I thought it would take place when I visited the coffee and tobacco province where I was born, or “meeting” relatives whom I had only known as a toddler and remembered through my parents’ memories. And I truly expected my heart to overflow with emotion when I looked—with my own eyes—at sites related to my early years.
The home where I first lived as a newborn. The Cathedral of San Rosendo, where I was baptized and confirmed. The park where my parents took me as a toddler to play.
It seemed ironic, then, that instead, the most emotional moment of my return to Cuba as an adult woman after 36 years took place on a Sunday morning standing in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, or Jose Martí Plaza, as it was known before Fidel Castro—and not in my birthplace of Pinar del Río.
On that warm and sunny January morning, I was one of thousands celebrating Mass with Pope John Paul II on the final day of his historic visit to the Caribbean island. Yet that morning, I was not a visitor, a tourist, or even a journalist. In spite of the fact that living most of my life outside Cuba will always make me an outsider, on that day, in some mystical, indescribable way, these were my people.
I was there as a Cuban pilgrim.
Somewhere to Call Home
From small to immense, much about my life and my sense of self has been defined by the fact that I am an immigrant, a refugee. Like the stories of the Israelites in the Old Testament, I grew up as a contemporary nomad, changing homes and moving from school to school—new towns, new states, even new countries. I never lived in a home for longer than three years. Eventually, I realized that once my parents were forced to leave their homeland in their mid-30s, they could call no other place home.
I am also aware that this same reality that created a deep emotional and spiritual hunger in me for somewhere to call “home” also blessed me with what I now call a pilgrim heart. I don’t believe in coincidences. Precisely the details that have affected me deepest, those are the details where I’ve found God. So, my hunger for a home, my need to belong, to have security, intimacy and stability, is nothing less than a personal call, an invitation from God to seek him, and to set instead my pilgrim eyes on our everlasting and eternal home.
That Sunday in 1998, the Lord granted me the grace of tasting that eternal truth. For a single and everlasting moment in time, I belonged. Not because I was born in Pinar del Río and was finally standing on Cuban soil, but because of my Catholic faith. I was one with “my” people; I belonged because of the Eucharist we shared! The body of Christ which we had just received made us, truly, one in the Lord.
An Invitation to Each of Us
As particular and personal as these events were for me, however, God’s invitation to hope in him extends to each of us. Hope allows us to recognize that what our spirit seeks, all that it longs for—healing, happiness, security, belonging—can only be truly found in God and in the promises of Jesus. In the words of Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, “We can only understand the events of our lives and the events of this passing world accurately if we view them in light of God’s plan of salvation, the kingdom that he is building in history, through the workings of his Church.”
In a world full of strife, where cynicism and distrust often walk together, it is no wonder the late Pope Francis summoned believers to become “pilgrims of hope” during this Jubilee Holy Year of 2025—always “ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Pt 3:15). Hope is a grace, a gift from the Lord, strengthened and reinforced by the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation. But living with hope also requires that I make a deliberate, personal resolution to say yes to the grace—which, for me, often entails a daily resolve!
For all of us, wrote Pope Francis in the Jubilee Year bull, “may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope”—a manner of hope “that fulfills the ancient promises, leads to glory and, grounded in love, does not disappoint.”
Prayer
Lord, only you satisfy my hungry heart.
Help me foster hope in you within my family.
Show me how to promote hope
among those I’ll encounter today
who suffer, struggle, or live in despair.
May I be living hope for the powerless and forgotten:
the elderly, the incarcerated, the unborn,
the sick, the migrants, the poor.
Come and fill us, Lord, with your Bread of Life.
Amen.
