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VIA CRUCIS
AT THE COLOSSEUM
INTRODUCTORY MEDITATION
'VIA CRUCIS 2010'
by Cardinal Camillo Ruini
When the Apostle Philip asked Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father,” he replied, “Have I been with you all this time, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:8-9).
This evening, as we accompany Jesus in our hearts while he makes his way beneath the cross, let us not forget those words. Even as he carries the cross, even in his death on the cross, Jesus remains the Son, who is one with God the Father.
When we look upon his face disfigured by beating, weariness and inner suffering, we see the face of the Father. Indeed, it is precisely in this moment that God’s glory, his surpassing splendour, in some way becomes visible on the face of Jesus.
In this poor, suffering man whom Pilate, in the hope of eliciting compassion, showed to the Jews with the words “Behold the man!” (Jn 19:5), we see revealed the true greatness of God, that mysterious grandeur beyond all our imagining.
Yet in the crucified Jesus we see revealed another kind of grandeur: our own greatness, the grandeur which belongs to every man and woman by the simple fact that we have a human face and heart.
In the words of Saint Anthony of Padua, “Christ, who is your life, hangs before you, so that you can gaze upon the cross as if in a mirror… If you look upon him, you will be able to see the greatness of your dignity and worth… Nowhere else can we better recognize our own value, than by looking into the mirror of the cross” (Sermones dominicales et festivi, III, pp. 213-214).
Jesus, the Son of God, died for you, for me, for each of us. In this way he gave us concrete proof of how great and precious we are in the eyes of God, the only eyes capable of seeing beyond all appearances and of peering into the depths of our being.
As we make the Way of the Cross, let us ask God to grant us this gaze of truth and love, so that, in union with him, we may become free and good.
Below, the Holy Father arrives.
Here is a translation of the remarks delivered by the Holy Father at the end of the Via Crucis:
Dear brothers and sisters,
In prayer, with meditation and emotion, we followed the way of the Cross tonight. With Jesus, we ascended to Calvary and meditated on his suffering, discovering anew how profound is the love that he had and has for each of us.
But let us not limit ourselves only to compassion dictated by our own eak sentiment - we must feel ourselves participants in the suffering of Jesus. We wish to accompany our Master by sharing his Passion in our own life, in the life of the Church, for the life of the world - because we know that precisely on the Cross, in the limitless love that gives himself totally, is the spring of grace, of liberation, of peace, of salvation.
The texts, the meditations, the prayers of the Via Crucis have helped us to look at this mystery of the Passion in order to learn the immense lesson of love that God has given us on the Cross, so that a renewed desire may be born in us to convert our hearts by daily living this love, the only power able to change the world.
Tonight, we contemplated Jesus with his face full of pain, derided, insulted, disfigured by man's sin. Tomorrow night, we will contemplate his face full of joy, radiant and luminous.
When Jesus was taken down to be buried, the tomb and death ceased to be a hopeless place, where one's story ends in the most total failure, where man reaches the extreme limit of his impotence.
Good Friday is the day of greatest hope, that which ripened on the Cross as Jesus died, as he exhaled his last breath, crying out, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23,46).
In turning over his existence into the hands of the Father, he knows that his death would become the fountain of life. Just as the seed on the ground must break open so that a new plant can grow. If the grain of wheat does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces
much fruit. Jesus is the grain of wheat that falls on the ground, is broken, dies, and because of this, he bears fruit.
From the moment that Christ was raised on it, the cross that was a sign of abandonment, of solitude and of failure, became instead a new beginning. From the depths of death would arise the promise of eternal life. On the Cross, the victorious splendor of Easter dawn already shines.
In the silence of this night, in the silence which will mark Holy Saturday, touched by God's boundless love, we live in expectation of the dawn of the third day, the dawn of victory for God's love, the dawn of a light that allows the eyes of the heart to look in a new way on life, its difficulties and its suffering.
Our failures, our disappointments, our bitterness at what seems to be the collapse of everything, are illuminated by hope. The act of love on the Cross is confirmed by the Father, and the blinding light of the Resurrection envelops and transforms everything. From betrayal, friendship can be born; from rejection, forgiveness; from hatred, love.
Grant us, Lord, to carry our crosses with love, our daily crosses, in the certainty that they are illuminated by the brilliance of your Resurrection. Amen.
As usual, the news agency photos, as many as they are, were not representative of the whole event - not enough crowd shots; no pictures of the actual stations of the Cross as performed, except for a couple of general shots outside the Colosseum, nor of those who carried the Cross, other than the Pope himself; and none of the Holy Father addressing the faithful at the end.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/04/2010 12:50] |