In 2008 the Mission Board of the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba convened the first Campaign of Fifty Days or Prayer for Cuba. It was an intense journey of prayer that involved believers inside and outside of the island. That same year, 2008, was also significant for another national reason: The Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, on February 28 in New York City, signed the Pact of Political and Civil Rights and the United Nations Pact of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which constituted a very laudable act.
After that important year our churches have continued praying for the nation and this year, 2012, our already celebrated Campaign of Fifty Days of Prayer for Cuba — always held between the day of the Resurrection and Pentecost — was the fifth one. But the mission of the believers is not only to pray but also to do everything they can for this world to adjust to divine will; not in vain did the wide Ignacio of Loyola say: Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you. It is in that sense that the believers themselves who pray so intensely for our nation should join a just citizen demand that asks the highest authorities of Cuba to take the necessary steps first taken in 2008, and ratify the signed pacts given that in them the spirit gathers the dignity of all human beings and the respect for their most elemental rights as creatures created in the image and likeness of God.
If the highest Cuban authorities ratify the pacts that they signed in New York in 2008 and take all the steps that implies we can thank God because many of the petitions that we have raised in our campaigns will have been granted. And it is that, a pact, although of man, once ratified, no one invalidates it or adds to it (Galatians 3:15).
Translated by mlk.
August 5 2012
