Pope visits prison on Holy ThursdayThis Good Friday, St. Peter's Basilica hosted the solemn Celebration of the Passion of the Lord. Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, Delegate of the Holy Father, presided at the liturgy on behalf of the Holy Father. Papa. The homily was delivered by Capuchin Father Roberto Pasolini, Preacher of the Pontifical Household, who offered a profound and timely reflection on the mystery of the cross as the center of the Easter Triduum.
From the beginning, Pasolini wanted to emphasize the symbolic value of this day: "between the white of the Lord's Supper and that of his Resurrection, the liturgy interrupts the chromatic continuity by dyeing all the vestments red", thus inviting us to "attune ourselves to the intense and dramatic shades of the greatest love".
In contrast to today's world, "rich in new intelligences-artificial, computational, predictive-the mystery of Christ's passion and death proposes to us another kind of intelligence: the intelligence of the cross, which does not calculate, but loves; which does not optimize, but gives itself". This intelligence, he continued, is not artificial, but profoundly relational, because it is "totally open to God and to others".
The freedom of Jesus in the face of the Passion
The homily developed three key moments of the Passion of Jesus to explain how to live a full trust in God. The first, when in the Garden of Gethsemane, when confronted by the soldiers, "Jesus, knowing all that was about to happen to him, went forward and said to them, 'Whom do you seek?'... 'Jesus the Nazarene.' He answered them, 'It is I.'" As he uttered these words, the soldiers fell back and fell to the ground. Pasolini recalled that this gesture reveals that "Jesus was not simply arrested, but offered his life freely, as he had already announced: 'No one takes it from me, but I lay it down for myself'".
This step forward, he stressed, is an example of how every Christian can face painful moments or moments of crisis with inner freedom, "welcoming them with faith in God and trust in the history that He leads".
Thirst for love
On the cross, already close to death, Jesus pronounced a second profoundly human phrase: "I thirst". This expression, the preacher commented, is a manifestation of extreme vulnerability. "Jesus dies not before having manifested - without any shame - all his need". In asking for a drink, he shows that even God made man "needs to be loved, welcomed, listened to".
Pasolini invited those present to discover in this confession of need a key to understanding the truest love: "To ask for what we cannot give ourselves, and to allow others to offer it to us, is perhaps one of the highest and most humble forms of love".
Donate to the end
The third and final word he dwelt on was Jesus' "It is fulfilled" before he died. "Jesus confesses the fulfillment of his - and our - humanity at the moment when, stripped of everything, he chooses to give us his life and his Spirit entirely." This gesture, he explained, "is not a passive surrender, but an act of supreme freedom, which accepts weakness as the place where love becomes full."
In a culture that values self-sufficiency and efficiency, the cross proposes an alternative path. "Jesus shows us how much life can emerge from those moments when, since there is nothing left to do, there is actually the most beautiful thing left to accomplish: to finally give ourselves to ourselves."
Adoring the cross as an act of hope
In the final section of his sermon, Pasolini recalled the words of Pope Francis at the beginning of the JubileeChrist is "the anchor of our hope," to whom we are united by "the cord of faith" since our baptism. He acknowledged that it is not always easy to "keep firm the profession of faith", especially "when the moment of the cross arrives".
For this reason, he exhorted those present to approach the cross "with full confidence" and to recognize in it the "throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace at the right moment". This gesture - to adore the wood of the cross - will be for every Christian an opportunity to renew his or her trust in the way God has chosen to save the world.
"Just as we have been loved, so we will be able to love, friends and even enemies," Pasolini concluded. And then, we will be true witnesses of the only truth that saves: "God is our Father. And we are all sisters and brothers, in Christ Jesus our Lord".
