The Augustinian Recollect Fabián Martín (Tepatitlán de Morelos, Jalisco, Mexico, 1981) has shared the last Advent and Christmas season with the Catholic community of Cuba and the Recollect missionaries who are in that country. This is his testimony.
My presence in Cuba was limited to the eastern part of the island, within the Diocese of Holguín, where a missionary community of the Augustinian Recollects serves four parishes with their capitals and their neighborhoods and smaller towns: Banes (residence of the Recollect community), Antilla, Tacajó and Báguanos.
I spent two months there from the solemnity of Christ the King until the Baptism of the Lord (November 2024 to January 2025). A brief but intimate time in which I shared with my Recollect brothers their projects and dreams, their desires and difficulties, their achievements and challenges. In an atmosphere of serenity, freedom and joy, they give their best energies to the service of the People of God.
Cuba gave me beautiful experiences and others that were hard and challenging. I have divided these experiences into three large groups: those that appeal to faith, those that invoke hope and those that express charity.
With this testimony I want to honor the lives of those people with whom I have shared this small stretch of life’s journey. Good people, but very long-suffering; tired of a relentless struggle against the circumstances they have to live, but with an iron willpower; sad and, at times, anguished, but with an unusual creativity to resolve everyday difficulties.
Faith, hope and charity are determined in the concreteness of life. Cuba is full of contrasts and absurdities, of incongruities and impotence, of failed dreams and new horizons; of family affection and painful separations, but for now necessary; of many limitations in the midst of great solidarity.
Faith
Cubans navigate their lives between risks and threats, in a boat that barely guarantees safety, but they do it together. And Christians do it with their gaze fixed on Jesus, the Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Carmen and the Virgin of Charity of Cobre.
These distinguished companions inspire their faith and their devotion and help them face contrary winds. Martha, Rosa, Iván, Moisés, María and many more names and faces come to each faith meeting to move forward, together, despite the fact that nothing is easy.
The Recollect mission is full of beaches and docks, the former occupied by tourists and the latter, fallen on hard times, witnesses of times of splendor. The sand is white and the sun is intense, and the occasional patch of pollution appears in the calm tide. Rusting boats on land guard a certain beauty. This is the land, full of risks and dangers like the sea, but also of good and blessing.
Hope
The hope of Cubans is like a sunset: a new day will dawn! At the end of each day there are beautiful scenes of intense red in the clouds and warm yellow in the sky combined with the blue of the sky and the sea, which creatively dialogue with the sun in the process of setting. Tomorrow it will return again. This dawn encourages them to continue, even though it seems that everything is going from bad to worse.
Cuba allowed me to capture the concrete experience of the nuances of Christian hope that until now I barely knew from theory. For many there is no hope of any kind and it is useless to try to convince them otherwise, because they have more than enough evidence and reasons for their despair.
So perhaps, just perhaps, it is considered good news to think that there is a loving God who entered the history of humanity to show the true path of justice and the fight against evil. It comforts them to think of the promises of the God of Jesus Christ and his deep involvement, accredited as the God of life, freedom and liberation, of solidarity until death with the suffering and the disinherited.
Every human being will have to give an account, before God there is no impunity: and this reassures the Cuban. That is why Patricia, Rosa, Rafa, Alejandro, Jesus and other names and faces are committed to their people from below and from within, inspired by Jesus.
They get angry, but they do not lose peace. They complain, but they roll up their sleeves to work. They get discouraged, but in Christ they recover the meaning of living and hoping. They often feel alone, but they find refuge in the heart of God and the community.
Charity
The charity of Cubans is most exquisite, accustomed to solidarity as a gesture of moral duty. They are sensitive and selfless, they help those who are as needy as they are, or more.
In Cuba there are constant blackouts, almost always for hours, sometimes for days. But Cubans are luminous. Without electricity, at night the countless stars offer clarity to take certain steps. On the streets they laugh, talk and sing, illuminating their interior together.
It is certainly distressing and drastically affects tasks and occupations, participation in community activities. But Cubans are contemplative. They sit on their small terraces, look at the stars and think of their loved ones who have gone to heaven or are far away. They are grateful for the sacrifice made for them from abroad and give up even what is necessary to give to those who need more.
Thank you, Cuban brothers, for having been my teachers in faith, hope and love during the days I was among you. It was a blessing for me to share life and see certainties grow in me that help me walk as a pilgrim of hope.
