Year: 2021

Remembering that Jesus loved to teach the truth with parables or stories, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, in his Sunday address, assured “that the deepest truth is found with the help of a short and simple story.” In fact, he said, “young children like to hear stories that carry morals and directions for living decently and honestly.” He insisted that when Jesus tells us about sowing the seed, he invites us to cultivate good, honesty, family harmony, and the kingdom of God. “A little teaching can bear abundant fruit, it can transform a bad person into a good one, a thief into an honest one, a father who abandoned his children into a close and good father, a family separated by hatred into a united family. A little teaching works miracles. God likes to work with the small ”.

We please God the Father more and better when in everything we think, say and do we become more like his Son Jesus Christ. What would Jesus do, how would he act, what would he say, in the face of this person or circumstance … these are the questions we have to ask ourselves to act better. Certainly, constant good spirits is not easy at all, especially in the present moment, with the pandemic, with the situations of pain and unease that invade us, with the fear of the future and the precarious conditions in which we live, with the work and coexistence problems that plague us. But good cheer is not only a state of mind but an attitude, a desire, a way of life, a personal choice of the Christian and a gift that God the Father grants to those of us who totally entrust ourselves to Him and are capable of preserving the peace that only He gives us.

The Pope asked priests to shed themselves, their preconceptions, their dreams of greatness, their self-affirmation, to put God and people at the center of their daily concerns. “To put the holy and faithful people of God at the center, you have to be a pastor. ‘No, I would like to be only an intellectual, not a pastor’: ask for the reduction to the lay state, it will suit you better, and be an intellectual. But if you are a priest, be a pastor. You will be a shepherd, in many ways, but always in the midst of God’s people. “

Christian spirituality is not synonymous with pietism or spiritualism. Nor is it to live in a glass tower isolated from the rest of the world or to be blank-eyed staring at the sky. Christian spirituality has an essential part which is its commitment to transform the person, the family and society for the better.

The Feast of Corpus Christi invites us to put our eyes and our hearts anew on Christ the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the sacrament that, each time it is celebrated, makes the offering of Christ present in obedience to the Father, who is also an offering for us and towards us. It is the sacrament through which Jesus fulfills the promise that he made to his disciples before going up to heaven: “I will be with you always.”

In his address this Sunday, Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, recalled that Jesus, at the Last Supper, the night he was handed over, instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his body and his blood to perpetuate for centuries, until his return, the sacrifice of the cross and entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, the memorial of his death and resurrection, sacrament of piety, sign of unity, bond of love, paschal banquet in the that you receive Christ. In this sense, he invited the faithful to attend this mystery “understanding it well and participating piously and actively in sacred action.”

Words and philosophical arguments would not be enough to explain a mystery as great as that of faith in the Resurrection of Christ, the essence of Christianity. All of this constitutes a dogma that originally elicited the most dissimilar reactions, especially within Judaism itself, where it emerged as a new reading of ancient writings. The task of Christianity was acquiring tenacity and urgency of reinterpretation in the face of the challenge of establishing two distinctions that would mark the future of the new faith, neither is it Judaism, nor is it simply philosophy: Christianity. All this, despite the fact that the Jews of the first century understood it as a heretical sect within Judaism. Even today it continues to be seen as a complex phenomenon that involves mistrust, sometimes stigmatized as a retrograde system of thought, but full of many enigmas and questions to be solved.