In an urgent call to compassion in times of crisis, Ramón Castro Castro, bishop of Cuernavaca and president of the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), presented chapter 18 of his catechesis series “Venga a nosotros tu reino”, titled Kingdom of Healing. In this reflection, preached recently and available on video, the prelate portrays Jesus as the «divine physician» who transforms the Church into a refuge for those wounded in soul and body, inviting the faithful to take on the role of «nurses» in a world saturated with violence and contempt for human dignity.
The catechesis, which evokes poetic and biblical images, focuses on the figure of Christ as the supreme healer, a theme that the bishop illustrates with classical and evangelical references. «Jesus is the physician and the entire world is his hospital,» affirms Castro Castro, recalling the words of the Gospel: «Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.» In a pastoral and accessible tone, the bishop emphasizes that all of us, without exception, are patients in need of the «medicine of Christ,» that «living water» which only He can offer.
Castro Castro extends the metaphor of the Good Samaritan to describe the ministry of Jesus. «He leaves the 99 sheep and goes to meet the one that has been left behind,» he explains, evoking the Lord who bandages the wounds of the fallen by the roadside and takes him to the «inn» –the Church itself–. It is not about stone temples, clarifies the prelate citing Saint Paul, but about the «mystical body» of Christ, where believers are simultaneously «sick and nurses.»
In his essay Why Do I Remain in the Church?, the then young theologian Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, inspires this duality, which Castro Castro adopts to encourage Catholics: «Christians belong to the Church because we believe that behind our Church shines and radiates His Church, the Church of Christ the Physician who heals and renews.» The Church, the bishop compares, is like the moon that reflects the light of the sun: it has no light of its own, but transmits the divine «light of all truth, of all love.» It is the Eucharist, «divine medicine,» that vivifies this body and turns it into a «sacrament of salvation.»
The message resonates with particular force in the current Mexican context. «Immersed in a time of deep crisis, saturated with violence and contempt for the dignity of each and every son and daughter of God,» the Church must rise as a «hospital of mercy,» with open arms to receive the wounded. Castro Castro emphasizes that care does not begin with judgments: «A hospital is not a place where the sick are attacked for having made mistakes that led to their illness.» First, the bleeding is stopped, the patient is fed and rested; only then is education provided to prevent relapses.
«Our primary task is less to judge the illness than to combat it by caring for the sick with charity and simplicity of heart,» urges the bishop, recalling that true healing is a gift from the Holy Spirit, not a human merit. In a personal turn, he warns: «While one day God asks us to care for the sick, another day we will be the sick who enter the Hospital of Mercy.»
The catechesis, part of a series that invites prayer for the arrival of the Kingdom of God, culminates with the evangelical invocation: «Thy kingdom come.» The video of the preaching, accessible on digital platforms, has been received with enthusiasm by parish communities and lay movements, who see in these words a map for pastoral action in turbulent times.
In the catechesis series “Venga a nosotros tu reino”, it is not only preached, but an invitation to live: to be an easy yoke and light burden in a world of «robbers and bandits.» For the wounded of Mexico and beyond, the bishop offers a promise: Jesus, the Physician, always returns to the inn to pay the full bill.
Venga a Nosotros Tu Reino, with 18 chapters published, is dedicated to the centenary of the encyclical Quas Primas of Pius XI on December 11, 1925. This document instituted the feast of Christ the King and sought to reaffirm his social reign in the face of secularism, considering that the distancing from Jesus Christ and his law is the cause of modern problems.