During the 6th General Assembly of CEAMA, Cardinal Jaime Spengler, president of CELAM, offered a profound spiritual reflection centered on love as the foundation of life and the Church’s mission.
The love that gives rise to everything
Beginning with the affirmation “The Father loves the Son!”, the Cardinal invited everyone to contemplate the mystery of God as an inexhaustible source of love. “The deeper we delve into the mystery of the Father who is love, the more we discover new seas, rivers, horizons, and possibilities,” he said, emphasizing that this love is dynamic, expansive, and life-giving.
In this sense, he recalled that the relationship between the Father and the Son constitutes the foundation of human existence, clearly affirming: “Love is the foundation of human existence.”
Rediscovering Our Face in God
In his reflection, he emphasized that it is in Jesus Christ that human beings find their true place and their deepest identity. “Jesus restores to us our hidden face, which is the very face of God,” he affirmed, noting that it is the relationship of love that makes a full life possible.
This call involves welcoming, loving, and following Jesus as teacher and Lord, allowing him to transform life and direct it toward goodness, communion, and fraternity.
A life that becomes mission
Cardinal Spengler insisted that the Christian life is participation in the very life of God: a life that is grace, gift, and commitment. For this reason, he recalled that disciples are called “to love, care for, heal, promote, bear witness, and proclaim.”
It is a concrete, incarnate life that is expressed in service to others, especially in contexts marked by multiple crises, such as those currently facing the Amazon and the world.
Prophets of Life in Times of Crisis
In the face of current challenges, the call is clear: to be prophets of life. This implies, as he explained, being deeply involved in reality, in the life of the community, and in the dramas of the present time.
“The prophet is a person of the present,” he noted, someone who communicates the word of God in concrete contexts, keeping alive fidelity to his revelation in history.
A Church that goes out from itself
Finally, he invited us to ask for the grace to step outside narrow frameworks in order to live as true disciples and servants of life, open to God’s will.
“May we do in all things not our own will, but the will of our Master and Lord,” he concluded, recalling that Christ is “the incarnate love of the Father.”
This reflection becomes a light for the Church’s journey in the Amazon: an invitation to return to love as the source, path, and horizon of every mission.