RELIGION

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, dogma of the Catholic Church decreed in 1854 which maintains that the Virgin Mary was freed from original sin from the first moment of her conception on the merits of her Son Jesus Christ. Today is a day to understand that God also wants to count on us to transform the world as He did with Mary, who also wants to fill us with his grace, who expects our yes to transform us and transform the reality around us.

“All goodness is achievable, peace can fill the earth, love multiply, hatred disappear.” With this statement, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana reminds us in his Sunday address of this December 6, that Christ has chosen us so that “the promise fulfilled”, which contemplates the reduced sin, the full good and the disappeared evil, will become a reality in each of us, in our homes and in our peoples , in our Church.

On this second Sunday of Advent, the Word of God is a song to hope, which entails a call to conversion. God asks us to help him, He wants to count on us. From passive and pitiful sufferers we have to become active and enthusiastic builders of new roads. The seed it puts in our hearts must sprout and grow to feed others as well. The social transformation that we all yearn for must go through personal conversion, so that together we build a fairer society, a better world, a human community in which no one is excluded, in which everyone is inside.

Let us welcome the time of Advent as an opportunity offered by the Lord to know Him more and better, to resemble Him, to be reborn to the hope To which He calls us, to live fraternal charity more authenticly, to share the pains and anxieties of the people with which we live. At the heart of today’s message is Jesus’ invitation to be attentive, vigilant, and watch over. Active and attentive vigilance of what He desires of us at all times, the people who claim us, the circumstances around us, our involvement in the history of our people, our own and others’ pain, with the awareness that our mission is not to confront anyone but to make Christ present with the word, with the gesture and , above all, with the witness of life consistent with his gospel.

Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, said in his Sunday allocution that Christ, King of Mercy, invites the baptized, whom he also considers kings, to fill their homes with mercy and to turn churches into mercy. In his desire that we be servants of mercy, the Cardinal recalled that without it the houses will be a battlefield, hearts a dumpster and the churches an undesirable place: life a hell. “Choose to live in hell, away from God, now and forever or live in the heavens of mercy, now and forever,” he said.

The Solemnity of Jesus Christ the King of the Universe concludes the Liturgical Year and opens us to a new one, which will begin with the first Sunday of Advent. Today we celebrate Christ in his divinity and in his humanity, as Lord of heaven and earth, King of the Universe. Victor of sin and death, risen, he has been startled and glorified to the right of the Father and from there we believe that one day triumphant and glorious will come to judge the living and the dead. His invitation is to do good to all without distinction, particularly the poorest, smallest, weakest or needy. If we recognize him in them, at the end of our day he will recognize us as the friend is recognized, see his same face reflected in our lives, and say, “Come, blessed of my Father, to inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.” In this hope we live and walk toward God’s eternity.

Holy Mass on the occasion of the Fourth World Day of the Poor, whose theme is “Put your hand to the poor” (Sir 7:32)

On the penultimate Sunday of the Liturgical Year, before the Solemnity of Jesus Christ the King of the Universe, in which Pope Francis invites us to celebrate the Fourth World Day of the Poor, the Gospel helps us to realize that we are all poor, for all that we are and have received from God. He, being rich, became poor for us to enrich us all. He looked at us with love, gave us existence and filled us with talents, qualities and potentials, each of us differently, without any merit on our part. The way to multiply the talents God has given us is to use them for the good of others, as works of love that leap into eternal life.

At the arrival of the husband, who is Christ, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, invited the wife, the Church, to keep the lamp of faith lit. “How wonderful that when he comes he finds us at Sunday Mass, in a merciful action, in family prayer, in the teaching of catechism, in forgiveness to those who have done us evil, in family love! Thus, the lamp of our faith will be fully lit with the oil of love,” he said in his allocution on this Sunday, November 8.

The Wisdom of God is light in darkness. From the light of God, we meet with the depths of our being, we recognize ourselves in Him. In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers us a parable full of symbols, one of them is the light in the darkness of the night. Also symbols are the ten virgins, their lamps, the oil. The wisdom and prudence of the first five virgins is intimately linked to the Wisdom that comes from God. To be awake is not to keep one’s eyes open, with fear and unease, but to be attentive to God with peace and serenity, to be prepared by fulfilling the task He has entrusted to us in His Church. We will be prepared if we nourish the light of faith with the oil of love for others. Because God is love, there can be no authentic faith in those who do not truly love.