Celebrating Mass in Fatima for the Oct. 13 feast day, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said the root of the crises in today’s world, both economic and moral, is the “absence of God.”
The retired prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, said that faith is something essential that cannot be marginalized or considered irrelevant, “because it changes radically the way of thinking and acting.” And it is not only about eternal salvation, but about something fundamental for “a serene life on this earth.”
“Without God, man and woman no longer have principles that illumine the path of life,” continued the Cardinal, asserting that “when God loses the central place due to Him, man also loses his place.”
This is because “far from God, the human being loses himself and is at the mercy of personal egoisms and group interests.”
Focused on the problem of the lack of faith, Carinal Re recalled that the Gospel of the day took him in thought to the Temple of Jerusalem, which Christ found changed into a “den of thieves and merchants.”
In pointing out this reading, the cardinal requested the pilgrims to ask themselves about “the place that God has in our hearts and in our lives,” warning of the danger when “God becomes the last of our concerns.”
He asserted that the Fatima apparitions continue transmitting a message of holiness and an invitation to change one’s life.
