RELIGION

“Blessed are those who believe without having seen me.” It is the bliss in which we are included those who have put our faith in Christ forever and, even without seeing him bodily, even involved in doubt and difficulty, we follow in his footsteps. Faith in the living and risen Christ “serves” not to turn away from the world and reality, not to enter into a solitary, alienating and selfish bubble, to have life in his name, to live in truth and in authentic freedom, to open our eyes to the world around us contemplating the wonders of God and also his miseries, to be in solidarity with the pain of the brothers with whom we share life , to whom Christ sends us to be witnesses and servants of his eternal and merciful love for each of them.

For its present, we resume the homily of Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical House, in the celebration of Good Friday. In his message, he recognizes as a factor of division within the Church today, putting above the religious and ecclesial choice, the political option that defends an ideology, therefore forgets the meaning and duty of obedience in the Church. “We must learn from the gospel and the example of Jesus. There was a strong political polarization around him. There were four parties: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians and the Zelotas. Jesus did not align himself with any of them and resisted vigorously the attempt to drag him to one side or the other. The early Christian community faithfully followed him in this election. This is an example especially for shepherds who must be shepherds of the whole flock, not a single part of it. Therefore, they are the first to have to take a serious examination of conscience and wonder where they are taking their flock: whether by their side, or next to Jesus.”

hallelujah! Christ lives, the Lord is risen! It is the cry that resonates from the Easter Vigil throughout the universal Church. It is the expression of joy and hope of all Christians who celebrate with joy and joy the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, their victory over sin and death, their transition from death to life. In the Easter season we inaugurate today, we must ask the Lord, as his grace and gift, to “appear” also to us, to touch our hearts, to soften our hardnesses, to heal our wounds, to heal our diseases, to make us feel his living presence, all powerful and close, in the midst of so much misery, suffering, pain and death. Only from the experience of the Risen One can we be his witnesses, authentic and reliable, as were his first disciples; witnesses of the light that overcomes darkness, of the truth that overcomes the lie, of life that overcomes death.

Blessed guano and other religious signs remind us that we are celebrating Holy Week. Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana invited everyone, as far as possible, to place religious signs in our homes during this time. “Seeing them, he said, will help us live a good Easter.” In his an allocution this Palm Sunday, he asked families to eat together around the table. “Let us do a little prayer before we eat and discuss, like Jesus and the Apostles, how to love each other more. Before we sleep, like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, let us pray together the Our Father with the children of the house and the next day, before we go out into the street, let us make a sign of the cross on the forehead of those who come out.”

With the celebration of Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday we enter Holy Week, holy days in which we will celebrate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord, his Passover, a founding event of our faith in Christ who died and risen for us and for our salvation. For all Christians these are days of silence and prayer, of contemplation of the mystery of the Father’s extreme love for each of us, manifested in Christ’s free and voluntary offering of one’s own life. To look to Christ, to listen to Christ, to accompany Christ, to let us question Christ, to identify with Christ. are guidelines that can help us live more intensely at the Lord’s Passover.

The allocution of this V Sunday of Lent invites us to answer honestly the following question: How do we want to see Jesus? Father Ariel Suárez Jáuregui, commenting on the Gospel of the day, reminds us that God is only seen and known in depth when we are reached by his infinite love of the cross.

How many crises, moments of darkness, suffering, enmities, pains… are diluted by looking at Christ crucified, naked and wounded! How many clothes we have left in the life behind which we sweeten reality, hide our miseries, fail to truth, accommodate religion! How necessary it is to look again at Christ crucified with the gaze of a child, without prejudice or complex, appreciating what hurts me and identifies with Him!

Since the beginning of Christianity, St Joseph has occupied a very special place within the Catholic saint. St Irenaeus of Lyon in his treatise Adversus haereses states that just as he lovingly cared for Mary and devoted himself with commitment to the education of Jesus Christ, he also guards and protects his mystical body, the Church, of which Mary is a figure and model. They also exalted his figure, from the brief gospel passages referred to him, other Fathers of the Church such as St John Chrysostome, Saint Jerome and St Augustine.

For the Jesuit priest Raul Arderi, Lent is, above all, a way of preparation for Easter, the feast of life, God’s victory over sin and death in this world. “Living Lent means singing and waiting against all hope: Cuba, joy is coming!”

In his Sunday allocution, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, recalls that Jesus not only purifies us of our sins, but also makes us partakers of his own strength and wisdom. Bringing up recent words from Pope Francis, on his visit to Iraq, he insisted that Christ “frees us in a way of understanding faith, the family, the community that divides, that it contrasts, that excludes, so that we can build a Church and society open to everything and solicitous towards our brothers and sisters most in need.” He strengthens us so that we can resist the temptation to seek vengeance, that plunges us into a spiral of endless retaliation.