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Pope Benedict XVI- Addresses |
"With
Christ We Have Climbed Calvary"
Papal Discourse at End of Via Crucis
H.H. Benedict XVI
April 2, 2010
Dear brothers and sisters,
In prayer, with stirred and recollected spirits, we have tonight
retraced the path of the cross. With Christ we have climbed Calvary
and we have meditated on his suffering, rediscovering how profound
is the love he has had and has for us.
But in this moment we do not want to limit ourselves to a compassion
dictated merely by our weak sentiments. Rather we want to feel that
we participate in the suffering of Jesus; we want to accompany our
Teacher, sharing his passion in our lives, in the life of the
Church, for the life of the world. Because we know that precisely in
the cross, in the limitless love where one gives all of himself, is
the fount of grace, liberation, peace and salvation.
The texts, meditations and prayers of the Way of the Cross have
helped us to gaze upon this mystery of the Passion, to learn the
immense lesson of love that God gave us on the cross, so that in us
is born a renewed desire to convert our hearts, living each day this
same love, the only force capable of changing the world.
This night we have contemplated Jesus' face full of pain, ridiculed,
insulted, disfigured by the sin of man. Tomorrow night we will
contemplate his face full of joy, radiant and luminous. Since the
moment Christ was placed in the sepulcher, the tomb and death are no
longer hopeless places where history is closed with the most
complete failure, where man touches the ultimate limit of his
powerlessness. Good Friday is the day of greatest hope, that matured
on the cross.
While Jesus dies, while he exhales his breath, he sighs crying out
with a loud voice, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit"
(Luke 23:46). Surrendering his existence, given into the hands of
the Father, he knows that his death becomes fount of life. As the
seed in the ground has to be broken so the plant can grow. If the
grain of wheat fallen in the earth does not die, it remains alone,
but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus is the grain of wheat
that falls in the earth, is torn, is broken, dies, and because of
this, can bear fruit. From the day on which Christ was raised up on
it, the cross, which looks like a sign of abandonment, loneliness
and failure, has become a new beginning. From the depths of death is
raised up the promise of eternal life; upon the cross already shines
the victorious splendor of the Easter dawn.
In the silence that envelops this night, in the silence that
envelops Hoy Saturday, touched by the limitless love of God, we live
awaiting the dawn of the third day, the dawn of the victory of the
love of God, the dawn of the light that enables the eyes of the
heart to see life, difficulties and suffering in a new way. Our
failures, our disillusions, our bitternesses that seem to signal the
collapse of everything, are enlightened by hope. The act of love of
the cross, confirmed by the Father and the radiant light of the
resurrection, envelops and transforms everything. From betrayal,
friendship can be born; from rejection, pardon; from hate, love.
Grant us, Lord, to carry our cross with love, our daily crosses, in
the certainty that they are enlightened with the radiance of your
Easter. Amen.
[Translation by ZENIT]
Look
at the One they Pierced!
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
