Songs of hope
It is April 3rd and it is as well the feast of Our Lady of Charity in Cartagena. In a municipal notice, we are invited to go out at 10 pm and sing the “Salve de Cartagena,” a great devotion in this city. The community asked us how this would be done. At 8 p.m., after the daily applause, our neighbor across the street said to us: “Will you go out at 10 p.m.? If you go out, I go out, because only I don’t know if I will remember the Salve” – Yes, of course. The bells were ringing and everywhere in the city this prayer to Mary was heard, because of the pain, the anxiety and the powerlessness of the situation. Have we learned our condition as creatures in need? is the question that my heart has been whispering all this time.
What will happen tomorrow with the singing? The invitation was for the whole Holy Week, but at 9:00 p.m. Shyly, we went out and, to our great surprise, new neighbours were waiting for us, creating a singular choir: an elderly couple, another very close, another in his forties with their teenage son and their 4-year-old daughter, another younger one with his newborn daughter in his arms… and us, also from different generations and cultures. Like a small remnant of Israel, like the representatives of a “human ark”, … physically separated and in close communion, we prayed again, singing Mary, that great universal mother, the very heart of God who welcomes into her womb this wounded humanity that seeks her, who awaits comfort and hope in a new heaven and earth, far away from suffering.
Mysteriously, the cross gathers us together, it summons us. Mysteriously, simple people, simple gestures… speak of God. My vocation is confirmed in this time of confinement: we can always gather a people to God; we can always glimpse the greatness for which we are made in the smallness of our lives; we are always saved together. Religious life is called to live in a state of alertness because there is always suffering and hope to share the way of the Absolute; because it is always time to remember the inexpressible tenderness of God for our lowliness. It is always time to confine oneself in His Loving and Patient Silence to come out of it healed, to share the taste of an abundant life for all creation.
Since last year, when I celebrated Easter in the prison of Campos del Rio, until this year, now confined, I have crossed many frontiers, … My life has taken place between Cartagena, Granada, Burkina and Madagascar with stops in Paris and Madrid. These days, in my house, looking at the world through the internet and the local in the faces of my neighbours.
I realize again that there is no other freedom than the one given by love, that space and time are very relative notions, that they depend on what we want to do with them … that there is no other path than the one we take together, that there is no other destiny than the loving arms of a Father-Mother God, that it is worth living to help each other to “sustain the songs of hope” like the “Salve” these days, to give thanks “like the daily applause”, not to be afraid to die in healing others, feeding others, taking care of all people and preferably of those most in need, …
They say it’s like a war. Living is the trench. Recognizing us as human brothers is the struggle. Knowing ourselves as resurrected beings is a victory, always discreet. These days, I am especially grateful for my faith, because Jesus Christ came to meet us because his wounds have healed us and in him we can recognize ourselves accompanied in any situation in history.
Charo LSA, Cartagena – Spain