1 February Optional Memorial in Latin America
Bl Candelaria was born Susana Paz-Castillo Ramírez in 1863. She enthusiastically welcomed the call of God to holiness, and since her youth, stood out in practicing living and effective charity, with which she cared for, consoled and healed the sick and wounded that strife had left on the streets of her birth city.
Homily at the Beatification Mass for Bl Candelaria
Cardinal José Saraiva Martins
1. Listening to the words of Jesus in the Gospel just proclaimed, the stupendous reflections of St. Augustine come to mind, when he affirms that if, unfortunately, because of a fire the four Gospels were destroyed and only the words "God is love" were saved, the substance would have remained intact. In what religion is love everything, as in Christianity? The Christian faith is an act of love, as Benedict XVI reminded us in his first encyclical. The exordium of today's Gospel passage is emblematic: "Jesus says to his disciples: 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments.'" In this "if you love me" is the synthesis of Christianity.
He who loves does everything out of love, even the impossible things, without being weighed down by them, because he observes the interior law, which is more demanding than any external discipline. And because the language of love is not words but the union of the one who loves with the beloved, in the seven verses of this Sunday's Gospel Jesus speaks seven times of union. Indeed, to be in: expresses the fascinating verb of supreme and total union: the disciples are "in" Christ and Christ "is in" the Father.
2. The Church's liturgy, with wise pedagogy, is preparing us for the great Solemnity of Pentecost. The first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, presents us with the Holy Spirit, received through the imposition of the hands of the Apostles. The Gospel, on which we are meditating, also speaks of the Holy Spirit whom the disciples will receive as the Paraclete: which in Greek sometimes means Comforter, sometimes Advocate, or both. St. John insists in his Gospel on the title Paraclete, since historically the Church, after Easter, had a living and strong experience of the Spirit as consoler, defender, ally in internal and external difficulties, in persecutions and in everyday life. In the first centuries, when the Church is persecuted, she has the daily experience of trials and condemnations; it is then that she sees in the Comforter the divine advocate and defender against her human accusers. The Comforter is experienced as the one who assists the martyrs and who, before the judges, in the tribunals, puts on their lips the word that no one is able to refute. After the era of persecutions, the accent shifts and the predominant meaning is that of comforter in the tribulations and anguish of life.
In contemplating the Paraclete we feel the strength to honor and invoke the Holy Spirit, and to be ourselves other "paracletes," "comforters," in the full sense of the word, according to the divine measure. If it is true that the Christian must be alter Christus, another Christ, it is also true that he must be alter Paraclitus, another consoler.
To be consolers, paracletes, is a quality that all the saints have had in general: like the Good Samaritan, they have worked to soothe the wounds of so many brothers and sisters with the balm of mercy and the oil of Christian hope. With a soul full of joy today, contemplating the life and example of the new Venezuelan Blessed, and her charism that is transmitted in her work, through her daughters, the Carmelite Sisters of the Third Carmelite Order in Venezuela, we observe that a true "art of consoling" stands out as a dominant characteristic. In her simplicity, Mother Candelaria lived and proposes to us, with all its actuality, a true theology of consolation. This explains the facts of her daily life that, even with a simple word or gesture, always lived with her constant and ardent prayer and a lively and deep faith, she was able to get close to so many sick people. Certainly, it was God who "consoled" through her.
In the testimonies collected for her cause of beatification, it is striking to note how her love for God was intimately united to her love for her neighbor. In fact, from a very young age she dedicated herself to the service of others, in the care of the sick or in the catechesis of young people and adults, with her maternal attention to the sisters of her congregation. A life consumed by spending hours and hours at the bedside of the sick, to the point of starving herself to be able to feed the sick in a hospital and to make hard journeys to find money for the hospitals.
And so, year after year, always - and perhaps this is one of the most attractive characteristics of Blessed Candelaria–with great simplicity, without drama, always serene and ready to listen, without ever complaining about the people who made the life of Christian service difficult for her. A charity that reached the heroism: like being left without a bed to sleep in, for having given it to a sick person; preferring to take care of the most contagious sick or people who were enemies of the faith; assisting with maternal gentleness the lost women who were hospitalized. Her total dedication to her neighbor was such that even the most unbelieving doctors were amazed by the generous dedication of this small and simple sister.
4. The Blessed whom we venerate today testifies, with her entire life, that supernatural love is the basis of existence, that only love can change the life of human beings according to their deepest needs and that love consists in the gift of self, overcoming resistance and individualism in order to carry out the divine will.
The present beatification, manifesting this aspect of Blessed Candelaria's spirituality, invites us too, with docility to the Holy Spirit, to be dispensers of God's "consolation."
Blessed Candelaria accompanies us and invites us to take care of the terminally ill, of those suffering from AIDS, to concern ourselves with alleviating the loneliness of the elderly and the difficulties of so many different forms of poverty, to dedicate the necessary time to visiting the sick in hospitals. And how can we fail to think of those who dedicate themselves to helping children, victims of all kinds of abuses? We must also defend the rights of threatened minorities, such as some indigenous peoples of Latin America, and be the voice of the voiceless.
But her testimony, the one I am most interested in that reaches each one of us and all those who in the future will find the eloquent lesson of Blessed Candelaria, in addition to the moral values, which are great, is what is at its origin. I am referring to the living and active presence of the Risen Christ in her, which is palpably manifested in her boundless charity. In this sense, the Blessed who today has been raised to the honor of the altars belongs to that multitude of Christians who strongly manifest and show the presence of Christ in the men and women of today, pilgrims, who at times, forgetting their goal, walk without direction.
In today's Gospel Jesus tells the Apostles that he will ask the Father to send them the Comforting Spirit, so that he may always remain with them. And this "abiding" of the Spirit in our heart "transforms us into Christ," making us in the world, and in history, that is, in today's society–in the concrete environment in which we live–his living presence and credible witness. This happened in Mother Candelaria and it can happen in us. The Spirit forms Christ in us and makes us his imitators in our time and throughout our lives, as the Holy Father reminds us: "One does not begin to be a Christian by an ethical decision or a great idea, but by an encounter with an event, with a Person, which gives a new horizon to life and, with it, a decisive orientation" (Deus Caritas Est, 1).
The holiness of life of this flower of Venezuela, who is Mother Candelaria, one of the eminent fruits of the history of Catholicism in Latin America, affirms us in the experience so well described by Benedict XVI at the beginning of his pontificate: "There is nothing more beautiful than to have been touched, to have been surprised by the Gospel, by Christ. Nothing is more beautiful than to know him and to communicate friendship with him to others" (Homily, Sunday, April 24, 2005: L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, April 29, 2005, p. 7). Therefore, while we rejoice in the beatification of Mother Candelaria and give thanks to God for it, let us allow ourselves to be surprised by the Gospel and make Christ the reason for our life.
