ADORE TO CHRIST IN HIS THRONE OF GLORY.
My dear brothers and sisters, very loved in dead and raised Christ.
We adore your cross, Lord, and we praised and glorified your Holy
resurrection. The joy of the whole world has come by the log of the
cross.
Dear brothers, this afternoon we are contemplating the God´s
passing by the night of the man. It is true that God has descended
until the darkest summits of the human existence, until the hell of
the solitude, until the hell of the sadness and the pain. But this
passing of God, made in Christ, could iluminate all the human nights.
When this passing finishes, when all the hiding places be iluminated,
we will be able to talk about the definitive passing of the Easter.
This afternoon we meet to contemplate the suffering face of the crucified
Christ. We want to approach the mystery of His passion and of His
cross, we want to be in communion with His sufferings, we want to
thank the immensity of His love. He loved us until the end, until
the offering of himself.
This afternoon,When we started the liturgical celebration of the Christ´s
death, we realized about its austerity, an austere but not sad celebration,
a sober celebration filled with emotion and feeling. All of us have
fallen on the ground, at least we (the ministers). You all have knelt
down, have postrated yourself in silence of meditation and gratitude.
My brothers, this is the attitude of who adores. Before this reality
of a God that dies for us, we can not do another thing that throwing
ourselves to the ground to repeat in our hearts that the God´s
love is great and strong. His love has arrived until the end, His
love has saved us, thanks Lord Jesus!, Thank you so much.
As I have said, my dear brothers, the celebration from today is remarkably
sober and very rich in signs and deeply expressive, all the celebration
is centered in the cross, as a privileged sign, we would say in a
way of sacrament, because of its meaning and action in the life of
the believer. Today, in fact, the Church does not celebrate the Eucharist,
the most important sacrament of the catholic cult, but we attend the
same memorial of the cross of the paschal lamb, the Church makes us
to live the same dramatic event which gives origin to the Eucharist.
Let us see in the cross, my dear brothers and sisters, some aspects
that throughout the liturgical year we passed them unnoticed. The
cross implies suffering, but it is the suffering that takes to the
joy. It is a death that takes to the Easter. Today is already Easter
somehow. Through the humiliation, shames and of the scandal that is
provoked in many people, Jesus is glorified by the Father. And He
gives glory to the Father.
The cross was frightful, a cruel spectacle, but since Christ died
in the cross, it is glorious, which was an instrument of torture has
become in instrument of salvation. Let us approach it as the most
sacred place, let us approach with devotion and gratitude the crucified
Christ.
We raise the cross to fix our eyes to it. It is requested a glance
of faith, a glance like the one of those poisoned Israelites in the
desert, who cured themselves when they watched the serpent of bronze,
which was raidsed in a log. My brothers, the serpent did not save
you all, nor the log, but the glance. Look at Christ, watch him in
the log of the cross, watch Him confessing that He saves us; giving
His life for us, He confesses that He dies for our sins, He confesses
that He is the lamb that clean the sin of the world, He confesses
that He is the pastor that from the cross calls to His ewes with loving
whistles, he confesses that in his scars we were cured. You all have
crucified to Christ, God´s word, from the cross He offers to
us the precious lessons like the one of silence and not violence,
the one of patience and donation, the one of humility and confidence.
We have listened to the seven words, we meditated, and we received
them as a valuable treasure. We have found teachings about the way
to forgive, about generosity, about the Sleeplessness, about the confidence.
He also wants to speak to you, this afternoon, this is the important
thing, that we listen the voice of Jesus in the log of the cross;
He wants to offer to you the forgiveness, He wants to offer to you
the paradise, He wants to gives you his holy mother, He wants to fill
you with his being, He wants to renew the total confidence in the
Father with you. Keep in your heart His words, like Mary that starts
to examine them, She starts to like them. If we go into the deepest
thing of the mystery of the crucified Christ, we will find the infinite
force of the merciful love, He said to us: “nobody has a greater
love that the one who gives his life for his friends”. The greatest
love, the one that gives all, until the last drop of his blood to
saves us, the one who gives his life to save our lifes, the one who
carries with our sufferings and our deaths to fill us with the joy
of the Spirit.
With the words of the Pope Benedict XVI: in His death, he said, in
His death on the cross is realized the act of God of putting Himself
against Himself. When Christ gave himself to give new life to the
man and to save him, this is love, in its radical form. The brutal
violence, the crucifixion is transformed into a love act, it is the
nuclear fission, the crucifixion is taken to the most intimate of
the being, the victory of love over hatred, over death.
My dear brothers and sisters, pray for all the men, absolutely for
all, feeling ourselves united to Christ in the cross, with the feelings
of Christ who offered His life for the salvation of the world. We
want to pray specially for all the men and for all the towns that
suffer in which Christ extends His passion that our prayer arrives
until the throne of the Father. Let us pray for the Holy Church to
be united, may the church be poor and samaritan. Let us pray for the
Pope, the eclesial community that it is witness of faith of the mercy
love of Christ. Let us pray for who govern to us, in order to the
Lord inspires decisions to them that promote the communal wellbeing,
in a environment of peace and freedom. Particularly, my dear brothers,
let us pray for the afflicted ones, the sick people, specially for
the serious cases. Let us pray for the poor ones in misery and hunger,
for the pressed ones, the excluded ones, the refugees, and immigrants
that suffer all kind of humiliations. Let us pray for the jailed ones
and the tortured ones, for the victims of the wars and of the terrorism,
for the victims of accidents and natural disasters. Let us pray for
the unborn children that innocently are destroyed in the womb of their
mother, for the uprooted children, the children of the street, the
sold, militarized and abused children. Let us pray for the young people
that start to grow and they fall in false paradises. For those that
are in strike, for those that do not live yet and they feel that life
is an absurd, and they are victims of the drugs, and they are victims
of the alcohol, the AIDS, the play and the sex. Let us pray for the
couples without a possibility of a house, for the couples without
possibility of children, they suffer! Let us pray for the victim women
of discrimination, of abuse and terrorism. Let us pray for the abandoned
elders, the desperated ones, and so on, all the pains and sufferings
of the humanity fit here, in the pain and suffering of Christ.
May our prayer be also of communion, uniting with them and with Christ.
The pain of the world exceeds us, but all the pain of the world fit
in the Christ´s heart. We have contemplated through listening
to the prophet Isaiah, the figure of the servant that crosses the
Passion of Jesus and it moves us by the compassion, and this is natural,
but the intention of the Church when it makes us to live this experience
goes much more far from a simple provocation of the feelings. Saint
John in his Gospel from which we have listened the Passion of Christ,
wants to take us to contemplate the glory of Jesus in the throne of
the cross, in the log of the cross.
In fact, my dear brothers, the Holy friday is not an occasion in which
we can privilege the compasion to Christ, maybe this is the commonest
attitude in the popular mercy, but the liturgy invites us to go beyond
the sentimentality or even of an authentic sense of compassion. The
Church through that liturgy invites us to believe in the crucified
messiah and to accept in faith that the death of Christ is the act
of supreme love of God through which He saves us, and to accept in
faith that God has wanted to show all His power in the weakness of
the cross, and He also wanted to accept in faith that the madness
of the cross is wiser than the wisdom of the world. From the death
of Jesus in the calvario, all in the life of the believer acquires
a sense impossible to reach through other means. May in the cross
of the Lord, we can have the certainty of that all our sins have been
forgiven, that after the cross another greater force in the world
does not exist than it is not the love.
And finally, my brothers, to accept in faith that life wants its greater
sense in love, in donation, in service, until giving everything. Let
us adore to Christ in His throne of glory, we adore to Christ in the
cross.
