THE FIRST STEP… Beyond the Pandemic

Timidly, humans begin to look out toward the streets. The most terrible days of the fear, tribulation, anguish, and mourning wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus appear to be behind us. As I write this article, the "official" global figures count almost 3.5 million people infected—suffering in the most absolute solitude, a million more who have recovered, and 250,000 who died alone, anonymous, without mourners or the rites of funerals.

All humanity has lived through an unusual and unprecedented situation of closing ourselves in, compulsory seclusion, confinement on a global level, quarantine, and social isolation—the most effective remedy to prevent contagion, to preserve and care for the invaluable gifts of health and life.

This is, without a doubt, the largest health crisis of our time, which overturned all our daily routines and "normality" and tore down all our certainties, security, and traditions. This crisis created a suspicion among us, shook our ideas of solidarity and brotherhood, and of being together, close to each other, and produced a still incalculable global economic slowdown, which is manifesting—first and foremost—in the terrifying number of unemployed people.

No one doubts that this pandemic is a milestone in the history of humanity and a turning point for our way of life, of being and living on this earth. During these days, we all wonder how to get back to what is being called the “new normal.” And although humanity has experienced earlier plagues and pandemics, this pandemic is the one during which we happen to be living. It is about this pandemic that I share here some brief reflections that, being realistic, positive, and hopeful, I hope to mitigate the exaggerated optimism that says that—following the pandemic—the world will be “new,” “distinct,” and radically “different” from what we have known, as if by some magic, the virus will turn us into better human beings and cast away the fatalistic pessimism of those proclaiming disaster, chaos, catastrophe, and death.

First of all, let me summarize—in addition to what I already mentioned above—other realizations and lessons that the pandemic leaves us. Suddenly, we are discovering the uselessness of the thousands of things that we had considered important and the usefulness of those that count: a life with meaning, with direction, with values… because the pandemic makes us confront the reality that nothing else matters when we do not have health or life.

Likewise, the pandemic teaches us that there is no economy or any other area of life in society if we do not have health and life, fundamental values of human existence. For the same reason, too, the pandemic suddenly and crudely revealed to us who is who in society. Who is socially useful and who is useless: because today a hospital’s stretcher-bearer or a restaurant’s delivery driver is more important to society than a soccer player, movie star, or a shoddy, chattering politician to whom we give such worship and platitudes. … Suddenly, health personnel and science professionals—to whom we give so little and no social recognition—were on the front lines of society in the fight against the pandemic.

We also learned about the planetary and ecumenical condition of human beings: that we are deeply and universally together in good and in evil. Quite literally, when someone sneezes in China, there is a fever at the other end of the earth. And, for the same reason, nothing that interests one human being can be alien to the rest of humanity or leave them indifferent. As Pope Francis has continually said, during these days, “no one is saved alone.” We all share the same “common house.”

We learned that although goodness and altruism have not disappeared and have manifested themselves these days in a thousand initiatives of solidarity with the most vulnerable in society, they coexist with the forms of unconsciousness, selfishness, corruption, and evil manifested these days, especially in the lack of cooperation and carelessness in not protecting others against infection, and in the theft of government aid meant for the poorest among us.

Politically speaking, if there was anything that exposed this health crisis, it was the insufficiency and shortcomings of the much-publicized "globalization" and of governmental institutions to face it. Society has tried to solve a global problem with local measures. Large cracks and structural flaws have been discovered within societies, exposing failures through which thousands of forms of structural inequity and injustice cannot go on.

We are also aware of a total absence of world leadership. The United States lost the opportunity to exercise it and those of us who dreamed of a new multilateral world order suddenly woke up, literally “distraught,” without a north, aimless, disoriented. ...

All this gives rise to the danger that—under the pretext of the pandemic— abusers in certain regimes and governments will, in turn, take advantage of collective fears to trample and violate human rights, and civil and individual liberties, by implementing—for example—emergency rule, curfews, states of emergency to legislate, greater police and military intervention to contain the population on the streets, etc. This is a danger that would, unfortunately, lead to new forms of autocracies, authoritarianism, populism, totalitarianism, dictatorships, protectionism, isolationism, nationalism, and xenophobia, which would revert achievements and successes we have already attained in societal life and our democracy.

Curiously and painfully too, society experienced this pandemic largely without the spiritual company of religious institutions. In societies already openly atheistic in relationships and social structures, each human being has had to solve alone—in personal and intimate confinement—the most distressing and fundamental questions about the meaning of life and the proximity of death and what lies beyond.

But this is not the end of human life on earth, nor can it be the end of trust, solidarity, and hope. This crisis must give us all a new and different attitude towards life and others. This crisis may represent an opportunity for the governments of the world to apply new paradigms in all fields of societal life: family, health, education, work, housing, public services, etc. ... This immeasurable crisis is a unique opportunity to adjust human and social values, to right the road. ... Now is not just for beating the virus, but also for overcoming our vain and arrogant failures—both human and global—that have been laid bare by the pandemic.

This crisis urges us all toward new forms of international cooperation and less harmful and healthier forms of globalized solidarity for all so that we can deal with present and future crises such as hunger, wars, climate change, etc. … all themes that involve the entire human family.

From the pandemic, we learn that the health-economy tradeoff is false. That, from now on, the public good requires that the economy be placed at the service of our collective health. ... How we solve and manage the lessons that this pandemic leaves us will depend—in large part—on the near-term future of humanity. The virus will not end economic inequality, nor will it end the animosity between leaders and the led. The virus will not miraculously work a mutation into the human spirit. Yes, from now on, fraternal solidarity, equal opportunities, honest work, and trust—without fear or anguish—in ourselves, in others, and in our institutions will save us.

May we have a vaccine soon! May the joy of life return! May the next pandemic be that of solidarity and fraternal love! “Light is the task where many share the toil,” said Homer. And “a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” said Lao-Tse. Well ... Let's take the first step!

SOMOS INNOVATION—the post-DSRIP future

As our city, our state, our nation and our world are struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, I first of all want to express my gratitude and admiration for your work on the frontlines of caring for coronavirus victims and protecting New Yorkers across the board. May you and your staff stay safe—and know you have the support of the entire SOMOS organization.

As you know, the DSRIP program formally concluded on March 31, 2020. It is a great disappointment that federal and state authorities opted not to renew the program’s mandate despite DSRIP’s many achievements. However, SOMOS will continue it groundbreaking work on behalf of the city’s poorest patients through SOMOS INNOVATE. It’s with an eye on that new chapter that I have drafted these notes.

The following draws on the recommendations and observations found in a report produced by the Helgerson Solutions Group (HSG), which earlier this year completed a strategic audit of SOMOS, precisely to map out its post-DSRIP future. HSG’s founder and principal is Jason Helgerson, the former New York State Department of Health Medicaid director and visionary behind DSRIP. He and this team know the health-care landscape intimately. It is a landscape being radically transformed by the Value-Based Payment (VBP) model and SOMOS INNOVATE will be our doctors’ guide and advocate.

As such, the HSG report proclaims that SOMOS INNOVATE is “about more than just being a VBP innovator. … SOMOS has the potential to revolutionize health and social care … and being a light in the wilderness for physicians and physician groups around the country.” As pioneered by DSRIP, the VBP model, a move away from the traditional Medicaid  fee-for-service payment formula, allows networks of independent physicians to bypass hospital systems and “contract directly with insurers (or the government) and take control of the total health care dollar and the flexibility those payment models offer to revolutionize care.”  With SOMOS INNOVATE at their side, our doctors can continue “to rise up and take control of their own destiny.”

SOMOS INNOVATE will continue the transformation of health care for New York City’s most vulnerable patients by continuing to “institutionalize cultural competence, empower patients and address the true root causes of bad health and social outcomes.” The fact that so many of our doctors share the same cultural background as the people they serve makes for “an exceptional closeness to their patient base, something that is very hard to achieve and harder to replicate by other organizations.”

To strengthen its clout and grow our network of providers, SOMOS INNOVATE will aim to engage other IPAs. It will also put a premium on partnerships with Community-Based Organizations to address Social Determinants of Health, a critical component in providing patients with comprehensive, wholistic care. Such care has the power to improve “community happiness” by “fully embrac[ing] the health, social and economic needs of the community.” It’s a model of care that revolves around the neighborhood-based primary care physician as trusted community leader.

To stave off competition, SOMOS INNOVATE will consider establishing “creative partnerships” with hospitals which might otherwise make access to specialty care more difficult. It will also pursue VBP contracts with Managed Care Organizations that would welcome SOMOS INNOVATION as a hospital competitor.

SOMOS INNOVATION has been operational for some time and continues to implement a rapid development strategy. The SOMOS Board of Directors appointed 20-year health-care industry veteran Dan McCarthy as CEO of SOMOS INNOVATION. An expert in value-based care, Dan has spent the bulk of the past year building up the organization and putting in place his management team.

The time is now, says the HSG report: “SOMOS is on the right side of health-care history. After years of delay, the health-care world is finally starting up really embrace value. New York State and Medicare are continuing their push to get virtually all providers into the VBP arrangement.” The goal is to position SOMOS INNOVATION on the forefront of publicly funded health-care innovation, state-wide and even nationally.

Achieving that objective will be critical if SOMOS INNOVATION is to succeed in enabling its doctors to remain competitive in a time of rapid change and in the face of the potential challenge of the Big Four—Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft—entering the arena of “technological innovation that will revolutionize the provision of many health-care services over the next decade,” stresses HSG.

In the form of robotics and Artificial Intelligence, “technology may replace as much as 80 percent of what doctors currently do and SOMOS will need to stay ahead of that curve on their physicians’ behalf.” A premium must be put on building “productive partnerships between doctors and machines.” Increasingly sophisticated technology will free up doctors from “routine tasks so that they can re-focus their time and attention to supporting their patients psychologically and helping them understand—as well as act upon—their medical condition.” Surely, this increasingly intimate attention paid to patients will be essential for delivering optimal value-based care.

Among the technological tools of the future will be smartphone apps that allow for 24/7 monitoring of patients. There will be sharp growth in the kinds of “wearable technology, biometric sensors as well as apps,” all working in sync to create an “Internet of the body.” “Doctors in the future will prescribe apps” allowing for patients’ self-diagnosis. Overall, technology will drive a “long-term shift from managing sickness to preventing it.”

The report says that in future, doctors may well be “dispensing their advice through chatbots, instant messaging and video calls instead of sitting in an office with a line of patients to see them.” Noting that SOMOS doctors “already excel at some of the inter-relational aspects of the job by virtue of being in, and of, the community in which they serve,” they will need training in acquiring a “new basket of skills” “to make the pivot to a more interpretative and context-providing role on its own.”

HSG notes that telemedicine, remote patient care, will have a $130B market share by 2025; and “the healthcare artificial intelligence market is projected to reach $19B by 2026.” All that innovation means that “the future of medicine will be more precise, personalized, participatory and preventive. These attributes align perfectly with SOMOS’ existing values.”

Indeed, helping and training our doctors “plan and prepare for the technological disrup4tions of the future” will be a hallmark of SOMOS INNOVATION. It is part and parcel of its overall commitment to empower our providers to offer the best possible care to New York City’s most vulnerable patients, and to bring about lasting reform of publicly funded health-care delivery.

The Pandemic and Easter

We live our human existence, amid experiences both good and evil, on personal, family, social, national, and international levels. Today, all of humanity faces an experience of evil: the pandemic caused by the exponential contagion of the Covid-19 coronavirus, which causes us to change and call into question everything: our way of life, our ways of interacting at the family and social levels, our institutions, and social structures. This experience of evil reveals all our weaknesses and frailties, in addition to the deficiencies of our social organizations, especially those in the health sector. Therefore, we live through these hours of confusion, anxiety, anguish, suffering, pain, and mourning across the globe.

To prevent and stop, as much as possible, the advance of this pandemic, human communities around the world have agreed on days and weeks of confinement, social isolation, and quarantine that has confined everyone in our homes.

The newscasts are saturated, every minute, with the counts of the infected and the dead, with the dire consequences we face in every area—especially the economic and labor areas—of our social coexistence that emerge wherever the pandemic goes, with headlines about initiatives that appear here and there to mitigate the suffering of so many, and with calls to all of us to save what we have built as a society.

For those of us who are alive here and now, at this moment in human history, this is an unprecedented situation—as novel as this heretofore unknown virus is in the world of medicine. All of us—each in his or her respective environment and lifestyle—are learning, as each hour passes, how to face this common enemy and how to survive….

But, in these hours that are difficult for everyone, not everything is bad, nor is everything negative, nor is everything lost. There are lessons to be learned from this evil experience on a global scale.

In the first place, this unusual experience of evil, which touches the most intimate and profound part of our being because it affects our health and, with it, our possibility of continuing to live or die, is an opportunity to recognize, on one hand, our utter weakness, our lack of self-sufficiency and, in religious terms, our “creatureness” and total dependence on a higher being we call God and Creator. But also, this is an opportunity to recognize our interdependence on all other human beings and how strong, essential, and extraordinarily solidary we are in good times, but also in evil times. In a word, we are beings who are "dependent" on God and on one another.

Secondly, social isolation, already declared in most countries, is a precious opportunity to enter into ourselves, to find ourselves again, to travel to the depths of our inner selves, and discover the truth on which we base our personal stories and the values ​​or anti-values ​​that support the fabric of our lives. This confinement to our homes is a unique opportunity—away from outward appearances, visual impressions, ostentation, and the daily bustle—to return to silence, to reflection, to meditation, to prayer. The obligatory quarantine that we are all living is, also, a unique opportunity to return to ourselves and to come together with our loved ones, with our close friends, with our family.

The enormous ease and speed with which the virus is transmitted and infects, also teaches us the shared responsibility that we all have in the construction or destruction of our life on earth. And if the common good, the general consensus, the best interests for everyone calls for surviving this pandemic, then we will all have to banish from each one of ourselves selfishness and all the negativity that it entails and bring forth the best of ourselves and the best of our human values to rebuild the world and our human coexistence with interactions, spaces, social methods, and institutional forms that are more just, more solidary, more equitable, more fraternal, more compassionate, and more merciful. In other words, this experience of evil that touches and affects us all so deeply, is an opportunity for hope that, from now on, we will all be different and build a different and better world.

During these days, Christians will celebrate Easter, the greatest religious celebration of our liturgical year while Jews will celebrate Passover. While Passover, in the Jewish theological system, recalls and commemorates the "passage" of the Old Testament people from slavery to freedom by crossing the Red Sea, Easter, in the Christian theological system, recalls and commemorates the "passage" from death to life through the triumph of the life’s work of Jesus of Nazareth—after his death on the cross—when he was confessed as Living and Resurrected in the community by the first Christians and by all his disciples up through today.

Everything that happens to us can be lived as a curse or as a blessing. I invite you to live this experience of evil, this pandemic, this social isolation, this suffering for loved ones who are sick or deceased as a moment of blessing, as an "Easter," as an experience of "passage" from death to life in our shared search for a more humane, more caring, more fraternal world. 

Happy Easter 2020!

Pope Francis and Postmodernity

On March 13, we will celebrate the seventh anniversary of Pope Francis' Pontificate, seven years of service to the Church and the world from the See of Peter in Rome. We will look back to 2013, when, during the fifth vote of a conclave that lasted two days, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the first Argentine and Latin American Pope. We will recall that, for his Pontificate, he chose the name of Francis, as a symbol and in honor of the poor saint from Assisi.

From the moment of his election as the new Pope, Francis showed the world a new style, his own style of a man, his genuine Christian, Jesuit, and Latin American style while guiding Peter's Boat. It was a style that was prominently demonstrated and summarized in Pope Francis’ first speeches during his first week, starting from his election and going through the Inaugural Mass of his Pontificate, celebrated on March 19, 2013, at the feast of Saint Joseph.

Then, on March 14, the day after his election, in his first Mass in the Sistine Chapel, he issued a call “to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ in order to avoid being dismissed simply as a “charitable NGO”. In addition, he stressed “the Church’s need to move away from the secular by building on the Gospel and the cornerstone of Christ.” On March 15, in audience with all the Cardinals of the world, he invited them to "try to respond with faith in bringing Jesus Christ to humanity and to attract mankind to return to Christ and the Church."   

On Saturday the 16th, in the Paul VI Audience Hall and in audience with journalists from around the world who covered the Conclave that elected the Pope, he told them: “Since many of you are not members of the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I cordially give this blessing silently, to each of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you, but in the knowledge that each of you is a child of God. May God bless you!” On Sunday, March 17, he presided over the Angelus Prayer, at which he spoke of “God's mercy that never castigates.” That same day, he wrote his first tweet: “Dear friends, I thank you from my heart and I ask you to continue to pray for me.” It was a petition that had already been made at the moment of his election when he appeared on the balcony of the Apostolic Palace for his first greeting and first blessing to the world. And on March 19, in the inaugural homily of his Pontificate, speaking of the power that Christ granted to Peter, Pope Francis recalled: “Let us never forget that authentic power is service,” considering the figure of the Pope as someone who “must enter ever more fully into that service” and “open his arms to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important” (1).   

Gospel, humanity, respect, mercy, service, welcome, the poor, and others are all recurring daily themes in the Petrine ministry of Francis. These are themes and emphases through which he shows us, wholly, as a man, a Christian, and a conscious and knowledgeable Pope that we are not only in an era of change, but also in a change of epoch (Doc. Aparecida 44) that involves and affects all areas and dimensions of the human being and, therefore, of all humanity. Francis is a Pope who possesses knowledge and awareness that few have of the challenges that these changes in this change of era presents to the evangelizing work of the Catholic Church in the world.

This change of era in which we live in this space-time in the history of humanity and in which we pilgrimage with our Christian faith in the world has been called the “transition from modernity to postmodernity,” “culture light,” or “liquid modernity” (Z. Bauman). These are terms with which we try to designate a set of changes and characteristics that are happening and define the human being in this new way of being, of thinking, of doing, and of behaving in the world and, within it, in all the communities of humanity at this historical juncture.

Roughly speaking, these changes mean a loss of the meaning of life, a “liquid” and poor (not solid) story of a history without a future, without hope (after world wars and the unsatisfied ideals of our modern ancestors) and, with this, a loss of work and effort and an unbridled and hedonistic search for the enjoyment of one's own self, which forgets the importance of everything collective, institutional, hierarchical, and for the common good. With the search for immediate pleasure, there comes a loss of the transcendent meaning of life and everything valuable is what comes by easy and fast, ephemeral, disposable and in passing, all without commitment and effortlessness.

The supreme “moral value” of light or postmodern man is pleasure and, to achieve this, “the means do not matter. ...” In the midst of the abundance of information and self-centered evaluation of the person, the truth is diluted in a subjectivism and moral relativism in which nothing is worth anything or everything is worth the same and each one manages “on-demand” the truths with which he tries to achieve the pleasure of living in the middle of this immense “cemetery of hopes.” For pleasure, you have to have and consume, so that materialism, luxury, money, consumerism, and comfort are imposed as a very important means in the pursuit of happiness. Here, aesthetics replaces ethics, sentiments instead of reasoning  and, in the large market for consumption that is any society, religion is one more item—eclectic and on-demand—in the game of supply and demand.

This new axiology, this new “moral” criteria, this new way of being, thinking, and acting for today’s human being challenges each of us and the very identity of the life and work of the Church in the world because it defies the very essence of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. The “liquid” and gaseous values of postmodernism challenge the solidity of the facts, words, criteria, and attitudes lived and taught by Jesus to his disciples of all times, if that is true, with them and only with them we can build our lives like those who build on rock (Mt 7:21ss).

That is to say, and with more concrete examples: What does Christian hope have to say about postmodern despair? What place does the cross of the Gospel have against today’s hedonism? What value does the search for love and evangelical brotherhood have in an egocentric and selfish world? How do we attain a transcendent vision for life in the midst of the materialist and consumerist immanentism of “light” men? And so on.

Pope Francis knows, feels, and suffers deeply every day these challenges and emergencies in which we have to set ourselves to the evangelizing work of the disciples of the Church if we want to be “the light and salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13 ff). For this reason, Catholics are constantly invited to build our Christian life as a “Church in exit:” A church that “leaves the convents, the ecclesiastical bureaucracies, and clerical structures to meet the people, especially those suffering, the poor, those abandoned as scrap or waste in a society that gets used to discarding, to technological obsolescence (Morandé Court, Pedro: Modernidad “líquida” y anuncio de Cristo).

May the years of the Pontificate of Francis be many more so that his evangelical Petrine service continues to be a beacon that will guide us all—amid daily, serious, threatening, and multiple current storms—to a safe harbor.

_____________

(     (1)     (quotations are taken from: (http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en.html) and the  

           boldfacing is mine.)

NB: The following page was also referenced in writing the original Spanish version of this post: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Cronolog%C3%ADa_del_pontificado_de_Francisco

So that we may understand

Sacred Scripture is the foundation of Christian life and the Christian Credo. Scripture is the first and primary source from which Christian faith and experience flow. In Scripture, we find the revelations of God and his plan of salvation for man and all men of good will, through the history of the people of the Old Testament, especially in the mission of the prophets, and lastly and perfectly, (Cf. Heb 1:1) through Jesus of Nazareth—his deeds and his words.

The entire history of the people of the Old Testament, especially the lives and proclamations of the prophets, the lives of the early Christians and their communities, but especially the very life of Jesus of Nazareth, became—through his authenticity and consistency, through his authority, that is, through the manifestation of the divine in the deeply human, (Cf. DV 2)—the space where God reveals himself and his will for all mankind.

For centuries, the importance, foundation, and centrality that Sacred Scripture must have in the life of the Church, in general, and in the life of each Christian, in particular, were neglected and forgotten. And, during twenty centuries, other voices, other words, other documents, other announcements, other exhortations, other notions of life became, perhaps, more important than the written Word of God. Sometimes, they were in tune with the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, but many other times, these have been bodies of teaching and/or doctrinal concepts that have contradicted how God manifests and communicates in the Bible.

That is why—six decades ago—the meeting of all Catholic bishops of the world at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council invited all believers in Christ to return—beyond the doctrinal tangle woven for twenty centuries—to the source of our Christian Credo, i.e., God's revelations contained in Sacred Scripture, especially to what the God of the Old Testament and our Creator and Father reveals, through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, also, the most recent popes and most important doctrinal documents of the Church have focused on providing the central place that Sacred Scripture deserves in the life of Christianity, seeking to raise awareness of the identity, the life, and the work of each disciple of Christ, in each community of faith.

Thus, in the Apostolic Letter issued “Motu proprio,” entitled APERUIT ILLIS and given in Rome on September 30, 2019, Pope Francis institutes the THIRD SUNDAY of ORDINARY TIME of the Catholic Liturgy as THE SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD. This year, this day will fall on January 26.

This new endeavor, this renewed importance that the Church wants to give the centrality of Scripture in the life of the Church and every believer, is recognized by Francis himself in the aforementioned letter when he says: “It is now common for the Christian community to set aside moments to reflect on the great importance of the word of God for everyday living. The various local Churches have undertaken a wealth of initiatives to make the sacred Scripture more accessible to believers, to increase their gratitude for so great a gift, and to help them to strive daily to embody and bear witness to its teachings.” (2)

The Pope wants this celebration for the “study and dissemination” of the Word of God to have—at the same time—an ecumenical character: “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.”(3) May this be the moment to highlight and recognize the importance of the Word of God in worship in our sister Christian churches. 

We congratulate and applaud Pope Francis’ initiative, which, in line with similar provisions of his predecessors, is encouraging our faith and bringing us closer to the primary source from which our faith, our hope, and our love flow: the Holy Bible.

“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Commentary on the Book of Isaiah, Prologue: PL 24,17B) - Quoted by Francis in the aforementioned Letter). We applaud, again, this new endeavor because, in the Catholic Church, we regain the centrality of the Word of God in our Christian life, but this calls for education on the part of us all: the agents of evangelization and its recipients. Theological education (exegetical and hermeneutical) is urgently needed so that we learn to read the origins of our faith in biblical texts with the same theological intentions—although from different cultural perspectives—with which they were written. We must synchronize the confessions of our faith with the confessions of faith of the first Christians. We must shape our lives to the life of Christ. We must, in short, give life to the Word of God in our daily lives.

Let us take advantage of this new Catholic ardor for the Word of God. Let us participate in the spaces of study of Sacred Scripture that are offered to us, so that our faith becomes more intelligent, more reasoned, more reasonable and, therefore, more credible. As the apostle Peter urges and encourages us: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” (1 Pet 3:15)

A New Year to Rejuvenate Ourselves and Renew

"New year, new life," the familiar saying goes. The start of a new calendar year is a great opportunity to review, evaluate, adjust, straighten up, heal, move on, forgive ourselves and others, forget and rid ourselves of the old and what hinders us, reinvent, undertake, and begin anew... An opportunity to feel that we can renew and start again with new courage, hopes, and energies on the road we are driving toward the realization of our best hopes and ideals ... a new opportunity to build hope. A new year, in short, is an auspicious occasion to make us “new” like the year that’s beginning.

And this hope for the "new" has never been as necessary as it is now in our current social, national, and global circumstances. Every minute, the media gives us news riddled with bad news, discouraging news about the lives of men and peoples: senseless news of life, suicides, crimes, family conflicts and breakups, corruption in the lives of political leaders and the religious, corruption in the administration of public affairs, neglect and poor quality in the administration of essential public services  (health, housing, education, etc.), impoverishment of the majority versus the scandalous enrichment and excesses of some elites, national internal conflicts and the threat of conflicts and wars between nations, the arms race, electoral and political disappointment in many nations about the poor performance of their leaders, hopelessness, injustice, a thousand forms of violence and death.

What can be said amidst this anguishing panorama that, in the daily reality of the world and in the news, seems to suffocate the signs of goodness, truth, justice, righteousness, and honesty that also survive— who can deny it—in many men and women in every corner of the earth?

We all have to rethink each day and with great seriousness and honesty: What is the individual life purpose we want for each of us? What type of society do we want to build for ourselves and for those who come after us? What type of society do we want to live in? What type of political system do we yearn for, choose, and want for our people? In what type of economic system do we want to live and enjoy the gift of our human existence every day? And, very importantly, what is the planet that we want to inhabit in order to deliver it, with the best possible conditions for human life, to future generations?

The overwhelming, worldwide failure of political and economic plans is resounding and undeniable. The uprisings, demands, and justified social protests among so many peoples and in so many nations are also obvious. The divide between the few who have so much and the many who have nothing has not been reversed or overcome. Still, there are threats to world peace that remain dormant. The excessive macro-economic growth of large corporations and multinationals in the face of the misery of so many. The suffering of the millions of men and women who, emigrating from their homelands in order to seek a better future, is approaching us and beckoning to us from all parts of the world. The hunger of millions against the indifferent comfort of a few. The dishonest and corrupt management of propaganda, elections, and the agenda of politics and politicians. The inequity, injustice, and violence scattered across the globe demonstrate our failures, selfishness, and social frustrations and, at the same time, point out our greatest challenges.

And at the bottom of all this lies, in praxis, in daily life and in the relationships of our individual lives, the absence of the most basic and profound values of human beings and a lack of authority, transparency, and consistency between what we believe and what we practice, between what we live and what we aspire to. A hypocritical inconsistency that translates into institutions and social structures that have been corrupted by the unbridled selfish and hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, greed, and ambition at all costs for possessing and the desire for the power to crush and repress the best ideals of humans.

What do we have to do? Where do we have to walk together and join the best efforts and hopes of all? The time has come to change stereotypes and social models that no longer work because they produce the adverse, inhumane, and catastrophic fruits and circumstances aforementioned. The time has come to put the common good before the individual good. To prioritize the common goals and objectives (environmental, social, and governmental) of all before the individual profits of large companies and financial corporations. The time has come to say yes to life and abundant life against a culture of death. It is time to say yes to solidarity, freedom, truth, honesty, dialogue, participation, peace, respect for different cultures, and for nature and to turn our backs to selfish individualism, consumerism, intolerance, injustice, discrimination, marginalization, moral and administrative corruption, and all forms of inequity and violence.

If we want to overcome the abundant and very serious evils that assault today’s human community, we must aspire to live a new year where respect for the person and for human life supersedes any other value or interest, in order to achieve the construction of a new society and a better world in which ethics prevail over technology, service trumps power, the worker is more important than the capital, and the transcendent supersedes the immanent and ephemeral.

I wish you all a happy new year 2020, which will be happy as long as we, all of us, want it and build it!

A Christmas for Everyone

 

In the Christian world, Christmas represents an important celebration commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But, at the same time, Christmas is a universal celebration and commemoration that marks the value and historical legacy that the life, work, and message of Jesus represents and holds for all humanity.

Jesus of Nazareth, who as Christians, we confess as the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God, the Lord of History, light of the world, bread of Life, Good Shepherd, the beginning and end of history, was—undoubtedly—a unique, peculiar man or, in the words of his apostle Paul, a "new" and novel man.

The journey of Jesus on earth was so impactful that we count the years of the official history of humanity, that of the West, and that of almost all the peoples of the earth starting from his birth.

And what did Jesus do to cause such an impact on the history of humanity? What is so great and monumental about the story of his life that makes it so valid twenty centuries after his birth? What was so impressive and monumental about his existence resides simply and uniquely in living and loving, in living to love, in understanding life as a gift from God in order to dedicate it in service—also as a gift—to all, especially the weakest, the impoverished, those who have been "discarded" from our society.

His experience of love, the gift of his own life to all, sprang from the recognition of God as the Father of all and, consequently, the recognition of all men as brothers, sons of the same God, Creator, and Father of compassion and mercy.

A human being like us, deeply human, this Israelite male, from the land of Judah, a colony—at the time—of the Roman Empire—a son, from a manger and later a carpenter’s workshop, of the peasants Joseph and Mary, an emigrant, being a child in Egypt and then in Nazareth, he reached his thirties on the dusty roads of his homeland to preach what— from his own experience—can make us happy: to live the purpose of man that God has for every man who comes to this world, to live as children of God and brothers of all, loving each other.

He met with some fishermen friends, who later spread throughout the then-known world the teachings of their teacher, the Nazarene. The people followed him because no one had ever spoken with his authority, that is, with his coherence between what he preached and what he lived, between what he demanded and what he delivered, between what he believed and what he proclaimed.

Loving heals all kinds of physical and spiritual diseases. Those who meet Him, discover and meet the love of God and feel relieved, healed, liberated, happy, saved. ... He spends his time doing good. He lives and preaches a good and new life that sprouts from within, from the heart of man, because he understands that if man is good, he will bear good fruits. ... With his novel, and therefore, scandalous, facts and words, he announces and denounces and enters into conflict with the authorities of his people and of his time who kill him on a cross, in the same way they had killed the great prophets of his people and as they continue killing all those involved with the man and the truth throughout history and in every corner of the world.

But his life’s purpose did not die with him in the tomb; it continued through twenty centuries of history, being vindicated, followed, and, hopefully, lived by those who are called his disciples: Christians, who confess him alive and resurrected, present in the life of each believer and in the life of each Christian community faithful to his "gospel."

The greatness, then, of the life of Jesus of Nazareth consists and paradoxically coincides with his smallness, with the simplicity of living that for which we were created: for and because of love and to live our daily lives extraordinarily well doing good.

Before everything and everyone, Jesus of Nazareth is a free man. He is a liberator in the face of ambition and greed, in the face of hatred and resentment, in the face of what the powerful will say, in the face of selfishness and lies, in the face of pride and hypocrisy, in the face of servility and injustice, in the face of violence and death ... A man who, with the trust, hope, and dependence of his life placed in God, lives bravely and fearlessly. Jesus, thus and also, is a man for us.

Because of all this, the life of Jesus consisted of—not only for his disciples—a model of life, a "Way, Truth and Life" for every man and woman of good will. In the presence of the life and message of Jesus, all our best yearnings, our deepest human tendencies, our best desires for good are clarified and enlightened.

But at the same time, amidst our current and difficult circumstances at the national and global levels, how we lack the authenticity of Jesus of Nazareth in today’s men and women! How the world needs men and women with the authority and coherence of life shown by the carpenter of Nazareth! How distant and lacking in the world today are the criteria, principles, and values lived and preached by Jesus of Nazareth! How far we are from realizing the Christian utopia of a world in which we can all live together as brothers! How much we need to live in the truth, love, justice, forgiveness, hope, and abundant life lived and preached by Jesus of Nazareth!

The life of Jesus of Nazareth and his message are, then, an obligatory reference, a call, a path, a task for all of us who long for a happy existence and a better world, living in peace, living more justly—a world that is more livable, more fraternal, supportive, compassionate, and humane.

For all these reasons, Christmas is a big feast day, a Christian holiday, and a universal celebration, because the purpose and message of the life of the child in the manger in Bethlehem are still valid, because today the deeds and words of the Nazarene are needed more than ever, in a world that cries out for justice, truth, peace, and abundant forms of life and humanity and because the carpenter's gospel of Nazareth is about to start.

  

Merry Christmas!