RELIGION

In his speech this Sunday, October 25, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, thanked God for the work of consecrated religious working in homes for the elderly and disabled. Among the communities whose hospitable charism is an obvious reality in the Haban archdiocese, the cardinal mentioned the Daughters of Charity, the Little Sisters of the Homeless Elders, the Handmaids of St. Joseph, the Religious of Mary Immaculate, the Brothers of St. John of God and the Congregation Martha and Mary. He also thanked the youth and adults for helping them care for those in these holy places.

God has created us out of love and to love. Our essence is also to love, to love God, to others and to ourselves, to love as God loves us, to love because God loves us. God’s love we have known him in Jesus Christ. His new mandate reminds us to love one another as He has loved us, or better, as He continues to love us. And his love consists in the surrender of one’s life. His mandate, rather than a law or a standard to be fulfilled, is to live what we are and for what we have been created by Him, which is infinite, total, compassionate, and merciful love, eternal.

The Archdiocesan Catechesis Commission has reported that next Saturday, November 7, the Catechetical Year 2020-2021 will begin in Havana. In a letter to the parish priests, leaders of Christian communities, catechesis coordinators and catechists, they are reminded that by this beginning, which was impossible to resume on the usual date (after the Feast of Our Lady of Charity of Copper), the hygienic health measures established by the competent authorities must be fulfilled.

In addition, the misiva urges catechesis sessions to shorten the duration of meetings and conduct them in open, spacious and ventilated spaces, maintaining physical distance and the use of masks as main safety measures. It also recommends reducing the number of children per group (no more than eight) where possible and, if necessary, expanding the number of catechists.

“This would be an opportunity to invite young people, because we know that many of our catechists are elderly people, people at risk in the face of this pandemic, so we thought it would be highly advisable to ask for their cooperation,” the letter states.

Next we share the full message, signed by Father Eloy Ricardo Dominguez, Archdiocesan coordinator of Catechesis,

“Mission is a free and conscious response to God’s call, but we can perceive it only when we live a personal relationship of love with Jesus alive in his Church.” With this expression of Pope Francis, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, recalled in his Sunday speech, the celebration on October 18 of World Mission Day. Over the centuries, and today, our Church continues to go everywhere, however difficult, announcing, teaching, baptizing, celebrating the sacraments, and practicing works of charity. The Habanero Archbishop insisted that we, as baptized, must also proclaim the gospel, but our mission is to make it present in our house. “Your husband’s best missionary is the wife, his wife’s best missionary, is the husband. The best missionary of his children is the father and also the mother. The mom and dad’s best missionaries are the children,” he said.

To give God what is god’s is to realize the essence of life. That He has created us as beings open to transcendence and fraternity, which He has created for us to love and be loved, and only by loving as He loves us, we are paying off the debt, we are fulfilling the righteousness of giving him back what He has given us first; divine and human love, towards Him and to our brothers and sisters, love incarnate and committed particularly to the less kind or loved.

In his address, corresponding to this Sunday, October 11, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, recalled that we are all invited to participate in the banquet that leads us to eternal life. “What happiness to be by the side forever of those who have fed us on this earth!” And because so many good things come out of the banquets, the cardinal invited the family to share Sunday lunch or lunch together. This will be an opportunity to listen to the wisdom of grandparents, admire the courage of young people, and fill ourselves with hope, learn from the innocence of children, and invoke God’s presence, and their light, to be happy in this life and celebrate with Him at the feast of heaven.

God the Father wants to marry all mankind through his Son, Jesus Christ. He does not settle for having created us, giving us life at every moment, but wants to establish with us a permanent friendship, a personal relationship because he cannot fail to love us. Don’t be content that we’re good, that we keep his commandments. He wants to have with us a sponsal relationship, of communion of life and love, made of dialogue, trust and forgiveness.

As a woman of action and delicacy could be defined María Cruz García, our Maricruz, a lay woman committed to her Church since her early incorporation into the Catholic Student Youth. An example of a wife, mother and grandmother, today she presents hes heses he himself before God with the musicality of his paused speaking, which did not detract from his balanced criteria, which he knew how to express in tone with the time and place. His rich personality leaves us with a desire: That there are many Cuban lay people like Maricruz in the current Catholic Church, so in need of them!

According to the reading of the holy Gospel according to Matthew 21:33-43, “Jesus shows us God’s faithfulness always to his people, whom he always forgives”. This is how Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana, referred in his address this Sunday, October 4. “God is persevering in his love,” he said, “created man in his image and likeness, and the first men of mankind rejected him.” They, he said, preferred the fate of selfishness and set aside living as children of God and brothers of all. Faced with this reality, he remembered that God chooses good people as a testimony to bear. Among them, the archbishop mentioned Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Jacob’s son, and Moses.

Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, discarded by so many wise and understood, reproached by man today, atheist, agnostic, indolent, apathetic, or indifferent; it is the cornerstone on which God the Father has wanted to rebuild his entire project of broken love for sin. And it remains for each of us Christians, their disciples, the hope of salvation, The One who overcomes death has become a giver of new life for all of us who believe in Him.