RELIGION

In his Sunday address, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, asked the faithful to be united like branches to the trunk of Jesus. “If the Word of God runs like sap within our person, there is life, there are good feelings, there are good thoughts, there are good actions, there are numerous fruits of love, (…) nothing and no one will separate us from God’s love and works good will multiply day by day. If we are united to Christ, no hurricane, no temptation, no fear, no disease, no conflict will separate us from Him ”.

At a mass celebrated in the morning hours of this April 30, in the church of the La Salle school in Caracas (Venezuela), Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, known as “the doctor of the poor”, was declared Blessed. The relic of the country’s first lay Blessed was carried during the ceremony by Yaxury Solorzano, the girl who was miraculously healed through the intercession of José Gregorio, after being shot in the head by a shotgun in March 2017.

Manuel Díaz Páez recalls his membership in the Catholic Worker Youth (JOC) with the satisfaction of having belonged to one of the most dynamic groups with the deepest social commitment in the history of the Cuban Church

“Remain in me, and I in you”, is the command that the Lord gives us today, in this historical moment, in our local Church, in the concrete place where we live. Abiding in Him is the challenge we face every day when things are not going our way, when they persecute us, slander us, or make us suffer in any way. Abiding in Him is not a game, nor a partial or temporary option, or a beautiful expression; It is the key that sets the standard for the existence of the authentic Christian, who does not fear anything or anyone; He is only afraid of not being faithful to Christ until the end. Staying is the opposite of abandoning, leaving, letting yourself be carried away by comfort, preferring yourself over others. Abiding in Him entails being willing to be rejected, mocked, lacerated and crucified as He was. The counterpart is simply incomparable: “ask what you wish, and it will be done.”

In his Sunday allocution, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, recalled that God, like the Good Shepherd, knows us all, for He created us. “He goes before us so that we may walk his way, by which no one has ever been lost. He goes next to us, teaching us to be happy. He goes after us protecting us from the dangers of sin, from selfishness. He sends us his Holy Ghost so that when we reach the crossroads, we know which way to go.” In a special way he asked to pray for the messengers of peace and joy that God has sent to Cuba and that new apostles may emerge from our communities and families and increase vocations for priestly ministry, religious and missionary life.

World Day of Prayer for Vocations joins the celebration of The Good Shepherd’s Sunday. In the midst of a society so in need of change and reform, in which no one is excluded or discarded, in which we are all inside, being all workers and architects of the present and the future, let us ask the good Father to send workers to his own; that there are young people who think of leaving everything for Jesus Christ and for the gospel, in the priesthood, consecrated or missionary life. We ask the Lord, aware that this prayer commits us to offer him who we are and have at the service of the Kingdom. How can I ask him without telling him: here I am for whatever you need me for? We also ask for all our shepherds. Pope Francis, our bishops, our priests… so that at all times and place they may reflect the kind and dedicated face of the Good Shepherd.

In the allocution of this third Easter Sunday, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana recalled that once the apostles saw the Risen Christ, their doubts were cleared, they lost their fear, they were filled with immense joy, they felt the closeness of Jesus. He began to eat with them and opened their understanding to understand the scriptures. “So that our joy of understanding the words of the Risen One may increase, we eat with Him, just as the apostles ate with Christ,” he said. While described Mass as a great feast, the cardinal and archbishop called for participation in it and communion. “Thus we join Christ and can say as St Paul, ‘I live, but not I, it is Christ who lives in me.’ And when difficulties and problems come, we will act with the joy of the Risen Christ.”

In a world and moment as convulsive as the one we live in, in visibly contradictory societies, we must ask much of the Lord to also open our understanding to us, as to the disciples of today’s gospel. Not only to understand the scriptures, the mystery of his passion, death, and resurrection, the “was necessary” or the “had to be like this”; also to understand the reality that surrounds us, the world in which we live, the society around us. To know how we are to act, in the desire and challenge to be your faithful and credible witnesses, taking the necessary risks and avoiding sterile recklessness. May the strength of his Spirit and the light of his loving presence always remain the coordinates in which we sustain our daily walk.

We share with our readers the brief history of two 17th-century capuchins, who preached against slaveholders in a poor hermitage in Guanabacoa. These are the young Br. Francisco José de Jaca, Aragonese, and the French or Burgundy Fr. Epifanio de Moirans, who were imprisoned for their performance, without plugging, and then deported to Spain. And they were not reduced to preaching or the written word: the silence of the confessional was, so to speak, one of his most effective accomplice grandstands. A simple metal plate, placed on May 18, 2007, in the old hermitage of santo Cristo del Potosí in Guanabacoa (Havana), has since recalled its relatively brief passage through Cuba.

Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, in his Sunday allocution greeted the faithful with the same phrase of the risen one to the apostles: “Peace to you”. He remembered that peace comes from knowing that God loves us, and if He loves us there is no need to fear or be afraid. “Peace, he said, comes from feeling that the mission that God has entrusted to us in the family, in the Church, in society, we can fulfill it despite many difficulties, because God himself has given us gifts to fulfill what is in charge. And whenever God gives a gift he gives it as a task.”