The pain of Christ (p. Theodossios Mary of the Cross)
For the Holy Friday ì
After the reading of the Passion, I would be able to penetrate the soul of each to bring him what he can get. But only God can. To understand the great events of the Last Supper and the Passion, you need a special grace. I said that I would bring every soul what it needs, because one needs to wake up and participate in the drama, pain, vision, blood and suffering and another needs to be pacified, to find serenity so upset by the pain of life and can not bear the image of the Passion of Christ, one needs to care about something, because there are many people, even in the Church, they say: All right, this man, God This Being has suffered extraordinary two thousand years ago, but why continue to celebrate the memory of that suffering and fill the world so much suffering?
Some, especially among painters and artists, they feel that participating in the Passion of Christ it means to represent it, both in their imaginations, is a framework, both with a statue, both in written works, with all the news since then, with sharp realism. For others, an abstract representation without precise image without symbols is sufficient.
The three days of Holy Week form a whole. The Passion of Christ is the continuation inevitable logic of the Holy Supper, the day of Friday is inconceivably large does the work undertaken by Christ for the redemption.
Many questions arise, the soul in secret and openly: Why this pain? Why this sacrifice? What is sacrificed? The Body of Christ? His bodily life? Certainly not. The Cross of Christ, the Passion itself is the suffering of his soul that was also manifested in the crucifixion of his body.
It is a sacred punishment of eternal justice for all the sins of mankind? That's what the people say. But God had a victim may need to download all his anger, because his sense of justice was satisfied and so the lives of the men were freed? We can not think that the notion of justice is limited to this.
Here we touch one of the greatest mysteries of Creation, which is difficult to transmit and to those who listen and are moved to the human fact of the Passion, Crucifixion and of Justice, that those who are not interested in the mystery of the Passion. The liturgy has the purpose of causing the memory not only intimate the fact of the crucifixion, but the fact of our participation as executioners. The main significance of today's liturgy is to remind us that we are part of the executioners.
What has caused the participation of Christ to human life, and his crucifixion, is our inability to perceive the love of God forever. And because we had fallen in the shadows of history, was and still is necessary, at any time, for our awakening, our inner being is suffering from a pain free, a great sacrifice, to offer only the 'Love Supreme can accomplish. So the crucifixion of Christ is not a punishment, but rather a consequence of our sins, our weaknesses, the fall of humanity in front of the Love eternal.
What I say may seem very subtle, and yet not so difficult to understand. People who, on earth, love so deep and true, will automatically receive all the pain of the errors, testing, contingency, of everything that affects the loved one. Although it lacks any notion of punishment and responsibility for the fact that we truly love, we receive in our hearts all the pain that comes from loved ones. This reality expresses a mysterious law of righteousness in the creation, which is the manifestation of eternal justice.
Christ became incarnate to take upon Himself the weight of all the men of the past and the future. Pronounce words cold, intellectual, because I can not perceive with all my being that the mystery of suffering caused by love and I can not participate. And that is why I said it's not easy to convey the mystery of suffering and the cross, first of all because we ourselves do not live it, and also because those who hear us can not perceive.
What happens between beings who love each other can help us to more easily understand the suffering of Christ. A father, mother, husband, son or friend, suffering and bearing the cross for the sick and the suffering of the loved one. The son kills his mother and takes the hit and brings this cross, the son praises God and his mother wept with joy. There is a justice which is exercised in a human sense. The Cure of Ars was in great pain in the confessional. Received all the evil of sin and sorrow, because the suffering of those who love not only caused by the sin of others, but also from his suffering.
We thus come to a little 'in the great mystery of these words: eternal justice. Love wants to be completely transmitted and received and when it can not hurt. Christ has received on his body and his soul, and will until the end of the world, by all mankind, the rejection of his coming, his love, his desire to free her. Even before his Incarnation, as the Word of God, as God has made known his love to men, by many signs and interventions through the prophets, saints, righteous men. And yet, humanity has continued and continues his path of darkness.
Christ became incarnate to accomplish the mystery of Redemption. What is this mystery? Why Passion is the implementation of the Redemption? Why has he allowed the soul of man, even of one man, to turn completely to the eternal love that Christ brings. He thus rejects the path of darkness and joins, through Word and Sacrament, Father's eternal love that was there, there is and will be given us in Christ incarnate.
Thus the Incarnation of Christ is the result of eternal love of the Father who wants to bring all men, if possible, within it, the union of love. Christ came, suffered the Passion, was crucified, because the harmony of the universe of love has been affected by original sin of man. The Christ, Mending the one eternal, received upon himself the universal discord, disharmony to which each of us participates.
Through this policy and this vision of the Passion, pain and death of Christ, we can get another great knowledge and an "injection" of life: the universality of meekness. We understand that, if we walk a follower of Christ, like Him we must open our arms and get all the pain, the blows, the betrayals, the lies, all the temptations, the universal and unchanging goodness of the Lord. We can not have notions of human justice on earth, we can no longer wanted to make judgments on the Church of God or our parents according to human standards, sectarian and personal.
On the contrary, our soul opens, and the footsteps of Christ look at the eternal Mother, our Apostles, our friends, the privileged souls, and all humanity, sinful humanity - the most sinful of us, if you can -; Our soul is opened and this openness of love makes us suffer. And as far as our love does not reject it away from us, but we accept Christ as praying: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Without this the end of the Passion, there is no reason to repeat, to meditate and to read two thousand years after the Passion. We do this in order to participate in this ontologically unique life to which He has called us and allowing us to live eternally.
Only openness of heart toward God, as was shown by Christ crucified, we open the Paradise, we obtain the resurrection and gives us the victory, against history. Otherwise we walk, masses of men, whole nations, for centuries we walk towards the grave without a resurrection, because our soul has refused to accept Christ crucified.
We can not participate with the same force and the same universality of Christ, because we are sinners, but the extent of participation and of our good will, we part on its own merits. This is the secret of the moral theology of salvation: our conscious participation in the cross of Christ makes us participate in the infinite merits of Christ. We are united to Him who is able to give, to illuminate, and sprinkle of spices, all the sorrows and trials, but without removing mitigandole to make it bearable to our weakness. For the love of God manifested through the great gift that was the Christ.
All the details of moving Passion - the denial of Peter, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin full of hate, Yarn weak and hesitant - are our history, the history of mankind; zi on Church of God or our parents, according to human, sectarian and personal.
On the contrary, our soul opens, and the footsteps of Christ look at the eternal Mother, our Apostles, our friends, the privileged souls, and all humanity, humanity pec-Catrice - the most sinful of us, if you can -; our soul opens and this openness of love makes us suffer. And as far as our love does not reject it away from us, but we accept Christ as praying: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Without this the end of the Passion, there is no reason to repeat, to meditate and to read two thousand years after the Passion. We do this in order to participate in this ontologically unique life to which He has called us and allowing us to live eternally.
Only openness of heart toward God, as was shown by Christ crucified, we open the Paradise, we obtain the resurrection and gives us the victory, against history. Otherwise we walk, masses of men, whole nations, for centuries we walk towards the grave without a resurrection, because our soul has refused to accept Christ crucified.
We can not participate with the same force and the same universality of Christ, because we are sinners, but the extent of participation and of our good will, we part on its own merits. This is the secret of the moral theology of salvation: our conscious participation in the cross of Christ makes us participate in the infinite merits of Christ. We are united to Him who is able to give, to illuminate, and sprinkle of spices, all the sorrows and trials, but without removing mitigandole to make it bearable to our weakness. For the love of God manifested through the great gift that was the Christ.
All the details of moving Passion - the denial of Peter, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin full of hate, Yarn weak and hesitant - are our history, the history of mankind, the king, with no interest in anything other than the satisfaction of their senses here is the biggest pain, the cause of Christ's agony in Gethsemane, the crucifixion of the Lord.
To the Heart of Christ, the man who is angry, he's wrong, warring thinking of doing well, is not responsible for man indifferent, closed to every ray of love of Christ.
So the passion, all the details of the Passion converge towards the central fact which dominates the Creation, the Fall, and Redemption: all that we can live, see and hear unspeakable has sprung eternal love divine. And we are called to join him, to turn our whole life in the image of the glorious life of Christ. And for this we must bring peace and pain all the error and suffering humanity.
To answer this question: What is life after the Resurrection?, We must be able to penetrate the great mystery of the Passion and suffering of Christ, which is the other face of the eternal glory. Christ did not fake when he suffered, nor when he said: "I am not alone, because the Father is with me" and again: "We scattered, every man for himself and leave me alone" (Jn 16, 32). Do not pretend, nor when he suffered when transmitted the peacemakers, for they already had in Himself the solution: the Resurrection.
We too must do the same, and understand that pain is pain, the tears were tears of absence has no friends, poor health is suffering, the indifference that strikes us about us is indifference. This is one aspect. On the other hand, evil - everything that we did as wrong, and that has been done and you will make in history - may be regarded as having already passed by the Cross of Christ transcendent.
And to the extent of our participation in the transcendent love of Christ, we too may be his children, his friends, be friends with us, be martyrs, we can all participate in the mystery of the Passion of Christ, with the peace that he had suffered while with the pain that led him to death and the blessing to all who made us and make us suffer.
Friday is the preparation for the Resurrection. Our sufferings, the sufferings of men, the participation in the suffering of Christ are the preparation, the preamble of our resurrection: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."
Find out more from the Universe, ed. New Town
Homily of Card. Giuseppe Siri on Good Friday (1970)
Dear faithful, the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to St. John (18, 1-19, 42), you have heard read, and now the unveiling of S. Cross focus the attention of the soul of us all about Jesus Christ Crucified. Let us look, then begin the adoration of the Cross. But first you have to look.
And here is what we see of importance to us and to the conclusions that we draw. The friends fled, at the foot of the Cross only a few people: the mother, who is undaunted in the feet at the foot of the Cross, John, the Magdalene. The other disciples fled. A group of women are watching from afar, too scary to approach. The people beyond the protected area of the execution view. The heads of the people who march under the cross with taunts: "You saved others, can not save yourself? If you are the Son of God, come down from the Cross "(cf. Mt 27, 40.42). Everything seemed to be over, everything, even the friendship, even the gratitude of many who had life in him, it seemed - tell-all over. Yet at that moment what happens at death? Because the moment of death in which He freely laid his soul, as free human soul had hired her, makes the oblation to the Father. In that time have changed the destiny of humanity and changed the destinies of all men who believe in him at that moment the great divide between good and evil becomes Him and Him alone. There are other minor objects to beat, but the contradiction is real stone him: watch it!
If we can hope for a better life that we lead now, and still, like it or not, has to end, it is because He died on the Cross. If we can call God "Father" and not simply "Creator," it is because He died on the Cross. If we can wait a mercy surpasses justice without eliderla, the will because He died on the Cross. Today, many do not think about what this anniversary, and yet what will happen to them tomorrow and tomorrow and the other the other day and the most terrible moment, that of death, depends on this crucifix. I'm not saying it does not matter that we think or not think, because of the importance it does. But at this moment for many who do not think, for many who do not feel for the many who do not cry, we must take the words on the lips of the Crucified: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (The 23, 34).
Look for a moment, you see it? You know what the Crucifixion was ending? The agony began the night before, to push beyond our comprehension, so that the phenomenon was medically unexplained, but very rare sweat blood.
Now, before this Crucifix, we have the courage to complain about something in our lives? Try it! There would certainly be nice. The we can say that our cross is heavy, but before the Crucifix claim to be without the cross we can not! Look at him. The faults of men, all along that rose wood, all the faults of men and he silent, he suffered, he offered. There are flaws that bother us? You want to challenge them to Christ Crucified? Just try, just try! There are a lot of darkness, many times our eyes see rather the cloud that keeps the sun's rays that the brightness of noon. We would always and only the light, joy, peace of mind. We can reject this cross in front of each one of us to carry his weight? See that your not on anybody has downloaded! The led on its own: "Torcular calcavi solus", said eight centuries earlier the prophet Isaiah (63, 3). Is there someone you want to throw back on others its own weight? Look at him: He has not downloaded at all; we who have downloaded everything on Him, and He has accepted this, because he was the Son of God
With these sentiments chiniamoci in the worship of the Cross.
Homilies by the liturgical year and. Faith & Culture
Print this article 