"With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop."

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Abundant Life Versus the “Culture of Death”

For over five decades, our North American society has upheld legislation that defends the heinous crime of abortion. This legislation comes with the appearance and excuse - among other things - of protecting a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and of supporting poor women so that they do not seek abortions in the darkness of illegality, with all the serious risks that this entails for their health and life. Yet this legislation forgets and tramples over, yes, the rights of the unborn, adding us – thereby – to the “culture of death” that, in so many ways, imposes itself on all of humanity.

We live in this historical and socio-cultural juncture of postmodernity. After two world wars, pessimistic accounts of “deconstruction” and “no-future” have appeared and the easy and fast, transitory, temporary, disposable, and ephemeral have prevailed. This is a historical and social moment in which individual freedoms and rights appear to take precedence over the common good and in which the truth has become “what is useful to me,” with the consequent predominance of subjectivism and sentiment, where each person assembles “a la carte,” his own manual of “truths” and constructs his own life project.

This is a world of permissiveness and moral laxity, of appearances, and where the unbridled search for happiness is confused with momentary and physical pleasure as an end, regardless of the means to achieve it. This is a hedonistic and pansexualist society in which sexuality, also “light,” is lived without love, without exclusivity, without commitments, reduced to genitality, and the frenzy of orgasms. This is a society and culture without convictions and without meaning, that has traded the transcendent value of life in exchange for all that be enjoyed here and now amidst the easy and immediate.

Issues such as abortion, divorce, euthanasia, etc., have gained resonance and power. In this “light” world and culture, a world of relativism and half-truths, and under the pretext of respect for plurality and differences, the truth is diluted or hidden. Feminist movements are acquiring rising power in all areas of our life in society, here and throughout the rest of the world. It is in this postmodern and “light” socio-cultural context that I will dare in these lines to give some opinions on the issue of abortion, at a time when our society is talking about the possible repeal, by the Supreme Court, of the federal law on abortion, to leave the legal decisions in this regard in the hands of each State of the American Union.

I write from the point of view of the Christian humanism that I profess because I understand that these teachings have universal validity insofar as the tendencies toward life, peace, justice, and truth are the intrinsic and inborn heritage of every human being whether or not we affirm the existence of the God of Christians and the consequent truths, values, and principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

An ethical-moral reflection on abortion cannot and should not be approached or appropriated exclusively by the humanistic and theological vision of Christianity. This appropriation or attribution of the discourse on the defense of life in abortion impoverishes and reduces the scope that the issue has for all humanity, because the appreciation, respect, and defense of the gift of life is the heritage of all humanity, insofar as that life is a value, inscribed in nature and in the heart of every human being and valid for every man and woman of any race, people, creed, ideology, etc.

The following reflections, great principles to consider on the subject of abortion and consigned here as concisely as possible, are only to foster an initial understanding that in no way exhausts the abundant and complex moral, ethical, legal, religious, psychological, political, and social controversies related to this topic:

• Christian and Catholic Moral Theology has always affirmed that the existence of the human person begins “from its conception. That is to say, from the moment in which the human sperm cell penetrates the human egg and fertilizes it, the moment in which the set of biological phenomena that lead to syngamy (union of the male and female pronuclei) begins, where the genome of the human being itself, the one that is unalterable, is definitively organized. In the union of the ovum with the sperm, the human nature of the new being is established and at that same moment, the genetic sex is also established.” (Dr. Rafael Pineda, Comentarios sobre los proyectos consensuados de fertilización asistida, translated from Spanish)

• All this means that Christian humanism maintains, at the same time, that human life is a biological process in permanent development: from conception to biological death, and that said process constitutes a personal identity, a human being. Therefore, “from the first moment of his existence, the human being must see his personal rights recognized, among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.” (From the Instrucción Donum Vitae 1,1 en el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica 2270, translated from Spanish)

• For Catholic moral theology, the "direct and voluntary" elimination of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. “Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” (John Paul II - Encyclical Evangelium Vitae of March 25, 1995 - N. 62). If the embryo is a person – who, like all human beings, is constantly developing from conception until death – then abortion is, bluntly, murder and the worst of crimes if we consider that parents and relatives (beings called to protect the life of the murdered innocent) lend themselves to take the life of an innocent and defenseless human being.

• Abortion is a crime. However, it is not only the woman who is involved in abortion. The woman who undergoes an abortion is the product of a social structure (family and legal) that influences and conditions her. Along with her, others are equally or more guilty (the father, the family, society...). The degree of culpability (whether the woman who should have been a mother acts with more or less malice) will depend on her degree of awareness, knowledge, etc. But, at the same time, nothing justifies the death of a human being, much less an innocent and defenseless one in the womb.

• Medical science serves life and never death. This is its first vocation, its reason for being.

• Naturally, the vast majority of human beings are born in a situation that – medically – can be considered “normal.”

• Any form of life is preferable – however precarious it may seem – to any form of death, however sophisticated it may be.

• The experience of parents and entire families who have accepted the existence of a child born sick affirms – also – the child’s value within the family and society and, furthermore, the moral value that accepting evil, suffering, and pain says about human existence. All this sounds contrary to a hedonistic and postmodern society in which pain and suffering are avoided in the unbridled pursuit of solely pleasure, regardless of the means to achieve it.

• If medicine fulfills its vocation and mission—that of promoting life and improving the quality of life of human beings—no one can decide to eliminate the life of a human being who—in the future—could experience an improved quality of life due to advances in medicine.

• The application of a greater evil (that of killing the child) does not solve the traumas and consequences left behind by a moral and physical evil such as rape. On the contrary, common sense allows us to understand that abortion adds greater evils and traumas to the woman who was raped and her life. 

• The same society that encourages abortion also abandons the woman undergoing an abortion to her own fate. Also, this same society, instead of punishing the rapist, punishes the woman who was raped and doubles her experience of evil by converting her, through abortion, into the murderer of an unborn child and adding "the physical and psychological complications that abortion already has in itself." (Cf. Dr. Cameron, Paul in Aciprensa).

• When we discuss abortion, we speak, first of all, of innocent people whose life is taken from them in the womb. But, we are also talking about the entire social, academic, scientific, medical, cultural, religious, political, legal, cultural, and family structure that directly affects the occurrence of all abortions.

• The woman’s body is the “lodging” that—during pregnancy— houses the body and the personal and distinct identity of the child: another being who is morally, psychologically, and legally independent, unique, and different than the mother. That the mother grants herself or is given the right to attack the child and kill him because he is lodged in her body is comparable to—for example—a homeowner believing he has the right to kill anyone who lives in his house.

What should be done, given the controversy and the political and public debate in our society about abortion? Let us return to valuing life as the sacred gift on which all other individual, group, and social values are based because political-social peace, social justice, and the progress and development in justice and the freedom of peoples are not built on death and cemeteries. Let’s work comprehensively, through all our actions, words, and attitudes, toward a “culture of life” and against a “culture of death.” Let’s not use legal devices to calm the twists of our consciences.

The clandestine practice or the decriminalization-legalization of abortion is hardly coherent in societies incapable of social justice, freedom, respect for human rights, equity, solidarity, and peace; that is, in societies where the “culture of death” is fostered. It is hypocritical to throw up our hands in horror at the murder of the innocent unborn, if, at the same time, we are not moved by the hunger and by the so many forms of injustice, violence, and death that surround us and also threaten the gift of life, and whose victims are the so many millions of our brothers here and beyond our borders. 

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A passage towards a better world - Easter 2022

 

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The Good Friday of Every Day

 

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THE WORD OF GOD and our words

The magisterium of the Catholic Church is vast on the value of the Word of God contained in Sacred Scripture and Christian life. Specifically, the magisterium is very rich and extensive in the - nearly - nine years of the pontificate of Pope Francis that he has given to the current life of the Church and world on this same subject, from which I will highlight the following three documents:

• The Apostolic Letter “Misericordia et misera,” at the conclusion of the extraordinary jubilee of mercy on November 20, 2016, in which the Pope expressed the wish that “every Christian community, on one Sunday of the liturgical year, could renew its efforts to make the Sacred Scriptures better known and more widely diffused. It would be a Sunday given over entirely to the word of God, so as to appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people.” (7)

• The Apostolic Letter, “Aperuit Illis” issued Motu Proprio on September 30, 2019, in Liturgical Memory of Saint Jerome at the beginning of the 1600th anniversary of his death, with which Pope Francis institutes that longing for the: SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD: “I hereby declare that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - which this year is celebrated on January 23, 2022 - is to be devoted to the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God. This Sunday of the Word of God will thus be a fitting part of that time of the year when we are encouraged to strengthen our bonds with the Jewish people and to pray for Christian unity. This is more than a temporal coincidence: the celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God has ecumenical value, since the Scriptures point out, for those who listen, the path to authentic and firm unity.” (3) 

• The Apostolic Letter “Scripturae sacrae affectus,” on the sixteenth centennial of the death of Saint Jerome, on September 30, 2020, with which he invited us all to “love what Jerome loved”: the Word of God. It is a letter with which – as I wrote at the time – “in addition to paying tribute to the life and work of this great human and Christian being, the Pope reaffirms the doctrine of the Catholic Church on Sacred Scripture, the primary source for faith and religion of all believers in Christ, of Catholics and, furthermore, for the experience and human activity of every man and woman of good will.” Because in all his teachings and, especially, with the SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD, "Pope Francis - in tune with the great reforms made, in the Church and for its mission in the World, by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, invites us – once again – to return to the source, to drink and feed our faith from the primordial source of God's Revelation that is Jesus himself - Word of the Father - and his gospels and to place the Holy Scriptures in the centrality of our personal Christian experience and in the life of the whole Church, of its existence and acts.”

In a world where we increasingly pursue connection, and where we, paradoxically, communicate less, perhaps, with tons of words, through the messages that technological advances allow today, it is possible that the word is being devalued, that it is losing its human and original value and power, which could explain, for example, the phenomenon of so many men and women who – amid so much telecommunication – experience, at the same time, so much loneliness and so much suffering due to isolation. Because the word has the power to communicate, to bring us closer, to make us known. Through the word we create, build, form lives, make knowledge, instruct, illuminate and transform our lives and the lives of others. But misused, mishandled, manipulated, and abused, the word also has the power to destroy lives, to harm, to kill.

The Christian, the man and woman who follow Christ, must know and recognize the immense value of the Word that creates and builds as in the biblical account of creation, when – through the Word – God creates. “And God said, “let there be...” (Cf. Gen 1:1ss; Jn 1:1ss) and of the Word that reveals, that makes known: what we confess about Jesus of Nazareth, as the Son of God and the Word of the Father, because, with all his actions and words, he shows the compassionate and merciful face of God the Father: “Whoever has seen Him has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).

May this SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD be a space and time for us to reflect on the value and role of the word in our lives and our daily interpersonal relationships. May we ask ourselves if our words build or destroy. May we ask ourselves – in short – if, in our daily lives, we are aware of the power and value of the word. 

But as Christians, especially, we have to ask ourselves what word or words we follow and if we follow THE WORD OF GOD that is CHRIST himself: the Word that feeds and sustains us, the Word that strengthens us and illuminates our lives with his life. 

May we ask ourselves if – as disciples of Christ, through our deeds and words, we make known the love of the Father, if we manifest with our lives the goodness of God, if each one of us is a revelation of God, in the image and likeness of the Son. In conclusion, on this SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD and always, as believers, we must ask ourselves about the position and value that we give to the WORD OF GOD in the life and works of the Church.

EASTER: Everyone CROSSES OVER, every day ...

Easter Sunday is an essential Christian holy day. Easter is a liturgical season lasting approximately six weeks, starting at the most significant Sunday of the Catholic liturgical year, when we celebrate Christians’ greatest confession of faith – proclaiming Christ risen and alive in the life of Christians and in the ecclesial community – and lasting until the solemnity of Pentecost.

Although it is the most significant annual holy day for Catholic Christians, the celebration of Easter has a universal message, i.e., a valid message for all men and women of good will, from any location, race, religious creed, political ideology, socio-educational level, social position, etc.

The Spanish word for Easter, PASCUA, comes from a Hebrew word meaning "CROSSING OVER". Easter was already celebrated by the men and women of the Old Testament when they commemorated the "crossing" of the Red Sea (cf. Ex 12-15), through which they were freed from the oppression to which they had been subjected for several centuries by the Egyptians. Later, the men and women of the Old Testament, converted now to Christianity, continued celebrating Easter, but with a new essence and meaning: the triumph and "transition" of life over death, the victory and "triumph" of good over sin in the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was crucified (cf. Ac 5:30), the first Christians who witnessed his Resurrection and confessed and proclaimed him as Living God (Mt 28:6) in their midst; these same first disciples made the transition from the old to the new (2 Cor 5:17), from selfishness to love , from those who are capable of recognizing themselves as brothers of the same God and Father (Gal 4:6), from sadness to joy (Jn 20:1- 18), from disbelief to peace (Jn 20:27), from cowardice to courage, from life alone to an existence where we can share bread with others (Lk 24:13-35), from the oppression of a life lived according to the law to a life lived in service and freely and generously given toward others (Mt 16:25), especially to those most in need (Mt 25:31ss).

This was understood, lived and theologized, at the time, by men like Paul of Tarsus or John the Apostle when they wrote that Easter consists of the renewal of the mind (Rm 12:2) or in the "crossing over" from death to life, if we love one another (1 Jn 3:14ss).

It is enough to see and hear the news that the media and social networks give us to make us aware of all the deep problems and  serious crises and conflicts now facing mankind in all the institutions that make up society and in all its facets.

These are conflicts that touch and involve the individual, the family, society, international relations, etc. Problems, conflicts and crises that manifest themselves in the loss of the value and meaning of life, in the solitude of many, in the use of psycho-addictive substances , in the breaking down of values, in the impermanence of family structures (divorces, de facto unions, infidelities, lack of commitment in marital couples, job instability, lack of social security for the family in many countries, intergenerational conflicts between parents and children, etc.); in administrative corruption; in lack of public services; unemployment; the loss of prestige, leadership and credibility of the religious institutions governing moral and social values; the lack of social opportunities for a personal and family life of dignity; the loss in the  quality of education; the pursuit of personal and social fulfillment through hedonistic and pansexualist pleasure; by recognizing selfishness and materialism as supreme values and through abusive and confrontational power; in scandalous forms of social inequality; injustices; a thousand forms of violence and death; drug trafficking; arms races; exploitation, and irreversible damage to ecosystems; internal and international war conflicts; famines; epidemics and pandemics; moral relativism according to which nothing is worth anything or everything is equal; and, a total lack of the existential meaning of transcendence.

This list of personal, family, social, national and world ills represents the manifestations of a greater evil: the evil that lives within man, in the very heart of the human being (cf. Mk 7:21ss). The crisis of structures is first and foremost a crisis of men and women. The rotten fruits of our human coexistence and our societies are the product of bad trees, with diseased sap. Because "the tree is known by its fruits ... " (Mt 7:15ss).

The first and deepest causes of our personal and social discomfort must be sought in the gaps, deficiencies and losses within the human spirit. While we have made significant advances in science, in technology, in the capacity to telecommunicate amongst ourselves, in the globalization of markets and in the accumulation of great capital and lifestyles full of luxury and comfort, we have diminished the importance of the great principles and values ​​that define the essential, intrinsic, innate spirit of the human being, that is, everything that makes us truly "human" and not inhuman.

EASTER has a message and a call for all to change and renew from within, to improve everything within us. EASTER is an auspicious time to pause on our journey and to start again. In Pauline terminology, we may cross over from the old man to the new man (cf. Col 3:10).

Today, the greatest emergency facing society and humanity demands of every human being an "Easter" experience, that is, an experience of "crossing over" inhumane, sub-human, or less humane circumstances and conditions to reach those that are more humane and worthy of people.

The desire for everyone, around the planet, to build  better societies and a better world in which we achieve the happiness we relentlessly seek, challenges us all to a daily and ongoing Easter experience: that of being better human beings, better families, better professionals, better citizens in order to build the apocalyptic utopia of "a new heaven in a new land" (cf. Rev 21:1-8).

Thus, the celebration of Christian EASTER is not merely a Catholic liturgical celebration, but also a birthright of all humanity, a call to all and a daily task while we are living: to be men and women, new and renewed, capable of transforming ourselves, our personal lives, and through those, our institutions and social structures to be more just, more solidary, and more humane.

HAPPY EASTER!

 

SIX YEARS OF POPE FRANCIS

On March 13^th and the 19^th, the Catholic world will celebrate the sixth anniversaries of the 2013 election and inauguration, respectively, of Pope Francis’ Pontificate.

Six years is a long way to look back and to evaluate what has been accomplished but, above all, to project the near future that awaits and challenges us under the guidance of this man, this Christian, and this pastor, recognized as a spiritual leader by and for all humanity.

Some Information About His Profile ...

His Pontificate has elicited admiration, and no one remains indifferent about it, either by the novelty of his genuine personality as a human being and as Pope or by the themes, accentuations and emphases of his Petrine ministry.

Francis is, above all, a Latin American man, a Christian, and a Jesuit priest who embraced and embraces the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in integrating them into his own life and his own teachings. And, this desire to want to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ authentically, simply, transparently and without airs, is not foreign to him, nor has it escaped the amazement and admiration of all, both within and outside the Catholic Church.

His own temperament and his life as a Christian also make him an intimate man and pastor – simple and humble – one who is like us. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is, as a man and as Pope, a daily, simple, and authentic being in his words and gestures, in the topics he addresses, in his attitudes and in his way of communicating and getting close to everyone. ...

His way of being in the Church and in the world shows him as a man who is conservative in his doctrine, but progressive in his attitudes and approaches; as a good pastor, welcoming, compassionate, and inclusive, and not exclusive (for example, in his approach to the position of women and homosexuals in the life of the Church) and as a Pope who has, wants and proposes a new way of understanding the forms of government within the Church, to the point of appearing and presenting himself as "anticlerical".

His Challenges and How He Has Answered Them ...

Restoring the trust and credibility of the world and of the Catholic faithful in the Catholic Church, in its hierarchies, in its institutions, and in its message is, without a doubt, the great challenge facing the Church in this era of the Pope Francis’ government. The Pontificate of Francis is challenged by important issues and problems – within and outside the Church – that must be confronted and resolved for the life, existence, and work of the Church in the world.

To these problems and challenges, Francis has responded by confronting them, without fuss or noise, but with all the determination and seriousness that these challenges demand from the Leader and Shepherd of the Universal Church.

In the remainder of this article, I briefly enumerate the big challenges that I see facing the Pontificate of Francis and the responses that the Pope has delivered in each case, during the six years of his Pontificate.

First, it is urgent that the Catholic Church, its authorities, especially its universal leader and guide, develop and lead positions on the major issues concerning the Church and all humanity. It is urgent that the light "does not stay under the bed, but that it gives light to all those who are at home". It is urgent that the light "shines amidst the darkness". It is urgent that the preaching of the Church leaves the sacristies to illuminate the path of all men and women of good will in the great issues, of all types, relating to human existence and to life in society.

Responding to this challenge, Francis, as a Latin American man, knows first-hand the various sounds, pains and profiles that the very serious social problems facing today's man have, and, from the first hours of his Pontificate, he has asked the Church to "go out to the peripheries".  What this means and implies is not to only go to the geographical peripheries, but also and, above all, to the central issues of the world and of all humanity where the Church, perhaps, became peripheral. ... Francis, in all his messages, is interested in everyday problems of all kinds where human beings live with the certainty and conviction that the Gospel of Jesus may enlighten and clarify the existence of every man and all men, with its mystery, its problems, its lights and shadows (cf GS 22).Francis's openness to any topic that interests everyone has been demonstrated in his many trips, messages, and meetings with political and religious leaders from around the world.

Second, Francis has pledged much of the last six years of his Pontificate to a major reform within the Church that starts from the very heart of the Vatican State organization  and, in particular, from the Roman Curia, its dicasteries, its organizational chart, accounts, etc. With the conviction that the testimony begins at home, Francis appointed, at the beginning of his Pontificate, a commission of Cardinals in charge of this reform, who serve as his immediate consultants and advisors. This reform has not been easy for the Pope due to the resistances that, in the very bosom of Vatican life, have arisen and have become evident.

A third challenge, the most mediatic of all, concerns the scandals that, in sexual matters, have undermined the credibility of the Church, especially through the sexual abuse committed against minors(pedophilia) by ordained ministers and of consecrated men and women (bishops, priests, religious men and women). These sex crimes committed, an immense majority of them decades ago and many others in recent times, today come to light thanks to accusations, the payment of lawsuits and, above all, the immediacy of the events in which we live today due to communication through the media and social networks.

In this, as in the most important matters of the life of the Church, Francis has taken the reins, has faced the issues, and has put the cards on the table so that the subject can be discussed and aired openly and without fear. The government of Pope Francis has made drastic decisions, legislated, met personally with the victims, has asked for forgiveness, has punished, has reduced many clerics to lay life, has decreed zero tolerance, but - above all – it has denounced the hypocrisy of our current life in society in which hedonism and pansexuality prevail. It is a pansexualist society and one that is libertine in sexual matters in which priests and clergy are born, in which they are raised and from which they come and, then, lose their minds in sexual crimes - of all kinds - that occur daily by the hundreds throughout the world and that are committed not only by the clergy, but also by men and women of all conditions and stations of life.

Finally: all of this sets a challenge more, and not less, important to the Catholic Church: the current and growing scattering and/or fall in the number of Catholic faithful in all latitudes, due to - in most cases - the problems mentioned above. Francis is aware of this and with his personality, his accentuations, his life, and his Pontificate, gravitates, above all, toward a Christian and ecclesial life in which the authenticity and quality of Catholicism and discipleship in Christ among believers prevails over mere quantity; and this quantity is a result of the testimony and Christians’ authentic following of Christ.

May God bless Francis so that, with the human and Christian authority and authenticity he has shown in these six years of his Pontificate, he may continue to guide the life of the Church and illuminate the path for all humanity for many years to come.

Take Courage (Jn 16:33)

1.-The human being: seeker of happiness ...

There are many concepts with which we philosophically seek to define and embrace the entirety of the human being. One of these concepts describes the human being as a tireless, permanent, eternal seeker of happiness because in the daily minutia of everything we do and experience, we want to be happy. Everything we live, then, is conditioned, has meaning, courage and truth in so much as it makes us happy.

2.- The Christian religious experience is, then, for the happiness of the human being ...

Particularly, religious experience, as a model of the mission, vision and values ​​in the lives of human beings and social institutions, plays an important role in this search for happiness. The different religious experiences and institutions must help to make the follower and believer happy. The Christian religious experience, therefore, must help us, the believers in Christ, to be happy. This must happen so that the life and mission of Christ has, then, validity for his disciples.

Twenty centuries of the Church’s evangelizing work in the world has not succeeded in showing and establishing the synonymy and coincidence between salvation and happiness, between eternal life and happiness, between the full and abundant life that Christ brings us and the happiness that every man and woman seeks while they live.

This explains the inconsistencies, hypocrisies and the permanent divorce between our faith and our daily life. For, on the one hand and in the margins of our personal, family and social histories, we seek the salvation that Christian religious faith offers us and, on the other hand, further away and almost always in contrast with our religious experience, we seek happiness.

This divorce, these inconsistencies, and hypocrisies disappear from the lives of Christ’s disciples when we discover that the health, salvation and eternal life offered by God through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, fundamentally coincide with the ceaseless yearning for happiness that every human being experiences; when we discover  that, as was beautifully expressed in the Second Vatican Council, "the truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” (GS22); when we discover that our life is illuminated and interpreted from and in the life of Christ; when we discover that our search for happiness and humanization finds in Christ and in his Gospel "the Way, the Truth and the Life" that makes us happy, that is, that saves us; when we discover that our choices, works, loves, sacrifices, renunciations, crises and achievements are understood and acquire meaning from the life, the options, the passion, the cross, the death and resurrection of this same Christ.

Thus, one can form an understanding of the human and ceaseless search for happiness from this beautiful and wise definition given to us by Saint Augustine: "You have made us, Lord, for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

3.- The search for happiness and religious experience is lived in  context ...

But the pursuit of happiness and Christian religious experience, like all religious experience, is lived in time and in space, not in a bubble; that is to say, in historical, social and cultural context. The pursuit of happiness is experienced by each person in the here and now of their personal, family and social conditionings and historical-social circumstances. That historical-social context is different and changing in the history of each human being and of all humanity and, therefore, produces and introduces nuances, interpretations, changes, and variations in the notion of happiness.

4.- Our current historical-social context: transition from modernity to postmodernity ...

To those who are here, to the inhabitants of the planet Earth of this time in which we live in a context that we call: the transition from modernity to postmodernity, it is a context and a historical moment with globalized characteristics that make us how we are, think as we think and act as we act today, unlike how our ancestors lived, felt, thought, acted and hoped.

We can succinctly say that the man of today seeks happiness by exercising power that tramples, crushes and oppresses. That today, we confuse happiness with the pursuit of the pleasure of the senses as the absolute beginning and end and regardless of the means to achieve it. We achieve this power and pleasure by accumulating material possessions, goods, riches in a network of interpersonal, social and regional relationships in which one’s power and pleasure grow as the money one boasts of, manages, and accumulates increases. All this stands in total and absolute opposition to the principles and values ​​that emanate from the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who taught us that we are brothers, children of the same Father, who understands power as service, finds pleasure in the generous surrender of one's own existence at the service of our most helpless brothers, and who has the capacity and ability to share whole-heartedly, compassionately, and harmoniously.

We find ourselves in a historical-social context, moreover, that is characterized and lived in the middle of conflicts and crises of the following types:

·       Personal (especially, the loss of absolute truths and with it, the meaninglessness of life),

·        Family (especially divorces, separations, and new family models),

·        Social (problems in politics, labor, health, education and housing, injustice and inequality, administrative corruption in governments and a thousand forms of violence, inefficiency in public services, etc.)

·        Regional, national and international (clashes between different political, ideological, governmental and economic models, internal violent conflicts and bellicose conflicts between nations, migration conflicts, displacements, famines, etc.)

·        Natural (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, etc.)

All these circumstances of our current historical-social context push our beliefs, our faith, our hope, our Christian religious experience to begin to be lived less by tradition and more by conviction; less as a set of external rites and displays divorced from our everyday reality and more like a lifestyle - according to the gospel of Jesus Christ - that permeates our personal and family lives and relationships and our social, political, cultural, economic, national, and international institutions.

Our historical-social context pushes and conditions us, here and now, so that our search for happiness-salvation through our Christian religious experience is "like one who is going to construct a tower or who is marching into battle..." (Lk 14:28ss). That is, a reasoned, reasonable, free, informed and intelligent Christian religious experience that allows us to "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope" (1 Pet 3:15). Christian experience that becomes in us a fundamental option of life for the person, the life and the gospel of Jesus Christ, until we can shout like Paul of Tarsus. "I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

5.-Christian Happiness-Salvation ...

Throughout these reflections, I have been showing what forms the notion of happiness for the disciples of Christ: to live their own life, to live daily the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. To live each moment of our lives as children of God and brothers of all in order to establish personal, family and social relationships that enable and build "abundant happiness and life" (Jn 10:10) for all. ...

6.- An invitation: to live the Christian experience without fear, without apprehensiveness ...

The historical-social context described above, in which we are pilgrims and live our faith and our Christian hope is, due to those who seek controversy or do not believe in the Gospels, challenging. For "the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few" (Lk 10:2).

What do we do as Christians in today's world and before the panorama so briefly described here? Are we to become disheartened, discouraged?

Press on today, listen, one more time, to the voice of Paul that encourages us, telling us: "We are persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed… (2 Cor 4:9),  because it strengthens our certainty of happiness-salvation in Christ, who tells us: " Take courage, I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33).

I invite you to return to our first Christian vocation: that of being a light in the midst of darkness and salt (Mt 5:13) in the midst of our current circumstances made unsavory by inhumanity.

I renew your invitation so recently made to all of today’s disciples of Christ by Pope Francis in the Apostolic Exhortation "Evangelli Gaudium”: to live a newly happy, joyful and rejoicing Christian experience. To be witnesses to the happiness-salvation that Christ gives us in the daily routines of our personal, professional, family and social lives. To live without fear of our baptismal commitment. To live with the joyful trust of the children of God and, consequently, to be able to establish relationships of compassion and mercy - as God loves us - with all the men and women within our lives. To live as missionaries of the joyful hope and good news of the gospel in the world today, as daily witnesses of the happiness-salvation that we find in Christian life. As men and women who are happy and transformed in Christ, with vision that - from and through the gospel - allows us to see everything with the joyful confidence and hope of those who know that "the bridegroom is with them" (Mt 9:15), "always until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20).