Allocution March 7, 2021
Good morning brothers, this is Monsignor Polcari, our Pastor Cardinal Juan de la Caridad cannot be with you today and has asked me to lead you a reflection on Sunday, March 7, Third Sunday of Lent. Following its good habit, I begin by thanking everyone who makes this Sunday radio meeting possible.
This Sunday’s Liturgy places its emphasis on the primacy of God in his relationship with the Chosen People, in the ancient Covenant marked by the Ten Words or Commandments proclaimed by God so that everyone knows that He is the only one and that there is no other; He is “his” God who joins Israel and makes them his people. God is jealous, he does not accept that the love that is due to Him be shared with false gods. The proposed text is Exodus in chapter 20, verses 1 to 17.
The acceptance or rejection of these “words” will correspond to the attitudes of fidelity or adultery in relationships with God. The life of the people of Israel will be marked by this experience that will reach its fullness in Jesus Christ, who will summarize all the laws and precepts in the supreme commandment of love. As Jesus teaches us, we must fully live the commandments because they are a safe and always current guide to our relationship with God and our neighbors, starting with the family, continuing with the community of brothers in faith and reaching those who do not support us. They want well and we know them as enemies.
(Song)
The apostle and evangelist John, in chapter 2, verses 13 to 22, whose evangelical text is offered to us today, tells us the episode of the purification of the temple by Jesus, with the great festival of the Jews already approaching.
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The life of Jesus is marked by the calendar of the holidays of the Jewish people. He celebrates them with his disciples and gives them their full meaning in his own person, as the apostle Paul tells us, referring to the sacrifice of Christ as “our Passover.”
Jesus manifests himself as the Lord who demands the correct fulfillment of the Scriptures, “because the zeal for his house devours him” and at the same time proclaims his divinity because He is the Lord of life: “Destroy this temple and, in three days , I will lift it up.” The Lord expels not only the merchants but also the lambs and oxen that were offered as sacrifices.
John’s narrative reaches its climax here: the body of the resurrected Jesus is the new temple of God, the old one will be left behind, so many times desecrated by the infidelities of Israel. And He is the only true Passover Lamb through whom salvation and forgiveness of sins is achieved. Jesus announces the destruction of the Temple that will mark the beginning of a new age in salvation history. The time will come when God will be worshiped in spirit and truth. Jesus, is the definitive temple.
After the resurrection of Christ, the apostles maintained a religious respect for the Temple; But Saint Paul will speak of the Christian’s body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and where the Holy Trinity comes to dwell from the day of our Baptism. Over time churches large and small will be built all over the world. And these sacred buildings are a privileged place for the faithful to encounter God, but not the exclusive place. The Church is present wherever there is a Christian who truly lives his faith, and the houses where they pray as a family become domestic Churches. The Catholic must make his body and his home a place for God, ensuring that his family lives in the love, respect and concern of each of its members, one for another.
The text of Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians comes to remind us who is the center of our Christian Faith and to whom we belong and whom we follow. Leadership in the Church corresponds only to Christ and him, crucified. In the new people of God, we are all servants and no one is Christian because of preference for a certain person, we do not follow men, we follow Christ crucified, a scandal for a world that only believes in the power of the effectiveness of plans, of money , of what it resolves. You cannot accept and follow Christ wanting his teaching and lifestyle to pass through human logic.
(Song)
I invite you to pray together. All of you who listen to me, let us unite spiritually with Christ, and we do it in interior silence, to ask God that in these special days of intense prayer and conversion, which Lent gives us, we can obtain His blessings from Him: We ask you Mister…
+Forgive us all our faults and strengthen us in faith, hope and charity. We ask you Lord…
+ In imitation of Christ, your Son, may we do all the good we can, caring for everyone and praying for those most in need. We ask you Lord…
+For the Pope, for our Bishop Juan de la Caridad, for all the other Bishops, priests and deacons, and for all the consecrated people, so that we may be pastors dedicated to the service of the People. We ask you Lord…
+ Let us pray for the healing of those who are sick in body and spirit. Most especially for coronavirus patients and those who care for and serve them. We ask you Lord…
+ So that each Catholic is a living temple that announces the gospel and welcomes everyone without excluding anyone. We ask you Lord…
And we conclude our prayer, imaginarily placing ourselves in front of the monstrance of the Holy Sacrament and making deep adoration. We ask you Lord…
I know that you would like to receive Christ sacramentally in his Eucharistic Body and Blood, but circumstances do not allow it. That is why now we will make a spiritual communion but first I invite you to make a deep prayer, in silence to that Christ whose Blessed Sacrament we contemplate in the Custody. It is a prayer that we are all going to pray worshiping Him.
(Song)
“Oh my good Jesus, I firmly believe that you are present in the Blessed Sacrament; I love you above all things and I wish to receive you into my soul, but not being able to do so sacramentally now, come, at least, spiritually into my heart. (Brief silence) Lord Jesus, as if I had already received you, I hug you and join you intimately. Don’t let me ever be separated from you.”
(Song)
Because it is Sunday, the Church focuses all its attention on the message of Christ, which we have heard; but I would not like to miss tomorrow’s celebration, March 8, of a saint who dedicated himself to serving his neighbor, mainly those who are sick with mental and nervous disorders. I speak to you about Saint John of God, a man who lived his experience as a disciple of Christ in the 16th century. He was born in Portugal in 1495. After a somewhat libertine life, he even served a time in the army, he found the Lord through the preaching of another great Saint, the Spanish priest Juan de Ávila, his conversion was so radical that they took him for mad, locking him in prison. the Royal Hospital of Granada; Thanks to the intervention of Saint John of Ávila he was able to be free and begin his great welfare work by founding hospitals and, as always happens, his life testimony attracted other young people to form the Order of the Hospitallers. Saint John of God died in Granada in the year 1550 and was proclaimed a saint in 1690.
The first brothers arrived in Havana in 1603 and took charge of the only existing hospital in the town, which, moved to a new place, gave its name to the Plaza de San Juan de Dios.
And I finish this note, highlighting the fact that two of the three Cuban Blesseds were Hospitaller Brothers of Saint John of God, I am referring to José Olallo Valdés and Jaime Óscar Valdés, both born in Havana and raised in the Casa Cuna; The so-called Father Olallo lived his exemplary ministry, serving the people in Camagüey; and Jaime Óscar, after serving many sick people in Spain and Colombia, gave the last and total testimony of his consecration, dying a martyr in Spain.
++ Under your protection we take refuge,
Holy Mother of God, do not discard the supplications that we address to you
In our needs, but deliver us from all danger,
Oh glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen
(Song)
And to conclude our Sunday meeting I give you the final Blessing.
The Lord be with you all.
And with your spirit.
May the blessing of Almighty God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, descend upon you and be with you always. Amen.