RELIGION

God invites us to announce his love and mercy. He also pushes us not to remain silent in the face of lies and falsehoods, injustices and abuses, and so many personal or social contradictions. Being a prophet in our time means living in the truth and being consistent with the Gospel. Fidelity to God and to his Church implies assuming the risk of rejection, persecution, mockery, misinterpretation, even the sacrifice of one’s life. All this has already been lived and suffered by Jesus Christ, the Master, the Prophet of the Father. Living it and suffering it is an undeserved honor that God grants us, because in this way we become more and better like his Son Jesus Christ, who voluntarily offered his life on the Cross for the salvation of the world.

“Today Christ also says to us:‘ talita cumi ’. He invites us to get up, ”said Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, in his Sunday address. The Son of God encourages the discouraged, the sad, the sorrowful, and the desperate. To them, and to us, Jesus invites us to rise up to continue the personal, family, ecclesial and social mission that God has entrusted to us when he created us, by giving them his gifts, by keeping our hearts beating.

Jesus tells us, he tells you: “With you I speak … get up.” Get up from your sins and your deaths, from your miseries and lies, from your vicious circles and redundant entelechies, from your perverse and evil fantasies, from your cowardice and negligence, from your complicit silences and your interested pretenses, from your selfishness and self-centeredness, of your laziness and excuses, of your pride and arrogance, of everything that destroys you and does not let you live in the freedom of the children of God. “I talk to you … get up.”

On this Father’s Day we address you with special affection, and we invoke on Cuban homes the protection of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Shouting to the Lord in anguish as Job did, as do so many men and women of our time, in the midst of the storm of the pandemic, of political and social storms, does not mean not having faith in Him but quite the opposite. We know that He is always with us, although sometimes doubts or fear invade us. And only He is the God to whom all the forces and elements of nature respond, and to whom we will all have to give an account of our life and our works.

A fundamental element that makes up the Good Shepherd is his sense of responsibility. A well-understood responsibility that encompasses all aspects of life, a responsibility that does not exclude, all its “sheep” are important, it does not make distinctions, does not judge their thinking, and even when it greatly respects their freedom, it helps and collaborates to have great sense of what is fair, respectable and above all that which makes his life honorable and worthy. That is why the Shepherd guides the path of good, raises his voice to point out the danger, he faces without fear everything and anyone who threatens the stability and common good of his flock. The Pastor cannot, under any circumstances, live apart from reality, as this also affects him as a person and above all “helps him to help”, puts him in the capacity of being able to transmit the Gospel in a coherent and practical way that contributes to the construction of the Kingdom of God and the salvation of souls. It is necessary to look with the eyes of God, listen with the ears of God, embrace with the arms of God, in order to see God in everyone.

La Santa Sede difundió este lunes 14 de junio el mensaje del Papa Francisco para la V Jornada Mundial de los Pobres, que tendrá lugar el próximo 14 de noviembre de 2021. El Mensaje, que lleva por título “A los pobres los tienen siempre con ustedes”, una frase extraída del Evangelio de San Marcos, se firmó ayer domingo 13 de junio, fiesta de San Antonio de Padua, en San Juan de Letrán, sede de la diócesis de Roma.

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. “