RELIGION

Among the Church’s most outstanding communicative experiences in Cuba is a project born as a virtual community that in 2020 was extended to other platforms and formats. Since its inception, the Catholic Youth Network (RCJ) has explored the world of social media and the media in order to connect as many young Cuban Catholics as possible.

In his allocution this Sunday, January 24, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, invites us to follow Jesus, as did Andrew, Peter, Santiago and Juan. In this way, we will be fishermen of people “for the greater glory of God and happiness of them, their families, their friends, their neighbors, their peoples”.

Pope Francis has instituted this third Sunday of Ordinary Time as the Sunday of the Word of God. From this virtual pulpit, which we have called “Today’s Word”, we intend to put our grain of sand to fulfill this desire of the Pope: that the Word of God will come to us as the food of the spirit from which we cannot do without. Nor could those disciples who left everything and marched after Jesus could not do without him. Leaving everything means losing everything to win it all. Men and women of all times and places, also today, follow Christ with what they are and have, it is worth it. If others did, how can we not be able to do it ourselves in our time. To this end Christ Himself will give us his grace and the strength of his Spirit.

2020 closed for Cubans amid an informative awakening. This time also demanded from the Church an awakening of evangelizing creativity on social media. Several priests and some bishops, youth groups, marriages, lay movements, and others came together on digital platforms to share and celebrate the faith. Father Rolando Montes de Oca says that “today not only do we all know more about everyone, but we share what we do and think as a people, which has inevitable cultural and social consequences.” In his opinion, on the Internet and on the networks “a new Cuba arises”, to which we must contribute the Christian content it needs to be the happy country that God wants and yearns for our people.

Today we are invited to meet those who last forever, the one who spiritually nourishes our person. Finding him is safe, because he is the one who passes, he continues to become encounterive. God always has the initiative. In his Sunday allocution, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, reminds us that in difficult times it is best to share, because the value of a life is measured by the lives it modifies. “Those who choose to be happy,” he says, “must help others to be happy, because one’s well-being is linked to that of others.”

Jesus wants us to make a way with Him; he does not think it is convenient or enough to explain to us to convince us or suddenly overflow with his truths. He wants us to follow in His footsteps and lively experience who He is and what He calls us to; that we stay with Him to share His own life and destiny because He wants to share ours. The “come and see” that Christ directs us to each one demands renunciation, sacrifice, trust, and patience. The disciple of Christ must be entrusted, sacrificed and light of luggage. The Church is a missionary by nature and all the baptized are called to evangelize, to be missionaries. Anointed by the Holy Spirit, which we have received from God and who dwells in each of us, we also want to say today to the Father, through Christ, from the depths of our hearts: “Here I am, Lord, to do your will”.

On October 3, 2020, Pope Francis gave the Church and the world a new Encyclical, Fratelli tutti (Brothers All), subtitled “on fraternity and social friendship”. In the most recent issue of #PalabraNueva, Fr. Jorge Luis Pérez Soto approaches some topics developed throughout the document, with the intention of sticking them to Cuban reality. It is a material written with reason, as a teacher who wants to enlighten and introduce a student; as a Cuban who feels deeply and with his heart the reality of his land; and above all as a priest and believer, convinced that the gospel and the via amoris are the only way to restore hope.

“Serving means caring for the fragile of our families, of our society, of our people”

Let us rebuke from the baptism of Jesus our own baptism and its meaning. This is the sacrament that identifies us with Christ, through which God delivers us from sin, aggss us with his Spirit and looks at us lovingly to say to us too, as jesus: “You are my beloved son”. How important it is for Christians to remember every day, in every place and in every event that, by baptism, we are called to identify with Christ, who went through the world doing good.

We celebrate the solemnity of the Epiphany or feast of the Three Wise Men, a feast very full of symbols and meanings for our Christian faith, for it is the revelation of the presence of the Incarnate God. Jesus Christ recognizes all men and women of good will. In front of Christ, king of light, there will always be the Herods of every age and place as kings of darkness. Herod “reincarnates” in all those who subdue, oppress, deceive, humiliate, manipulate, violent, or kill whoever it takes to remain in “his power.” Herod’s figure also represents the evil to which we are always exposed. Above all, the evil that can go against love and faith, against others and against ourselves. Just as the Magi set out to be trusting in a star, we too are invited to stand in the way of Christ, detaching ourselves from all that does not allow us to be his disciples. Only God can be offered and given everything. From the image of the Three Wise Men, Christians are called to be missionaries; transformed by the living experience of encountering Jesus, we are sent by Him to witness his light.