Good Friday, the "other death of God".Holy Thursday: Pope washes feet of 12 young prisoners in RomeIf last Wednesday the Holy Father prayed for the mothers of the fallen Ukrainian and Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian war, on the Way of the Cross On Good Friday at the Colosseum, in front of some twenty thousand people, a young Ukrainian and a Russian man prayed for peace, raising some diplomatic dust. Already last year, a Russian and a Ukrainian woman, Irina and Albina, carried the cross on the Way of the Cross.
In the sentence corresponding to the tenth Station of the Way of the CrossJesus is stripped of his clothes', the young people said: "Jesus, please make peace in the whole world so that we can all be brothers".
Let us pray saying: Purify us, Lord Jesus.
From resentment and rancor: purify us, Lord Jesus.
From words and violent reactions: purify us, Lord Jesus.
From attitudes that cause division: purify us, Lord Jesus.
From the desire to stand out, humiliating others: purify us, Lord Jesus".
The general motto of the Way of the Cross was "Voices of peace in a world at war". The young Ukrainian recounted that "last year, my father and mother prepared me and my younger brother to take us to Italy, where our grandmother has been working for more than twenty years. We left Mariupol during the night. At the border the soldiers stopped my father and told him that he had to stay in Ukraine to fight. We went on by bus for two more days. Arriving in Italy I was sad. I felt that I was stripped of everything; that I was completely naked. I didn't know the language and I didn't have any friends".
"Grandma was trying hard to make me feel lucky, but I kept saying I wanted to go home. Finally, my family decided to return to Ukraine. Here the situation is still difficult, there is war everywhere, the city is destroyed." "But with the help of the good God, peace will return," he said.
Ruso: "may we all be brothers".
"I, on the other hand, am a young Russian. Saying so I experience almost a feeling of guilt, but at the same time I do not understand why and I feel doubly bad, deprived of happiness and dreams for the future," the Russian boy began.
"I have been watching my grandmother and mother cry for two years. A letter told us that my older brother had died. I still remember him on his eighteenth birthday, smiling and bright as the sun, and all this only a few weeks before he left for a long trip. Everyone told us we should be proud, but at home there was only suffering and sadness. It was the same with my father and grandfather; they also left and we don't know anything about them," he continued.
"One of my schoolmates, in great fear, told me in my ear that there is war. When I got home, I wrote a prayer: Jesus, please make peace in the whole world.
world and that we can all be brothers and sisters".
14 thanks to Jesus
After the prominence of the families The reflections of the fourteen Stations of the Cross for this year's Stations of the Cross were the hard testimonies collected before Pope Francis in Audiences and apostolic journeys, by people of various ages in areas of war, conflict and discarding. These voices have come from the Holy Land, various parts of Africa, Central and South America, the Balkan Peninsula, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
In the Closing Prayer, before praying the Our Father in Latin, 14 times thanks were given to the Lord. "Lord Jesus, eternal Word of the Father, for us you have become silence. And in the silence that leads us to your tomb there is still one word that we want to say to you, thinking of the itinerary of the Way of the Cross that we traveled with you: thank you". These were the words of thanksgiving:
"Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the meekness that confounds arrogance.
Thank you for the courage with which you have embraced the cross.
Thank you for the peace that springs from your wounds.
Thank you for having given us your holy Mother as our Mother.
Thank you for the love you showed in the face of betrayal.
Thank you for changing the tears into a smile.
Thank you for having loved everyone without excluding anyone.
Thank you for the hope you instill in the hour of trial.
Thank you for the mercy that heals miseries.
Thank you for having stripped yourself of everything to enrich us.
Thank you for having transformed the cross into a tree of life.
Thank you for the forgiveness you have offered to your executioners.
Thank you for having defeated death.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the light you have kindled in our nights and, reconciling every division, you have made us all brothers and sisters, children of the same Father who is in heaven".
