On the evening of November 4th some members of the Coexistence team had the privilege of being invited to participate in the activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of Christian Life.
The occasion brought together many at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, where there was a mass presided over by the Cardinal of Havana Jaime Ortega Alamino, his auxiliary bishop Monseñor Juan de Dios, Father Alberto Garcia, director of Catholic Sunday publications and other priests of the Jesuit Congregation.
God wanted the Gospel proclaimed this day, as appropriate for the occasion, with love your neighbor as the central theme. In his homily the Cardinal emphasized that love conquers all, all hopes; he recalled the words of Father Felix Varela when he said “There is no Fatherland without virtue”, highlighting that virtue is in love rather than knowledge and recalling the first Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XVI making a call to live in faith and love in all its facets.
After the Mass there was a cultural evening that began with a few words about Christian Life followed by the invitation of Father Alberto for other voices to take the floor. I remembered when he shared in Pinar del Rio, more than six years ago on the 10th anniversary of the magazine Vitral and ceded the floor to who was at that time director, and is still the director. of the project and the magazine Coexistence, the engineer Dagoberto Valdés Hernández.
Dagoberto focused his words in an infinite gratitude to this publication, “this little leaf” as everyone there calls it, a symbol of perseverance, of how much can be achieved by the love of Christ, for others and society. He emphasized that Christian Life today is a sign of how far we can get if we truly believe in the power of the small and the usefulness of virtue. He thanked also the older sister of all publications that later emerged within the Church, for this necessary catechism, simple but direct, for all the good both do for the Cuban family. Finally he thanked Padre Alberto, the Editorial Board of Christian Life and God for allowing us to participate in the celebration and for teaching us that “everything has its time, and there is a time for everything under heaven.”
The Editorial Board and staff of the magazine Coexistence are most especially grateful to Father Alberto Garcia and his invitation to the team, congratulate Christian Life and urge them to continue working for the love of Cuba and its Church.
by Yoandy Izquierdo Toledo
November 8 2012