Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, Bishop Emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and head of the Doctrine of the Faith at the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), offers Exaudi readers his weekly article.

FACTS

We have prayed a lot for an end to wars, not only between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Palestine, but in so many other places, far and near, but the conflicts do not end. We ask God to enlighten our authorities so that they organize politics and economics to serve the community, rather than their own interests. However, it seems we cannot escape corruption, demagoguery, and the manipulation of information, particularly affecting the poor. We ask God that common and organized criminals change their lives, so that we may live in social peace, but they do not stop their crimes and extortions, despite the good efforts of some authorities. We ask God that there be no more imbalances in the ecology, and disasters are often increasing due to human irresponsibility. Does God not hear us?

When we are struck by illness, or when someone close to us falls ill, and we ask God for health, we are not always cured; death may even follow. When a wife, husband, or children and relatives insistently ask God for family harmony, the opposite sometimes happens: separations, violence, and divorces. Some parents pray a lot for their children to follow the right path, and they do the opposite. We ask God, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints for just and adequate work, but none is found. Does God not hear us?

We pray a lot for more priestly, religious, and missionary vocations, but they decrease instead of increasing. Masses and rosaries are offered for some intentions, and everything seems useless, because things don’t change. We ask God to increase our faith, and it wavers. There are those who, when their requests for pilgrimages, novenas, fasting, and other religious acts aren’t fulfilled, become discouraged and can lose their faith. Some make promises and oaths not to use drugs and intoxicants, but then go back to same old thing. Doesn’t God hear us?

LIGHTNING

Pope Leo XIV, in his homily last Sunday, on the occasion of the Jubilee of Missionaries and Migrants, said:

“The Spirit commands us to continue Christ’s work in the peripheries of the world, sometimes marked by war, injustice, and suffering. In the face of these dark scenarios, the cry that has been raised to God so often in history arises again: Lord, why do you not intervene? Why do you seem absent? This cry of pain is a form of prayer that permeates the entire Scriptures, and we have heard it from the prophet Habakkuk: “How long, Lord, must I cry for help, and you will not hear? Why do you show me iniquity and look on oppression?” (Hags 1:2-3).

Pope Benedict XVI, who addressed these questions during his historic visit to Auschwitz, returned to the theme in a catechesis, stating: “God is silent, and this silence lacerates the soul of the person praying, who calls out incessantly, but finds no response. God seems so distant, so forgetful, so absent.”

The Lord’s response, however, opens us to hope. If the prophet denounces the inescapable force of evil that seems to prevail, the Lord, for his part, announces that all this has a fixed time, an end, because salvation will come and will not delay: “The wicked will surely perish, but the righteous will live by faith” (Hags 2:4).

There is a life, therefore, a new possibility of life and salvation that comes from faith, because faith not only helps us resist evil by persevering in good, but also transforms our existence to make it an instrument of the salvation that God continues to desire to accomplish in the world. And, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, it is a peaceful force; faith does not impose itself through the means of power or in extraordinary ways; a mustard seed is enough to accomplish unthinkable things (cf. Luke 17:6), because it carries within it the power of God’s love that opens paths of salvation.

It is a salvation that is realized when we personally commit ourselves to and take on the suffering of our neighbors with the compassion of the Gospel. It is a salvation that develops, silently and seemingly ineffectively, in everyday gestures and words, which are like the tiny seed of which Jesus speaks. It is a salvation that slowly grows when we become “unprofitable servants,” that is, when we place ourselves at the service of the Gospel and of our brothers and sisters, not to pursue our own interests, but solely to bring the Lord’s love to the world.

The point is to proclaim Christ through welcome, compassion, and solidarity. Without taking refuge in the comfort of our individualism, we must look into the faces of those who come from distant and suffering lands, open our arms and hearts to them, welcome them as brothers and sisters, and be a presence of consolation and hope for them.  (05-10-2025)

ACTIONS

Like the apostles, let us ask the Lord to increase our faith, which is that certainty that God does not abandon us, that He does not disregard our fate. But let us learn from the example of Jesus, who insistently asks his Father to free him from the painful passion that is approaching, but leaves everything to the loving and provident will of the Father. He knows what is best for us and acts at the right time. And may we become a source of hope for many people who suffer, so that we may be the channel through which the merciful love of God the Father overflows. Through us, He continues to love and do good. We are hope for others, as Jesus is.