Cardinal offers a “believing response to the sunset of the West”

The Archbishop of Santiago and Cardinal Primado de Chile, Fernando Chomali, shared a reflection entitled: “The believing response to the sunset of the West”, where he proposes to respond to an actuality where competition, egocentrism and indifference with a lifestyle focused on love and founded on Jesus Christ prevails.

In a column published in the Portal El Libero, the purple recalled a thought of the poet Octavio Paz, pronounced in 1954: “Day by day it becomes more evident than the house built by Western civilization has become a prison, a bloody labyrinth , a collective slaughterhouse. It is not strange, therefore, that we put in radical to reality and look for an exit. ”

In this regard, he said he agrees and deepened: “It is a matter of looking at what happens around us, in Latin America and in the world to realize that we are prisoners of a system that does not give us truce, which qualifies us as’ losers ‘or’ winners’ according to the success we have achieved in life “, a success” understood as the ability to have goods, to have power, even at any price. “

West: an athletics track where everything is worth

The cardinal observed that “we live a violent, very violent society,” and warned: “We have already become accustomed to her.” In this regard, he reflected: “We have entered such a degree of individualism, that the only thing that matters to us is that nothing happens to us already our loved ones.”

Citing Pope Francis, he mentioned the “globalization of indifference”, in a world “where the other is presented to us as a threat because we will take our position in the career that I want to study, our place at work, and so, Even infinity, ”he lamented.

“West resembles an athletics track where everyone competes, where the pressure to win is so powerful, that we skip our line, we lied, steal, disappoint,” he compared, and made reference to two “slogans” that are part of the Western culture: “Everything is valid and the end justifies the means.”

Today, Cardinal Chomali stressed, “life is played in having, in doing, in the here and now.”

A poor and egocentric anthropocentrism

Before realities such as the large number of prisoners in prisons or millions of migrants looking The urgency of promoting economic development together with intellectual and spiritual development, or less the importance of sharing the experiences of the most developed countries with the most disadvantaged countries ”.

Before a “poor, egocentric and immanent anthropocentrism, and therefore without major horizon than to promote personal achievements, even if it is in the detriment of the other,” he called “to look more closely at the proposal of Christianity, which has also been rammed by This cultural process that postulates God’s irrelevance in society and has resulted in a silent apostasy; in a galloping superficiality to understand the mystery of faith; And in a life where it is said to believe in God and be a Catholic, but it is lived, in practice, as if God did not exist. ”

“We have not been able to show the beauty of believing”

“For many, the Church is a supermarket where going to look for the ‘religious products’ that I need, but that does not require greater attention when it comes to opening its mystery, its bimilenary existence, and its magnificent evangelizing, educational and social work and less to get involved delivering the gifts, skills and skills that the creator has given me. ”

In this regard, he pronounced a self -criticism: “It is evident that we have not been able to convey faith to the point that it touches life and it becomes telling how Saint Paul ‘for me life is Christ.’ And this questions us deeply. ”

“We have not been able to show the beauty of believing and showing that the Christian proposal is a lifestyle, it is a culture that arises from faith in a person, Jesus Christ, which left us with teaching to find happiness, the meaning of our lives and those of others, ”he added.

A simple life where the center is love

“It is a proposal that will be consummated in fullness in future times, which escapes our possibilities to foresee, but today has its concrete realization in a reality called Church, community, which he founded. This proposal is the certainty of the divine presence in our lives and that keeps us hope. It reaches it through faith, basically based on the credibility of who speaks to us, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, ”he said.

Therefore, he proposed “a lifestyle that consists of serving others, not looking In “a simple life where the center is love, and always have as a horizon the forgiveness, reconciliation, and they are necessary as many times.”

“The world tells us to compete, our faith invites us to share; The world tells us to succeed, our faith invites us to succeed by detaching; The world invites us to appear, our faith invites us to get the little ones and give life for others, ”he synthesized.

Catholics, called to be fundamental actors

“This proposal is very powerful, there is no superior and also, it is a source of full happiness, of joy of the soul, because it does not expect any remuneration but is based on gratuity,” he said.

In that context, he called Catholics to testify to God, manifested in Jesus Christ, “in our home, in our neighborhoods and workplaces, as well as in our social life.”

Catholics, he said, “we are called to be fundamental actors in the history of our country since we can impregnate, from the faith that we profess, pre -political and pre -ethical values ​​that the minimum frameworks can give from which we manage to understand in depth Life in society to transform it. ”

Humanity, community, fraternity

Finally, and facing the future of Chile, he stated: “Do we want a country where development is understood only as economic development? Or will we all promote an integral development that reaches all the dimensions of the human being and covers them all?

“Will we continue to segregate more and more by schools, neighborhoods, clubs, universities, or will we undertake the path of recognition of all human being for just being and to which I wish the same possibilities that I had and for which we are willing to help?”.

A path “where you breathe greater humanity, greater sense of community and greater fraternity”, said Cardinal Chomali, is not optional for Catholics, but “a moral duty that arises from the conviction that this is God’s will for our lives for our lives and, in addition, an authentic source of joy and peace. ”