Year: 2021

En su alocución dominical el cardenal Juan de la Caridad García, arzobispo de La Habana nos recuerda que hoy también Dios nos pregunta a nosotros si queremos dejarle, si preferimos el camino del mal, del odio, de los vicios, de la destrucción familiar, del abandono de los ancianos…. el camino de la negación de Dios. “Ante esta interrogante nuestra respuesta es seguirle siempre, pues Él tiene palabras de amor, paz, concordia, entrega sacrificada por el prójimo… Mi familia y yo te serviremos, Dios nuestro; y caminaremos y viviremos contigo ahora, diciendo sí a tolo bueno, y diciendo no a todo lo malo. Tu palabra nos indica el camino, y tu cuerpo y sangre, presentes en la Eucaristía, en la Comunión, nos fortalecen para ser felices en la misión de amor que nos pides”.

Responding to a request from the Office of Humanitarian Affairs of the Office of the City Historian and the municipal and provincial directorates of Public Health in the Cuban capital, the Community of San Egidio agreed to convert its headquarters in Havana into a center of isolation. for cases of positive children to Covid 19.

God has created us free, to think, choose and act accordingly. Freedom, for better or for worse, is what most resembles us to God, it is the characteristic that best reflects the image of him in us. Those who seek to take possession of the freedom of others, in any of its forms or levels, are wanting to occupy the place due to God alone. Those who allow personal freedom to be curtailed in the name of any reason or cause, no matter how just and noble it may seem, are allowing the most essential and valuable part of their person to deteriorate and perhaps disappear. Every human person, as being intelligent, free and capable of loving, similar to God, is qualified and called to choose his destiny and to make the opportune decisions to achieve it; to think, decide and act accordingly to being essentially free from it.

Mary invites us to set out on the journey, not to allow ourselves to be trapped by the culture of evil and death, to look at the world from God’s eyes and reflect his goodness and mercy in our words and deeds. Putting ourselves on the path towards God and towards others, detaching ourselves from what hinders and hinders us. A path that so often is not made of roses but of thorns, in which the cross appears at every step. We, with Mary and like Mary, from the smallness of our history, from the humility and poverty of how little we are and have, must reaffirm ourselves in faith in God and in the truth that only in Him can we find.

“Our path is the same as that of Christ and the Virgin.” In this way, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, archbishop of Havana, reminded us in his Sunday address that created in the image and likeness of God, who is love, we do not leave space in our hearts for hatred or revenge. “And at the end of life, he said, how wonderful to leave a family full of love, a Church full of faith, hope and charity and a people full of peace.” He begged the Virgin to help those who have Covid, especially pregnant women, whom the Gospel of the day personifies in two great women: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth.

The talk that Fr. Manuel Uña, O.P, gave to the Havana clergy was about the priest’s mission in a changing and complex Cuba. When specifying the three crises that in his consideration affect Cuba today, that of COVID-19, economic and political, Father Uña insisted that before them the Church cannot remain as a mere spectator, nor should it face the situation from out with excessive criticism. “These processes, he said, must be accompanied from within through dialogue. This requires ministers capable of understanding the fate of the sufferer and comforting him. He recalled that it is the pastors who are primarily responsible for the mission of mediating and dialogue at high levels: “A favorable solution will not be reached by impositions, nor by calling for confrontation, but when mutual listening is exercised, They seek common agreements and concrete and tangible steps are taken that contribute with the contribution of all Cubans, without exclusion, to build the homeland of all ”. He insisted on the need to propose ways of meeting and dialogue that can lead to reconciliation and peace as the only valid alternative. He stressed that any mission must free itself from enmity, which already infiltrates many aspects of life and encouraged priests to protect their spirits from the temptation of force, from the contamination of the heart and the contempt of our fellow men. “Let us be shepherds, brothers who strengthen our brother, accomplices of reconciliation and hope. Of that hope that is not utopia but the certainty of a future that is making its way between us ”.