La luz de la fe nos guía y nos sostiene a lo largo de las etapas de nuestra vida.
A mediados de junio de 2015, el querido Papa Francisco publicó su encíclica emblemática, «Laudato Si’». El documento, erudito y práctico, transmite la voz del Espíritu Santo. Más que informativo, es transformador en su capacidad de despertar, inspirar, cambiar y confirmar a quienes oran con él.
Al haberse publicado tan cerca del solsticio de junio, la carta también encarna la voz de la Tierra, que nos llama a hacer una pausa, reflexionar y elegir de manera informada y reverente. Toda la Creación sabe practicar esta pausa respetuosa. Lo hace cada año en sus retiros semestrales conocidos como «solsticio» y «equinoccio».
Hoy, solsticio de junio de 2026, nos invita a hacer lo mismo. Les ofrezco dos bendiciones para elegir, según su hemisferio. Que este día sagrado nos traiga a todos las bendiciones de amor que el Papa Francisco anhelaba con tanto fervor:
Todo el universo material habla del amor de Dios, de su cariño infinito por nosotros. La tierra, el agua, las montañas: todo es, por así decirlo, una caricia de Dios.
Laudatory Si’: 84
Music: Winter by Antonio Vivaldi (arr. Sergio Ercole)
In mid-June 2015, beloved Pope Francis published his landmark encyclical, “Laudato Si”. The document, erudite and practical, carries the voice of the Holy Spirit. More than informative, it is transformative in its power to awaken, inspire, change, and confirm those who pray with it.
Published so close to the June solstice, the letter also embodies Earth’s voice, calling us to pause, reflect, and choose in an informed and reverent manner. All Creation knows how to practice such a deferent pause. It does so every year in its semi-annual retreats known as “solstice” and “equinox”. Today, June Solstice 2026, invites us to do the same.
I offer you two blessings to choose from, depending on your hemisphere. May this sacred day bring all of us the blessings of love Pope Francis so earnestly hoped for:
“The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
Laudato Si’: 84
Music: Summer by Vivaldi (Guitar) arr. Sergio Ercole
Like me, some of you may have thought that the Emancipation Proclamation was a “one-and-done” event. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Like its companions in American history ( the Constitution,the Bill of Rights), the document – and its dynamism – is a complex living reality that, even now, continues to unfold among us.
The Emancipation Declaration was first issued on January 1, 1863, freeing enslaved African Americans in the Confederate States. There were many states, notably some in the North, to which the new law did not immediately apply (border states of Delaware and Kentucky). However, the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865, made slavery universally unconstitutional throughout the United States.
During the intervening time period, enforcement of the new law rolled out slowly through the post-Confederate South, especially in far western regions like Galveston, Texas. It was not until June 19th, two years later, that freedom reached that resistant enclave:
On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free. (Wikipedia)
Wanting to learn more about the Juneteenth holiday, I purchased a beautifully illustrated children’s book, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free. I wanted to share it with my grand-nephews and niece when they visit because this history belongs to all of us. We all need to learn from it.
Ms. Lee, who is approaching her 100th birthday in October, has suffered personally from racist terrorists. She grew up in Texas, where her family’s home was burned down by white rioters when she was twelve years old. Resilient and brave, she eventually pursued an extensive education and became a teacher, community leader, and activist. She lobbied particularly for the recognition of Juneteenth as a Holiday, believing it was crucial to the story of African American freedom.
President Joe Biden talks with Opal Lee after signing the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act Bill, Thursday, June 17, 2021, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Chandler West)
In June 2021, at the age of 94, her efforts succeeded as a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. She was an honored guest at the bill signing ceremony, receiving the first of many pens the President used to sign the document. As she sat in the front row, she received a standing ovation, and President Biden got down on one knee to greet her. (Wikipedia)
Music: Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Black National Anthem) – sung by Wintley Phipps
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) June 7, 2026
Piety is a virtue that can get a bad rap. It is sometimes associated with a “better than thou” attitude ostentatiously demonstrated by sanctimonious practices and gestures.
A profound sense of the true meaning of piety captured me when I saw the sculpture “Pietà” in Rome. I had seen a hundred photos of this treasure in previous years, but none touched the beauty and pathos embodied in the marble itself. I was tearful, speechless, and prayerfully united with Mary as she held the broken body of her precious son. What I felt was intense piety, an indescribable oneness with the Holy.
That holy, broken, but resurrected Body of Christ abides with us today in the Church and in the Creation. The redemptive energy of the Trinity, fired in us through the Incarnation, continues in time through Love. Redemption perdures through the love with which we bring the world to God, and God to the world. We are the Body of Christ living in our time.
Over the centuries, many brilliant theologians have approached the mystery of the Body of Christ, each contributing their own insights to help the rest of us grow in faith. For me. Pierre de Chardin, rare combination of scientist and mystic, expressed some of the most beautiful and expansive language about this mystery:
Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe your life into it; I pray you, lay on us those your hands — powerful, considerate, omnipresent, those hands which do not (like our human hands) touch now here, now there, but which plunge into the depths and the totality, present and past, of things so as to reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.
May the might of those invincible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which I have gathered into my heart and now offer you in its entirety. Remold it, rectify it, recast it down to the depths from whence it springs. You know how your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.
Do you now therefore, speaking through my lips, pronounce over this earthly travail your twofold efficacious word: the word without which all that our wisdom and our experience have built up must totter and crumble — the word through which all our most far-reaching speculations and our encounter with the universe are come together into a unity. Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood.
The Mass On The World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, S.J
A century before De Chardin, the grace-filled poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins also experienced the Body of Christ in the glory of Creation. Both of these writers foreshadowed the cosmic wisdom of our beloved Pope Francis who authored the spiritual masterpiece, Laudato Si’.
The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.
Laudatory Si’ (100)
Poetry: The Windhover – Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
” This poem is focused not on feelings or individuality, but on wording Christ. The kenosis of the Son into matter is the heart of all beauty and it is only in Christ that beauty is to be found and it is to Christ that beauty leads.”
Lavish Mercy 