of your womb, Jesus!
You came to visit our people
And you chose to remain with us
As Mother and Lady of Cuba,
on our pilgrimage
through the paths of history.
Your name and your image
are carved
into the hearts and minds
of all Cubans,
both in the Country and abroad,
as a sign of hope
and the center of brotherly communion.
Holy Mary, Mother of God
and our Mother!
Pray for us
before your Son Jesus Christ,
intercede for us
with your motherly heart,
flooded with the love of the Holy Spirit.
Increase our faith,
awaken our hope,
broaden and strengthen our love.
Watch over our families,
protect our young people and our children,
console those who suffer.
Be the mother of the faithful
and of the pastors of the Church,
model and star of the new evangelization.
Mother of reconciliation!
Gather your people
scattered around the earth.
Make of our Cuban nation
a house of brothers and sisters
that this people may open wide
her mind, her heart
and her life to Christ,
the one Savior and Redeemer,
who lives and reigns with the Father
and the Holy Spirit
forever and ever.
Amen.
VIII
Mary and the Revolution of Tenderness
Mass, Homily of Pope Francis
Minor Basilica of the Shrine “Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre,” Santiago, Cuba
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
The Gospel we have just heard tells us about something the Lord does every time he visits us: he calls us out of our house. These are images which we are asked to contemplate over and over again. God’s presence in our lives never leaves us tranquil: it always pushes to do something. When God comes, he always calls us out of our house. We are visited so that we can visit others; we are encountered so as to encounter others; we receive love in order to give love.
In the Gospel we see Mary, the first disciple. A young woman of perhaps between fifteen and seventeen years of age who, in a small village of Palestine, was visited by the Lord, who told her that she was to be the mother of the Savior. Mary was far from “thinking it was all about her,” or thinking that everyone had to come and wait upon her; she left her house and went out to serve. First she goes to help her cousin Elizabeth. The joy which blossoms when we know that God is with us, with our people, gets our hearts beating, gets our legs moving, and “draws us out of ourselves.” It leads us to take the joy we have received and to share it in service, in those “pregnant” situations which our neighbors or families may be experiencing.
The Gospel tells us that Mary went in haste, slowly but surely, with a steady pace, neither too fast nor so slow as never to get there. Neither anxious nor distracted, Mary goes with haste to accompany her cousin who conceived in her old age. Henceforth this was always to be her way. She has always been the woman who visits men and women, children, the elderly, and the young. She has visited and accompanied many of our peoples in the drama of their birth; she has watched over the struggles of those who fought to defend the rights of their children. And now, she continues to bring us the Word of Life, her Son, Our Lord.
These lands have also been visited by her maternal presence. The Cuban homeland was born and grew, warmed by devotion to Our Lady of Charity. As the bishops of this country have written: “In a special and unique way, she has molded the Cuban soul, inspiring the highest ideals of love of God, the family, and the nation in the heart of the Cuban people.”
This was what your fellow citizens also stated a hundred years ago, when they asked Pope Benedict XV to declare Our Lady of Charity the Patroness of Cuba. They wrote that “neither disgrace nor poverty were ever able to crush the faith and the love which our Catholic people profess for the Virgin of Charity, for whom, in all their trials, when death was imminent or desperation was at the door, there arose, like a light scattering the darkness of every peril, like a comforting dew … the vision of that Blessed Virgin, utterly Cuban and loved as such by our cherished mothers, blessed as such by our wives.” Thus they wrote one hundred years ago.
In this shrine, which keeps alive the memory of God’s holy and faithful pilgrim people in Cuba, Mary is venerated as the Mother of Charity. From here she protects our roots, our identity, so that we may never stray to paths of despair. The soul of the Cuban people, as we have just heard, was forged amid suffering and privation which could not suppress the faith, that faith which was kept alive thanks to all those grandmothers who fostered, in the daily life of their homes, the living presence of God, the presence of the Father who liberates, strengthens, heals, grants courage, and serves as a sure refuge and the sign of a new resurrection. Grandmothers, mothers, and so many others who with tenderness and love were signs of visitation, like Mary, of valor and faith for their grandchildren, in their families, they kept open a tiny space, small as a mustard seed, through which the Holy Spirit continued to accompany the heartbeat of this people.
“Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness” (Evangelii Gaudium, 288).
Generation after generation, day after day, we are asked to renew our faith. We are asked to live the revolution of tenderness as Mary, our Mother of Charity, did. We are invited to “leave home” and to open our eyes and hearts to others. Our revolution comes about through tenderness, through the joy which always becomes closeness and compassion — which is not pity, but suffering with, so as to free — and leads us to get involved in, and to serve, the life of others. Our faith makes us leave our homes and go forth to encounter others, to share their joys, their hopes, and their frustrations. Our faith “calls us out of our house,” to visit the sick, the prisoner and those who mourn. It makes us able to laugh with those who laugh, and rejoice with our neighbors who rejoice.
Like Mary, we want to be a Church which serves, which leaves home and goes forth, which goes forth from its chapels, forth from its sacristies, in order to accompany life, to sustain hope, to be the sign of unity of a noble and worthy people. Like Mary, Mother of Charity, we want to be a Church which goes forth to build bridges, to break down walls, to sow seeds of reconciliation. Like Mary, we want to be a Church which can accompany all those “pregnant” situations of our people, committed to life, to culture, to society, not washing our hands but rather walking together with our brothers and sisters. Together, serving and helping. All children of God, children of Mary, children of this noble Cuban land.