I still remember the day I returned to Cuba after a vacation. As I unpacked my luggage, my companions, priests from our community, couldn’t help but tease me because almost everything I had brought were cooking ingredients, while only about two kilos contained medicines I could share with those in need. At that moment, my mind was set on my responsibility in the kitchen, since our cook was unavailable.
I always told myself: “It’s never easy to cook if there are no ingredients available.” So, in a place where even a single paracetamol pill is a matter of survival, the lack of medicine can make one feel painfully helpless. Knowing how difficult it is to find even the most basic ingredients in Cuba, I thought I had made the most practical decision.
However, upon seeing my brother priests unpacking suitcases full, mostly of medicines, and despite the many questions they usually faced at airport customs, I realized that they had seen a need I had not fully grasped. The parish had quietly become a refuge that people came to not only to pray, but also to ask for medicine, since even the simplest pills had become a luxury for many families.
That experience moved me deeply. It reminded me that missionary life consists, above all, in learning to see with the eyes of Christ, whose heart is always attentive to the deepest need of the person before him.
A conversation with one of my fellow missionaries has been engraved on my heart ever since. He simply said: “Our help, even when we share a medicine, must always be a way to bring people closer to God.” Those words have stayed with me because they transformed my perspective on our mission.
Sometimes I wondered whether our constant generosity was enough, or whether, without meaning to, it could create dependency. But as I continued serving, I realized that perhaps the most important question was not whether each person made perfect use of our help, but whether I treated them as Christ would. Life in Cuba is painfully difficult.
There are people who ask for medicine because they are sick, while others ask for it because selling it is one of the few ways to put food on the table. Faced with that reality, it is easy for my heart to become distrustful. However, every time I met with our volunteers at Espíritu Santo Parish, in Tacajó, I encouraged them not to let fear harden their hearts. If someone deceives us, then we simply have to learn (I always told them: what happened, happened), but we must never allow another person’s dishonesty to become the reason we deny mercy to those who need it most.
As children of our Holy Father Saint Augustine, we believe that every act of charity is an invitation to communion. Even if all we can offer is a small tablet, a listening ear, or a kind smile, these become signs that the Church is a home where every person is welcomed and loved. More and more, the words of the song have become my own prayer: “Jesus, teach me your way of making others feel more human; may your steps be my steps, my way of acting.” I have come to understand that the Lord does not ask me to do extraordinary things, but to let him love others through the ordinary gestures within my reach.
There are days when both our volunteers and our parishioners feel discouraged because, no matter how many medicines or vitamins arrive, they are never enough for everyone who comes. When that happens, I recall a story I first heard in my English class as a high school student: the one about the man walking along the shore, picking up stranded starfish one by one and returning them to the sea. When someone told him he could never save them all, he simply replied: “Maybe not, but I made a difference for this one.” Over the years, that story speaks to me in a new way.
Mission rarely consists of achieving great things that everyone notices. More often, it is about quietly making ourselves available to God so that, through our small acts of faithfulness, someone might catch a glimpse of his love. We cannot cure every illness, solve every injustice, or change an entire system overnight.
However, as Augustinian Recollects, we are called to be present, to build communion, and to be humble witnesses of hope in places marked by uncertainty. A small bottle of vitamins, a package of medicine, a conversation with a patient, or a compassionate welcome may seem insignificant, but in God’s hands they become rays of his light.
We may not be able to change the whole reality of Cuba, but if one person leaves our parish convinced that God has not forgotten them and that the Church stands by their side, then Christ has already made himself present. And in my reflection, I understood that this is the quiet beauty of this vocation: not to do everything, but to be available, in the simplest ways possible, so that his light may continue to shine where hope is most needed.
By Fray Jhoben Manalo Rodríguez, OAR
Augustinian Recollect Mission, Cuba
