RELIGION
Message from the Holy Father Francis for Lent 2021
Fasting, prayer and alms, as presented by Jesus in his preaching (cf. Mt 6:1-18), are the conditions and expression of our conversion.
Year: 2021
RELIGION
A message of peace for us too
Advanced in the second month of 2021, Father José Miguel González Martín proposes to resume the message of the Papa Francisco of the most recent World Day of Peace to talk about healing and reunion, two such urgent realities in Cuba today, which presuppose that there is disease and fracture, confrontation and disenquitment. “In open and sincere dialogue, he believes, without prejudice or prevention, among all partners, its causes must be addressed, because symptoms and consequences are already known and suffered. By analyzing the causes together, we will be able to propose, not impose, common paths of peace and reconciliation, of healing and reunion; we will be able to implement ingenious and bold solutions, but achievable and that benefit everyone. The free and sincere expression of all that we understand as a lack of truth in the social fabric of the country cannot do without the also sincere desire for healing and reunion. Truth, however true, cannot be imposed or cast by force, reason, ideology, or even religion; it must be sought, found and shared in open, sincere and fraternal dialogue.”
RELIGION
Allocution, Sunday, February 14
In his address this Sunday #14defebrero, Lord’s Day and Valentine’s Day, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of #LaHabana, invited the faithful to do the same as Christ: listen to the sick, pity them, reach out to them, help them, speak to them, fill them with peace. “This peace, he said, will lift their spirits and make them fight with all their might to regain the health of soul and body.” He recalled #17defebrero next year in every church in the world will be celebrated on Ash Wednesday. In this way the path of forty days of preparation to Holy Week begins. “During this time, he said, God invites us to conversion, to change to be better.” Taking advantage of the celebration of Valentine’s Day, the Haban archbishop exhorted husbands to live a new life in their marriages, full of hope and illuminated by the light of the gospel.
RELIGION
VI Sunday of Ordinary Time
It is worthwhile for us to spend a little time today thinking about what our leprosies are, our individual or collective scourges, which drive away, stigmatize, discriminate and dehumanize. We cannot be left alone in concluding that the leprosy of our time is covid-19. There are many more leprosy spread and hidden or hidden: hunger suffered by thousands of people and, along with it, poverty in any form, lack of decent housing, lack of fairly paid work; other leprosy are forgotten wars in poor countries and any form of explicit or hidden violence against women, children, the elderly, including abortion, which is the murder of the unborn; another leprosy is the oppression and repression of totalitarian regimes that cancel out personal freedom and hurt the economic and social development of peoples; another leprosy is the manipulation of the masses through deception, lying and false promises through some means of social communication… Discovering, unmasking and identifying our individual or collective leprosy is the first step in healing and ridding us of them.
RELIGION
A Cuban charity hero
Olallo lived, from 1835 until his death, in the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, from this period, he was in a convent community truly structured until 1854. In 1857, as a result of the Laws of Exclaustration, the Order lost the administration of the hospital that passed into the hands of the Civil Lobby of the City and only two friars remain there: Manuel Torres and Olallo and, from 1876 until his death, he was left alone, not only there: in Havana the Hospital de la Orden was first closed , then the community closes and at the same time the same thing happens in the rest of America.
SOCIETY
Old evils, new optimism
Thinking about each other, accepting it, helping them, also making their ideas, paths and dreams possible, is a way to contribute equally to their own paths and dreams. To think of the other is to keep in mind that our work, whether in front of a quartet, behind the wheel of a bus, the post of an agro or the window of a public service, has its fruit and destination in another. Whoever reads to us, to whom we sell or transport or facilitate a management, is like yourself. If we do our thing right, if we treat it and serve it well, that same treatment and service we must receive.
CULTURE
There is no compensation, but justice
The film Fragments of a Woman does not focus on a story about motherhood. This proposal by hungarian director Mundruczó (AFTA – Day After Day, Pleasant Days, Little Apocrypha No.1, Joan of Arc on the Nightbus…), which has featured screenwriter Kata Wéber, wants to show the sudden collapse of a life project in the face of desire and the possibility of a couple (Sean and Martha) making family. Martha’s character will offer a lesson in humanity above what everyone expects.
SOCIETY
Thumb and ethics of care in Cuba
One of the messages of the classic tale entitled Pulgarcito is precisely the invitation to slip through the difficulties and capture the dynamism of the miniature. Let us remember that in the narration the little protagonist settles in the horse’s ear, speaks quietly and achieves with a “strong” voice that only listens to the one who must do so, to get the animal to advance, and with this unusual fact the goal of moving from the small to the big is achieved. That dynamic of the small to the big is what Dr. Teresa Díaz Canals shares in her text to point out some aspects that she believes are necessary when addressing the issue of care in Cuba.
CULTURE
Faulkner: between the Bible and literary mastery
Many writers have incorporated the Bible into their books. Among them, the following article reminds us of William Faulkner (Nobel Prize in Literature 1949). He, like thousands of authors, would not let his literary imagination pass indifferent to the most famous narrative text of all time, from which he knew how to draw more than one interpretation when it came to opening himself to the depths of the human soul and giving away pieces as striking in that sense as Absalom, Absalom! And descend, Moses. In times of obligatory gathering, it would be not bad to stop, at least, in the work of a teacher of our teachers. It would be worth the try.
RELIGION
Allocution February 7, 2021
In his Sunday address on 7 January, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, reminds us that prayer cannot be any occupation in the life of a Christian, as it was not for Jesus, who dedicated himself to the service of his brothers and sisters. “The man who has lived on the watch over others has been someone who has not been overcome by activism, agitation, haste, dispersion, but has sought throughout his life silence and prayer, even when everyone was looking for him.”