Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, bishop emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and responsible for the Doctrine of Faith at the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), offers readers of Exaudi his weekly article.
LOOK
Last week, the bishops of the country met in an ordinary assembly to evaluate what we have done in the last three years, elect new positions and decide the path for the next three years. We approved this general objective: To walk as a prophetic and synodal Church, following Jesus Christ and driven by the Holy Spirit, under the gaze of Saint Mary of Guadalupe, to continue evangelizing and building a culture of peace, through fraternal dialogue, justice and reconciliation, in hope towards the jubilees 2031-2033.
We proposed four transversal axes: 1. Synodality at the service of evangelization, to emphasize listening to God and to our brothers and sisters, to integrate personal, community and pastoral conversion, and to promote discernment and ecclesial co-responsibility. 2. The vocation, formation and mission of all the baptized, which includes ordained ministers, consecrated life and lay people, emphasizes vocational culture and integral formation, and strengthens the identity and mission of each state of life. 3. Illuminating the change of era with the Gospel, to illuminate cultural and social transformations, address current anthropological implications and integrate care for the common home and integral ecology. 4. The construction of the Kingdom of God in justice and peace, promoting accompaniment to the poorest and most vulnerable, attending to the victims of violence and working for reconciliation and peace from the truth.
The President of the Republic, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, the Secretary of the Interior, Lic. Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and the Head of Religious Affairs in this same Secretariat, Lic. Clara Luz Flores, were with us. We shared concerns about our national reality, such as insecurity, violence, poverty, excessive felling of trees, social polarization, migration, care of nature and other issues. For their part, they expressed their willingness to continue discussing this and seek solutions.
DISCERN
There are those who say that we should not get involved in these matters; but Pope Francis, faithful to the Gospel, wrote in his exhortation Gaudete et exultate on the call to holiness in today’s world: “Being saints does not mean blanking our eyes in a supposed ecstasy. Saint John Paul II said that «if we have truly begun from the contemplation of Christ, we must know how to discover him, above all in the faces of those with whom he himself wanted to identify himself». The text of Matthew 25:35-36 «is not a simple invitation to charity: it is a page of Christology, which illuminates the mystery of Christ». In this call to recognize him in the poor and suffering, the very heart of Christ is revealed, as well as his deepest feelings and choices, with which every saint tries to be configured” (95). “The Lord made it clear to us that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands of his, because mercy is the beating heart of the Gospel” (96).
No one is taking away the importance of prayer, of meditation on the Word of God, of liturgical celebrations, but we cannot be ministers of Christ and of his Church in the style of the priest and Levite of the Old Testament, who believed themselves to be saints because they went to the temple of Jerusalem and prayed the psalms, but did nothing for the poor man lying on the side of the road (cf. Lk 10:25-37). In fidelity to the Gospel, the Pope, in his exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, tells us: “To be evangelizers of soul, it is also necessary to develop the spiritual taste for being close to the life of the people, to the point of discovering that this is a source of greater joy. The mission is a passion for Jesus but, at the same time, a passion for his people. When we stand before Jesus crucified, we recognize all his love that dignifies us and sustains us, but right there, if we are not blind, we begin to perceive that Jesus’ gaze widens and turns, full of affection and ardor, toward all his people. Thus, we rediscover that he wants to use us as instruments to reach ever closer to his beloved people. He takes us from among the people and sends us to the people, in such a way that our identity cannot be understood without this belonging. Jesus himself is the model of this evangelizing option that introduces us into the heart of the people” (EG 268-269).
And last Sunday, on the World Day of the Poor, he reiterated: We see how injustice grows around us, causing the suffering of the poor; nevertheless, we allow ourselves to be carried away by the inertia of those who, out of comfort or laziness, think that ‘the world is like this’ and ‘there is nothing I can do’. Thus, even the Christian faith is reduced to a passive devotion, which does not bother the powers of this world and does not produce any concrete commitment to charity.
Christian hope, which has reached its fullness in Jesus and is realized in his Kingdom, needs our commitment, it needs a faith that operates in charity, it needs Christians who do not pretend to be indifferent. Let us ask ourselves: do I pretend to be indifferent when I see the poverty, the need, the pain of others? Do I have the same compassion as the Lord towards the poor, towards those who do not have work, have nothing to eat, are marginalized by society? (17-XI-2024).
ACT
The bishops, if we want to be faithful to Jesus, must make our own the pain of the people, who feel disoriented and hopeless. And all followers of Jesus must do the same: we must feel the anguish of our people and do what we can to reverse this situation of violence and insecurity, seeking opportunities to speak with the authorities and doing even something small to help and protect those who suffer.
