Singing to you is as necessary as air

Ana Lucia Vlieg, poet and singer-songwriter, a blind friend of ours from Boston, told us she was struck by what Enzo “had allowed Christ to do in her life through the companionship of Fr. Giussani and the movement.” We read this in the short testimony in the February 2024 Newsletter, which you can find here. This time, we’d like to share one of her beautiful songs and her splendid voice, and tell you a little more about her.

“My name is Ana Lucia Vlieg Paulin,” she begins, “and I was born in Panama 46 years ago. From a very young age, music and faith have been present in my life. As I grew older, I began to fall more and more in love with the person and message of Jesus Christ, lived within the Catholic Church”.

Ana Lucia has an interesting educational background: she earned a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston and a master’s degree in English Language and Literature from Boston College.
In the musical field, she has participated in several recordings as a performer and composer, performing in various Latin American countries.
“From my love for Christ, and from my awareness of music as a tool of communication and beauty,” she explains, “I developed the desire to tell my story of faith through the songs I write”.
After trying to sing about my experience of faith, I also imagined the encounters the Maestro had with the many characters of the Gospel, and I tried to express them in my compositions.

The artist lives in Massachusetts, where she works as an office manager with her husband. She has published two collections of poetry: Mi Despertar Poético (1988) and Sueños y Esperas (1996). Her album Llamados includes songs she composed and performed as a soloist. She is a member of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation and an active volunteer in the immigrant community. The themes of faith, love for one’s homeland, commitment to human dignity and solidarity, along with the ability to be amazed by the simplicity of everyday life, are at the heart of her poetic and musical work. This is confirmed by her account of how a song she loves dearly came to be: “The song ‘Come l’aria’ came about after some friends and I were thinking about the gift of breathing. It occurred to me that, just as air is vital to our physical life, the certainty of Christ’s presence among us and the knowledge that we are called to friendship with Him are vital to our spirit.
I also thought that, having received the gift of experiencing this love and friendship with Him, I truly needed to share this good news with others. I remembered the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who describes his need to speak of God as a burning fire within his bones, and those of Saint Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, where he said: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” For me, it is vital, like air, to sing of His presence, to testify to the joy of knowing I am loved by Him, and to share the beauty of the daily challenge of following the path His example has taught me.

Fondazione Enzo Piccinini