Year: 2021

Today’s Gospel invites us to share. “We will lack nothing, and those who give and receive will be satisfied.” In this way, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, in his Sunday address, invites us to give thanks to God every time we eat bread, food … and we pray that we can share them. “God himself, he said, will multiply, in one way or another, return what we gave.” He recalled that Jesus has commanded us to do the same at the Last Supper, take bread, give thanks, share and nourish ourselves with his body and blood in the Eucharist. “How wonderful, Christ and I identified both with a single heart, with a single soul, with a single desire for good and love.”

The Church of the first centuries greatly flourished from the witness and vitality of the early Christians, some of whom gave their lives and shed their blood like Christ. The Church of our time and place will be fruitful if each one of us intends to be Christians and witnesses of Christ to the last consequences, as was James, as were so many apostles and martyrs throughout history. Giving life, so that others may have life … tremendous challenge that, with Christ by our side, is attractive and achievable.

In recent days, the gestures of solidarity that many people have expressed towards the people of Matanzas move to tears. It is known that these actions multiply. It is about that genetic solidarity that accompanies us and that does not need slogans or ideologies to be present when it is most needed. To speak of initiatives of this type, the example of the one promoted by the Daughters of Charity can illustrate the response of the many Havanans who have known how to share what little they have. Many have even decided to keep little or nothing to give more, to share and help.

This July 19 we said goodbye to a man with many defects, who made mistakes during his life, but who, like all the saints we know, had more than good works and good decisions. From Bishop Siro we inherit his firmness and courage, his testimony of dedication and commitment to God; But above all he taught us love for Cuba, like the land where we are born and which we have to love if we say we love God, and he taught us to love the Church, to feel with her, to defend her from the storms; she is us; and as children and members of her, we have to take care of her and each one of us assume the responsibility that we have with her, without expecting others to do our part.

Her body defeated by covid-19, buried in a friend’s vault, in a grassy cemetery and without sidewalks, María Teresa Varela Suárez (Mayte), Sister of Jesus, has been the living image of poverty. However, the person who writes these lines assures us, “his tunic has not been stained nor has his foot been injured”, because his faith and his brotherhood with Jesus remained intact despite the fear he felt when he entered Intensive Therapy, or of the difficult moments that his previous life had: that faith and that brotherhood are “the foot” and “the robe” of which the sacred author speaks, keeping them is the true protection that God offers to those who decide to accept his friendship or fulfill his mandates, said in biblical language. “Mayte helped me understand that life is precisely the rugged path to the Light, with the shadow behind you: those shadows of envy, resentment, fear or oppression. As if that were not enough, she helped me bear the consequences of walking towards that Light in Cuba ”.

When the apostles return, happy with the mission held, Jesus invites them to go to a quiet place to rest. In its Sunday Aocution, Cardinal Juan de la Charity García, Archbishop of Havana, reminds us that a quiet place to rest can be our house, the place where we spend the greatest time of our lives and where the greatest richness of our Existence: the love of our parents, husbands, grandparents, brothers, grandchildren and other relatives. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who lived in Nazareth in a palace of love, peace and concord, pray for our families to always live in a quiet and full place.”

They are also pastors of society, all those who have publicly assumed a charge that implies dedication and service, people who, from their responsibility, lead the destinies of the peoples, societies, and not only from the Church. God complains about the negligence, poor work, of delays, of the ill will, of the selfish and irreflexive attitude of who he only thinks of his own good, who prefers to close his eyes and look elsewhere against suffering alien . Today Christ behaves for the crowds who are without course because the pastors of him have abandoned them. He will never leave us alone. Our crosses are the cross of it; Our deaths are the death of it; Our hopes of a better life light up from the light and the joy of the resurrection of it, which is victory of good about evil, of love on hatred, of life on death.