Triduum: Thursday, Friday, Easter Vigil

MAUNDY THURSDAY [17 April 2025]

Dearly beloved I am sending a text to meditate on the mystery of Holy Thursday, one to contemplate the gift of the Cross, mystery of passion and glory for Good Friday, and a note that may be of interest on the Easter Vigil of which it would be important to recover the theological and pastoral sense and value.

Rather than provide as usual a commentary for each biblical reading, I prefer to propose a meditation on Jesus washing the disciples' feet because it is a gesture that introduces us into the heart of the mystery of Holy Thursday. 

1. Eucharist gift and service of love

The starting point is this text by St Augustine: "Surge et ambula: homo Christus tua vita est, Deus Christus patria tua est. Arise and walk: the man Christ is your life, Christ God is your homeland (St Augustine, Discourse 375c)

The fourth gospel does not report the institution of the Eucharist, but deepens the testimony of the synoptics by specifying what Christ wanted to give us in the Eucharistic mystery-sacrament. Instead of the words of the institution the evangelist places the account of the washing of the feet to indicate the meaning and purpose of the Eucharistic mystery which is to live in mutual love following the example of Jesus. The washing of the feet therefore does not replace the account of the institution of the Eucharist given by Matthew, Mark and Luke, but intends to present it as a gift and service of love. Benedict XVI invites us not to stop at the differences in the Gospels when they narrate the Last Supper: "for John, it is the Farewell Supper while for the Synoptics it is the Paschal Supper". Indeed, he writes that one thing is evident in the entire tradition: the essence of this farewell supper was not the ancient Passover, but Jesus revealed the newness of his Passover in this context. Although the banquet with the apostles was not a Passover dinner according to the ritual prescriptions of Judaism, in retrospect the close connection with Christ's death and resurrection became evident. It was Jesus' Passover in which he gave himself and thus truly celebrated the Passover with them. In this way he did not deny the old, but brought it to its full fulfilment (cf. Jesus of Nazareth, II, p. 130). The essential thing is to constantly remember that on that evening Jesus celebrated his, the true Passover. The liturgy with the sequence "Lauda Sion" composed by St Thomas Aquinas on the occasion of the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264 helps us to focus on this truth: "Novae cenae novus rex, novae paschae novus lex, vetus transit observantia. The first Holy Supper is the banquet of the new King, new Easter, new law, and the old has come to an end'. Then the sequence continues: "Quod in cena Christus gessit - faciendum hoc espressit - in sui memoriam. Christ leaves in his memory what he did in the supper - we renew it'.

2. The disruptive power of the new Easter

The washing of the feet helps us precisely to understand the disruptive force of the 'new Easter'. "Before the feast of Easter Jesus, knowing that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn 13:1).  Having ended his public life, Jesus leaves the "Passover of the Jews" to his adversaries and prepares to celebrate "his" Passover with a chosen few, and among the apostles is the betrayer. What a time of great suffering! And yet John presents this hour filled with pain and tragedy as the moment awaited by Christ, as 'the hour of glory'. Benedict XVI again writes that what constitutes the content of this hour, John describes with two words: passage (metàbasis) and love (agàpe). Two words that interpret and explain each other; both describe together the Easter of Jesus: cross and resurrection, crucifixion as elevation, as a "passage" to the glory of God, as a "passing" from the world to the Father. The passage is a transformation because Christ brings with him his flesh, his being as a man. By giving himself on the cross he transforms it, he transforms killing into a gift of love to the full, to the end. With this expression "to the end" John refers in advance to Jesus' last word on the cross: everything has been brought to an end, "it is finished" (Jn 19:30). Through his love, the cross, the instrument of death, becomes metabasis, the transformation of the human being into a sharer in the glory of God. In this transformation we are all involved and our life also becomes "passage", transformation.

While they were eating dinner, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him everything in his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God, got up from the table, laid down his clothes and, taking a towel, wrapped it around his waist. Then he poured water into the basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and dry them with the towel with which he had girded himself (cf. Jn 13:2-5). With full awareness the Lord is about to perform the great and humble act of foot-washing. On the Last Supper John does not give many details, he only notes while they were dining, which can also be translated as "when the supper was ready", or: "when the supper was finished". The evangelist is not very interested in the details of that meal and prefers to surprise us with Jesus' unexpected choice. The interruption of the supper to wash his feet is disturbing and stimulates us to reflect in order to seek the reasons for such a choice. 

2. Eight verbs to understand this unusual and unexpected rite

Our attention is provoked to understand this gesture of his by meditating on its meticulous description made up of no less than eight verbs: "he got up from the table, laid down his clothes, took a towel, wrapped it around his waist, poured water into the basin, began to wash his feet, dried them, took off his clothes again" after which he sits down again ready to explain its meaning. St John accumulates verbs without repeating himself so that Jesus' gesture remains impressed in the reader's mind as he intends to show that true love always translates into concrete actions of free service. Here then is Jesus undressing and putting on an apron, reminding us of what we read in St Luke: "Behold, I stand among you as one who serves" (22:27). The laying aside of clothes also symbolically expresses the imminent gift of life. In doing so, he wants to involve, starting with Peter, all the disciples and also each believer: therefore also us.

At first glance, this unusual and unexpected rite appears as an invitation to allow ourselves to be purified again and again by the fresh and salutary water of his word and love. It is an authoritative 'sign' because the gesture and words are substantiated by the gift of himself even beyond death. In fact, a few hours later, while he was lying lifeless on the cross, a soldier's lance blow would cause blood to flow from his side along with water (cf. Jn 19:34) showing his pierced body as a total gift beyond death. Christ's words are much more than mere communication; they are rather flesh and blood for the life of the world since Jesus himself is the Word made flesh (Jn 1:14) and his word is life that gives itself, real presence, bread that makes life. In every sacrament celebrated in faithfulness to his word, Christ kneels down and purifies our lives.

3. God's work for man starts from below

In the washing of the feet, Jesus presents mutual service, inspired by love, as the indispensable means to keep his presence alive in the new Community in which the disciples will have the task of creating conditions of freedom and equality, placing themselves each at the service of the other. God's work in favour of man does not come from above like a handout, but starts from below to raise man to the divine level. This is what Jesus does, the undisputed leader, who abandons his role to place himself below his disciples: "Christ Jesus, though he was in the condition of God, did not consider it a privilege to be like God, but emptied himself by assuming the condition of a servant, becoming like men" (Phil 2:6-7). He emptied himself (ekenosen): Christ voluntarily emptied himself of his divine glory to become a servant, to enter the human condition with humility, weakness and vulnerability, "obedient unto death". 

We have no trouble understanding Peter who is bewildered, unable to accept what the Lord is accomplishing, indeed rejecting it altogether. "So he came to Simon Peter and said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "What I do, you do not understand now; you will understand later." Simon Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet for ever!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you will have no part with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not only your feet, but also your hands and your head!" (Jn 13:6-9). Peter perfectly expresses the attitude of the Eleven who, after being with him for years, think they know everything about Jesus. Peter, however, probably interpreting the thinking of the others, does not yet know where the Master wants to go by loving "to the end" and this is why Jesus reiterates to him the importance of the gesture so that all may understand: "If I do not wash you, you will have no part with me". In his educational action, the divine Master first teaches with deeds, then explains in words. In truth, he does not explain or explains very little by proceeding by affirmations; he does not condemn, but he makes it clear how much of a loser he is who thinks and acts like Peter who does not want to let his feet be washed and therefore will have no part with him.  What a drama to be separated from the One who loves you "to the end"!

Jesus, however, is patient in his waiting, he knows that it can be a long time to understand and put his gospel into practice. By observing how he educates Peter, we can learn to act as he wishes, remaining in his school as humble and faithful disciples.

4. The example of Christ founds and accompanies our educational action

The washing of the feet is the model for us to understand and put into practice. This is because we are in the presence of a sacramentum that is at the same time exemplum. Sacramentum i.e. mystery of Christ and power that transforms us into a new form of being, invigorating us with energy of new life. Exemplum because Christ remains the one who gives himself and always continually precedes us. The root of Christian ethics does not lie primarily in our moral capacity, but in God's gift to us. It is in the free gift of God that the reason why the central act of our being Christians is the Eucharist: that is, infinite gratitude for the new life that the Holy Trinity communicates to us through Christ's death and resurrection. It follows that the Mandatum Novum consists in loving together with the one who first loved us, and never prescinding from this truth. As with Peter, it is up to each one of us to learn that God's greatness is different from our image of greatness and that it consists precisely in descending, in the humility of service, in the radicality of love to the point of the total spoliation of one's self. And this must always be stressed again because we are constantly tempted to seek the God of power and success, or even of compromises, and not the God of the Passion. It is always tiring and difficult, as Benedict XVI observed, to realise that the Shepherd comes as a sacrificial Lamb who gives himself and, in this style, leads us to the right pasture.

Giovanni Papini, a 20th century convert writer, in his brilliant and visceral 'Life of Christ' highlights a connection between the washing of the feet and the mission of the apostles. He writes: "The Eleven, beyond deaf nature, had some claim to the benefit of the washing. For weeks of months those feet had walked the dusty, the muddy, the shitty roads of Judea to follow him who gave life. And after his death they will have to walk, years and years, on longer, shabbier roads, in countries whose name they do not even know today. And the foreign mota will lord, through their shoes, the feet of those who will go, as pilgrims and strangers to repeat the call of the Crucified". Papini probably links up with Augustine who, in a more elegant and calm manner, had presented the washing of the feet as a right and a necessity for all evangelisers. For Augustine, foot-washing is not only an exemplary gesture for educating the disciples, but also an aid for the apostles in their task as evangelisers. He writes in this regard: 'When we, the church, proclaim the gospel, O Christ, we walk the earth and dirty our feet to come and open the door to you [to let you into the hearts of the people you have entrusted to us]. When we preach to you, we walk with our feet on the earth to come and open the door for you. Wash our feet that...have become dirty walking on the earth to come and open the door to you" (Homily 57 on Jn).

5. Holy Thursday as an occasion to purify priestly service

Ultimately for us priests, Holy Thursday is a most auspicious occasion to ask Jesus to purify our priestly service. At the end of tiring days of apostolic work, we realise that we have "dirtied our feet" by giving too much importance to ourselves so as to make it more difficult to encounter Christ with people. We hear his words resounding in us: "I have given you an example so that as (kathos) I have done, you also may do" (John 13:13). Kathòs can be translated as, but here it has a special meaning: it indicates an action that produces a desired effect and it is as if Jesus were saying: by doing this I make it possible for you also to act as I do in serving your brothers and sisters. While the synoptics conveyed his command "Do this in remembrance of me", referring to the gesture of "consecration" (Lk22:19; Mt26:26; Mk14:22), John reminds us that the new community of his disciples will also have to make their Lord present in mutual service as well as in Eucharistic worship: "Knowing these things, you are blessed if you put them into practice" (Jn 13:17). In the fourth gospel we find only two beatitudes written: the first is directly addressed to the apostles present; the other will be proclaimed eight days after the resurrection and concerns especially the future disciples: "Blessed are those who, though they have not seen, will believe" (Jn 20:29). Both are especially necessary for us, priests, chosen by him to continue his mission: we will only be blessed if we unite the practice of charity with the steadfastness of faith.In summary, Christ's gesture of washing the feet shows in a visible manner that love must translate into fraternal welcome, hospitality and forgiveness, always preserving the style and spirit of the service he entrusted to the apostles, a ministry of humble, gratuitous love always based on him. Ultimately, it is a vocation to 'wash feet' in the heart of the world. 

Origen, who lived between 185 and 253/254, Father of the Greek-speaking Church, master of spiritual and allegorical theology wrote in one of his homilies: 'Jesus, come, my feet are dirty. For me make yourself my servant, pour water into the basin; come, wash my feet. I know, it is reckless what I say to you, but I fear the threat of your words: If I do not wash you, you will have no part with me. Wash my feet therefore, that I may have part with thee' (Homily 5 on Isaiah). And Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan (339-397) and one of the most important Fathers of the Latin Church, a theologian with a pastoral and spiritual slant, teaches us to pray like this: 'O my Lord Jesus, let me wash your holy feet; you have soiled them since you walked in my soul... But where shall I get water from the spring to wash your feet? In the absence of it I have eyes to weep: by wetting your feet with my tears, let me myself be cleansed" (Penance, II, ch. 7). Finally, Jacques Dupont, Carthusian monk, Prior of the Carthusian monastery of Serra San Bruno and Procurator General of the Carthusian Order (1993-2014), who died on 13 January 2019 observes: 'Only he who accepts to have his feet washed can do so to another without an attitude of superiority'.

GOOD FRIDAY [18 April 2025].

For today here is a reflection on "The cross, the only hope of the world" 

1. Chronicle of a violent death

Every Good Friday, the liturgy repeats the proclamation of the Passion of Christ according to Saint John. In the final analysis, it is the chronicle of a violent death, and such episodes, then as now, are part of the daily news. Killings of criminals, people victims of attacks, innocent people struck down by misfortune, car or work accidents with loss of life, disasters created by natural disasters such as the recent devastating earthquake in Myanmar, one of the strongest recorded in the country in over a century, people killed because of their faith. These are all news items that follow one another quickly and last for a short time in the fast-paced daily panorama of public opinion. On the contrary, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, which took place more than two millennia ago, continues to be an event as vivid as if it were happening today, and this is because his death changed the face of death forever; indeed, it gave new meaning and significance to death. It is worth pausing, then, to meditate on this death that has conquered death forever.

2. Blood and water flow from the destroyed temple

One day in Jerusalem, answering those who asked by what authority he was driving the merchants out of the temple, Jesus replied: 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. "He spoke of the temple of his body" (Jn 2:19. 21), comments the evangelist John, but his interlocutors did not understand. It was in truth an anticipatory sign of another event that is fully understood in John's passion narrative. When the crucifixion was completed, seeing that he was already dead, they did not break Jesus' legs as they had done to the other two crucified men, but "one of the soldiers with a spear struck his side and immediately blood and water came out" (John 19: 32-34). One catches here the reference to Ezekiel's prophecy that spoke of the future temple of God, from the side of which a trickle of water gushes out and becomes a stream, then a navigable river around which all life flourishes (cf. Ez 47:1 ff.). That "destroyed" temple from which gushes forth water and blood is the pierced heart of Christ, source of a "river of living water" (Jn 7:38). The heart of Christ already dead is alive because he conquered death; Christ risen from the dead is alive and his heart also lives in a new dimension that is not physical but mystical. The reference to the Lamb who lives in heaven "immolated, but standing" of which Revelation speaks (5, 6) is also easy. Christ is the Lamb of God who sacrificed himself, but now lives risen and glorified "standing as if immolated". His pierced heart is living, indeed "eternally pierced, precisely because eternally living". On each Good Friday, at the conclusion of the celebration of Christ's Passion, after his "consummatum est - it is fulfilled" Jesus bows his head and hands over his spirit (Jn 19:30). The expression "Consummatum est" (from the Greek Τετέλεσται, Tetélestai) is full of meaning: it is the total fulfilment of the mission of Jesus who has completed the work entrusted to him by the Father, realising the Scriptures and the plan of salvation.

3. Christ delivers the spirit 

The Latin expression "tradidit spiritum" (Jn19:30) in the original New Testament Greek koinè version "παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα" (parédōken tò pneûma) means "he delivered", "he entrusted". It is the verb παραδίδωμι, which implies a voluntary act of handing over, while τὸ πνεῦμα (tò pneûma) = "the spirit" can mean either the life-breath or, in a deeper sense, the Holy Spirit. All this is fulfilled because Jesus freely offers his life for the salvation of all mankind. This is the origin of the steadfastness of the Christians' hope, which fears no obstacle and resists all opposition from then on until the end of the world: despite the fact that a growing mass of evil is amassing in the hearts of men and in the structures of the world, making humanity seem inhabited by a "heart of darkness", Christ's sacrifice makes a living heart of light beat in the universe: his Heart. "Now the Father's plan is fulfilled," says an antiphon of the Liturgy of the Hours, "to make Christ the heart of the world": it is precisely from this certainty that the optimism of us Christians takes vigour. Illuminated by the word of God we scrutinise reality with the yardstick of the Spirit's wisdom and, certain of Christ's victory, we can proclaim with the blessed Juliana of Norwich: "Sin is inevitable, but all will be well and all things will be well" (Juliana of Norwich).

4. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis. "The Cross stands firm while the world turns".

Carthusian monks have adopted a coat of arms that appears at the entrance to their monasteries, as in their official documents. In this coat of arms, the globe is drawn, surmounted by a cross and surrounded by this phrase: "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis": the cross stands firm amidst the upheavals of the world. The statement "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" contains a comforting spiritual truth: in the midst of the whirlwind of time, of chaos, of the instability of the world, the Cross remains the only still point, the axis around which everything revolves. The Cross is truly like the mast of the ship in the storm of the world, and several Christian authors used naval imagery precisely when speaking of the Cross: St. Columbanus (6th-7th cent.) wrote: "The world is like a stormy sea: if you want to reach port, attach your gaze to the wood of the Cross." Origen (3rd cent.) commenting on Noah's Ark, sees in it an image of salvation and the Church, and in the wood a reference to the Cross. He who clings to it does not sink in the flood of the world. St Ambrose in his exegesis of the story of Noah and the crossing of the Red Sea, speaks of the Cross as the rudder and sail of the Church: it is the Cross that guides, orients. Indeed, the mast, the central structure that supports the sail of a ship, is a perfect figure of the Cross because it holds the ship of life together: it allows orientation even in a storm; being vertical, it unites earth and sky and carries the sail of the Spirit, which blows where it will (cf. Jn 3:8). "Stat Crux, dum volvitur orbis" reminds us that the Cross is not a symbol of defeat, but of stability, direction and hope. Even if everything turns, even if life is rocked by waves, the Cross is the still centre of the world, the axis of meaning of all history. The Japanese writer Shusaku Endõ, in his novel 'Silence' (Chinmoku, 1966), set in the context of the persecutions of the 16th century, shows the cross as a living paradox: an instrument of death, but also an emblem of salvation and peace. The Cross of Christ is God's definitive and irreversible 'No' to violence, injustice, hatred, lies, to everything we call 'evil'. At the same time it is the total and irreversible "Yes" to love, truth, goodness. "A clear 'No' to sin and 'Yes' to the sinner: this is the style of Jesus' life and action throughout his life and which he now consecrates definitively with his death. A living demonstration of this is the good thief, to whom the dying Jesus promises paradise. One must always be clear about this distinction: the sinner is God's creature and retains his dignity, despite all his or her own misdeeds, while sin is the fruit of the passions and instincts and of the "envy of the devil" (Wis 2:24) and for this reason, by becoming incarnate, the Word took on everything of man, except sin. In front of the crucified Christ, everyone, but truly everyone, even the most desperate, can recover their trust and no one can say like Cain: "Too great is my guilt to obtain forgiveness" (Gen 4:13). The cross of Christ does not "stand" against the world, but for the world: it gives meaning and even value to every kind of human suffering. To the elderly Nicodemus, Jesus confides that "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (Jn 3:17), and the cross vividly proclaims the final victory of Love. Not he who dominates others wins, but he who triumphs over himself, not he who hurts and makes others suffer, but he who suffers even unjustly and forgives.

5. The Cross certain hope in the digital and volatile age

The Cross of Christ remains a sign of certain hope "dum volvitur orbis". The world, since its origin, is marked by constant and changing upheavals. From the primitive stone age we are now in the digital and numerical age, where numerical data have become the heart of communication, knowledge, economy and even culture. Thus, massive digitisation dominates: all information (texts, images, sounds, actions) is converted into numerical data (bits), automation and algorithms. From finance to health, everything is managed by numerical systems and artificial intelligences, for which numerical data is the new 'oil', used to profile, predict, influence, many indeed almost all activities: communication, work, relationships. We move everywhere in non-physical digital environments and global interconnection, thanks to digital networks, creates a world that is instantly connected, but unfortunately extremely fragile. Man risks being reduced to data, to measurable behaviour. Truth is what can be quantified, calculated and controlled. Freedom is under threat from algorithmic surveillance and the idea of transition is no longer sufficient to describe the reality at hand. The idea of mutation today is associated with that of shattering in a 'liquid' society with which the acronym VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) is associated, where there are no fixed points, no undisputed values. The result is that, unfortunately, there is nothing stable to cling to: we are lost in the 'nothingness' that is not just absence, but an existential void that is often filled with anxiety, disorientation, or with frenetic activity that only serves to mask it. The digital ocean remains a complex reality, in some ways fascinating but dangerous: it offers unforeseen possibilities and risks, and therefore requires attention, prudence and responsibility. Father Cantalamessa, in one of his sermons on Good Friday in St. Peter's, described our era as follows: "Everything is fluctuating, even the distinction of the sexes. The worst hypothesis that the philosopher predicted as the effect of God's death, the one that the advent of the super-man should have prevented, but did not: "What did we ever do, to loosen this earth from the chain of its sun? Where does it move now? Where is it that we move? Away from all suns? Is not ours an eternal plummet? And backwards, sideways, forwards, on all sides? Is there still a high and a low? Are we not wandering as through an infinite nothingness?" (F. Nietzsche, The Gaiety of Science, aphorism 125).  And the former preacher of the Papal Household added: "It has been said that 'to kill God is the most hideous of suicides', and that is what we are partly seeing. It is not true that 'where God is born, man dies' (J.-P. Sartre); the opposite is true: where God dies, man dies. Salvador Dali painted a crucifix that seems a prophecy of this situation. An immense, cosmic cross, with an equally monumental Christ on top, seen from above, with his head reclined downwards. Below him, however, is not dry land, but water. The crucified Christ is not suspended between heaven and earth, but between heaven and the liquid element of the world. However, this tragic image also contains a consoling certainty: there is hope even for a liquid society like ours because above it 'stands the cross of Christ'.

6. O crux, ave spes unica 

On every Good Friday, the Church proclaims its consciously certain hope in the words of the poet Venantius Fortunatus: 'O crux, ave spes unica', Hail, O cross, world's only hope. The Son of God who became man has died but is no longer in the grave: he has risen. On the day of Pentecost Peter proclaims emphatically to the crowd: "You crucified him, but God raised him up!" (Acts 2:23-24), He who "was dead, now lives for ever" (Rev 1:18). The cross does not "stand" motionless amidst the upheavals of the world as a memory of a past event or as a mere symbol, but remains firmly planted in history as an event of today, indeed of every moment because Christ lives with us. We all have something of that heart of stone of which the prophet Ezekiel speaks: "I will tear out from them the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh" (Ez 36:26). Yes, a heart is stony when it closes itself off from the love of God and becomes insensitive to the needs and suffering of its brothers and sisters; when it allows itself to be seduced by greed for material goods and is deaf to the cries of those who do not even have a penny to live on. Heart of stone is mine when I let myself be dominated by passions and live by compromise, falsehood, violence and impurity. Hardened is my heart, when folded in on myself, it prevents me from living for Christ, who loved me by dying for me. My heart trembles before the sudden storms that invade me and threaten to plunge me into the darkness of fear and discouragement. In these situations, what happened at the same time as Christ's death can happen: "the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, the earth shook, the rocks were broken, the tombs were opened, and many bodies of dead saints were raised" (Mt 27:51f.). Even in complex situations like this, an invitation to the courage of hope emerges. In a Good Friday liturgy, Pope Saint Leo the Great exhorted the faithful thus: "Let human nature tremble before the torment of the Redeemer, let the rocks of faithless hearts be broken, and let those who were shut up in the sepulchres of their mortality come forth, lifting up the stone that was upon them" (Sermo 66, 3; PL 54, 366).  The heart of flesh foretold by the prophets is the Heart of Christ pierced on the cross, 'the Sacred Heart' that continues to live in our hearts when we receive it in the Eucharist. Archbishop Fulton Sheen notes: "By the most extraordinary paradox in the history of the world, by crucifying Christ they proved that He was right and they were wrong, and by defeating Him they lost. By killing Him they transformed Him: by the power of God they changed mortality into immortality...They humiliated Him on Calvary, and He was exalted and raised above an empty tomb. They sowed His body in dishonour and He rose again in glory; They sowed Him in weakness and He rose again in power. In taking away His life, they gave Him new life...remake man and you will remake the world! (Fulton J. Sheen, from "Justice and Charity")

EASTER VIGIL [19 April 2025]

I hope you may find this brief study of the Easter Vigil helpful, as it is in danger of losing its meaning and becoming almost like the early Mass on Saturday evening. But this should not be the case at least for the Easter Vigil.  

The Easter Vigil in history 

The Easter Vigil has a two thousand year history, albeit with alternating events in the three periods of its life. Here is a quick historical overview of it in order to understand its value and importance. Its history in the secular tradition of the Church, on the one hand expresses a constant celebratory continuity, never failing, and on the other hand undergoes a wide oscillation in its timetable, which for many centuries made it inconsistent between its symbolism and the time when it should have been celebrated. 

1. First period: the great night of Vigil

Here are the main stages: - First period (2nd - 4th century): the Easter Vigil is the basic celebration of the Church, the great night of Vigil in honour of the Lord. From it, the entire Liturgical Year will later develop, as from its source and watershed. The ancient Vigil occupies the whole extent of the night: from the evening light of Vespers to the first light of dawn, when with the Eucharist the Mystery will be fulfilled and the sacramental encounter with the Risen One, who appeared to the first witnesses at that hour, will be realised. It is the paschal pannukia, in which the main scriptural pages are proclaimed, thus outlining a broad overview of salvation history, which will have in Christ dead and risen its summit and its fulfilment. It also concludes the baptismal instruction of the catechumens with the proclamation of the great biblical events, which recall the mystery of regeneration. It is thus that Baptism finds its most suitable place in the Vigil: it is about dying and rising with Christ in the mystery of the sacramental signs. In this way, the Easter of the Lord also becomes the Easter of Christians, who pass from the death of sin to the life of grace. From the earliest times, therefore, the Easter Vigil hosts the three fundamental elements, which will be a permanent constant throughout the centuries: the prophetic Word, the Sacraments of Initiation, and the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The following Sunday would be without liturgy, as everything was concentrated in the night celebration, so solemn and prolonged. Moreover, before the 4th century, such a day is working and does not allow for celebrations. 

2. Second period: the Easter Vigil slips to the afternoon

Second period (4th - 16th century). With religious freedom the Easter Vigil tends to move more and more out of the night and gradually slip into the afternoon of Holy Saturday. On the opposite side, the solemn Easter Eucharist enters into the middle of the day on Sunday, now recognised as a feast day, giving rise to a second and more solemn Mass, the 'Mass of the Day', while the ancient Vigil Mass merges with the night rites and descends with them towards the eve. Initially, the Fathers tended to ensure that the people were not dismissed before midnight, understood as the discriminating hour for the authenticity and truth of the Easter Vigil itself. However, in the concrete celebration, the time shifts more and more to the afternoon of Holy Saturday, even if the recommendation remains that the people not be dismissed before midnight and that the Gloria in excelsis not be intoned before the first stars appear. Gradually, the Vigil is fixed between the sixth hour and Vespers, and in this way it is legally incorporated into the Missal of Pius V, which stipulates that the Vigil begins after the sixth hour and ends with Vespers. However, ever since St Pius V in practice, even after the abolition of Vespers Masses (1566), the Vigil is in fact celebrated on Holy Saturday morning. The practice is taken over by the Bishops' Ceremonial and is defined in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which fixes the end of the Easter fast with midday on Holy Saturday. With these indications, the Vigil reaches its great reform with Pius XII in 1951. "It cannot be denied that these successive anticipations had created, if not a crack in the unitary structure of the Holy Triduum, at least a jarring contrast between the mystery of the day and the liturgical formulas expressing it and superimposed on it. Despite this, the Church maintained its rites, which always preserve for the faithful their historical-commemorative reason and all their value as symbol and mystery" (Righetti, vol. II, p. 252). As long as the three holy days (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday) were civilly festive - even though the rites had for centuries been celebrated in the morning hours and were incompatible with the Hours relating to the Mysteries recalled - they continued to be attended by the faithful, but when in 1642 Pope Urban VIII had to recognise these days as working days, the participation of the Christian people in the rites of the Easter Triduum was no longer possible, and they ended up being celebrated solely by the clergy, with an absolution that was more juridical than pastoral. - Third period (1955 to the present). 

3. The Easter Vigil returns to its time

With the reform of Pius XII the Easter Vigil returns to its proper time with precise indications, which guarantee its celebratory coherence. In fact, the Decree for the Restoration of the Easter Vigil, Dominicae Resurrectionis vigiliam (9 February 1951) states in no. 9: "The solemn Easter Vigil must be held at the appropriate hour, that is, such that it allows the solemn mass of the same vigil to begin around midnight between Holy Saturday and Resurrection Sunday". The firmness of this disposition, which would have ensured a sure success in terms of the time of the celebration of the solemn rite, was unfortunately diluted, from the very beginning, in the same decree, by a concession, which would later prove to be reductive of the nocturnal character of the Vigil, allowing it to be celebrated on the evening of Holy Saturday. "But where, given the conditions of the place and of the faithful, in the judgement of the Ordinary, it is appropriate to bring forward the time of the Easter Vigil, this is not to begin before dusk, but never before sunset" (Idem n. 9). This provision still adversely affects an Easter Vigil that has in fact never been nocturnal, but simply evening. In fact, the celebration practice shows that already in the early years (1951-1955) the parishes made use of the faculty to anticipate the Vigil in the evening. With the reform of Vatican II and in particular with the Instruction Paschalis Sollemnitatis of 16 January 1988, there is a greater insistence on a Vigil that is truly nocturnal and it is stated: 'The entire celebration of the Easter Vigil takes place at night; it must therefore either begin after the beginning of the night or end before dawn on Sunday'. Abuses and customs to the contrary, which sometimes occur, so as to bring forward the time of the celebration of the Easter Vigil to the hours when the Sunday prefestival masses are usually celebrated, cannot be admitted. The reasons given by some for anticipating the Easter Vigil, e.g. public insecurity, are not invoked in the case of Christmas Eve or other conferences held at night. However, the midnight hour is not determined as a discriminating factor. Thus in this further uncertainty, the Easter Vigil today tends not to take off from the convenient evening time. As with the Midnight Mass at Christmas, the extension of the festive precept to early vespers has had a great influence on the Easter Vigil, so that the Easter Vigil is considered legitimate from sundown on Holy Saturday, as a 'pre-holiday' Mass. This was not the case before this provision, when those who anticipated the Vigil in the evening also knew that the night Mass only fulfilled the precept if celebrated after midnight. For an effective take-off of the Vigil as a nocturnal celebration, it would be desirable today to have a precise indication of a discriminating time by the authority of the Church, going back to unequivocally establishing midnight as the hour of the Eucharistic liturgy of the Vigil itself into which one enters with the solemn singing of the Gloria. No exceptions should be allowed, as the Vigil is only celebrated in parishes or communities assimilated to them, as a choral, unique, and therefore unrepeatable act on the holy night. We have seen how concessions to this effect have become the rule, effectively losing the night celebration. 

4. Resurrection Sunday begins at midnight

What is more, the third day of the Easter Triduum, Resurrection Sunday, does not begin at the hour of Vespers on Holy Saturday, as if it were the first Vespers of Sunday, as is the norm for ordinary Saturdays and vigils. Resurrection Sunday begins at midnight, since Holy Saturday is a day of the same solemnity, as is also Good Friday. The three holy days, in fact, have the same degree of solemnity. One understands then that, in the Roman rite, it is not possible to treat the evening hour of Holy Saturday as a time already belonging to Resurrection Sunday.

Midnight is taken as the reference hour to unite the two parts of the Easter Vigil: the liturgy of the Word and the sacramental liturgy. The hour of the resurrection is not referred to us by Sacred Scripture. It belongs to the mystery of God. The Church expresses this awareness when it sings in the Exultet: "O blessed night, you alone have deserved to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld". This is why liturgical tradition urges the Church to spend the nocturnal hours of the holy night in the vigil. Indeed, the Easter night has, since antiquity, been a night of complete vigil, until dawn, the hour when the tomb is found open and empty. Among the various nocturnal hours, however, the midnight hour finds very special consideration. It is linked to precise biblical events, which form the basis of the nocturnal celebration of Easter. 

5. The importance of midnight, the hour of Easter 

Midnight is the great Hour long prepared by God to save his people: "At midnight the Lord smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt... This was a night of watchfulness for the Lord to bring them out of the land of Egypt. This will be a night of watchfulness in honour of the Lord for all the Israelites, from generation to generation" (Ex 12:29. 42). The crossing of the Red Sea also took place at night and ended at the crack of dawn: "...The Lord throughout the night stirred up the sea with a strong east wind...But at the vigil of the morning the Lord from the pillar of fire and cloud cast a glance over the camp of the Egyptians...the sea, at the crack of dawn, returned to its usual level..." (Ex 14:21-27). (Ex 14:21-27). Perhaps the whole thing was accomplished in those three days of walking in the desert that Moses requested of Pharaoh to celebrate the worship of the Lord: "It is granted to us, therefore, to set out on a journey of three days in the desert and to celebrate a sacrifice to the Lord our God..." (Ex 5:3). (Ex 5:3). Those three days are prophecy of the true Passover Triduum in which the Lord worked, in the fullness of time, our redemption. The Passover event is thus fulfilled in the context of at least two nights: that of the Passover banquet with the passing of the Exterminating Angel, and that of the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. The paschal liberation, then, in its salient phases, takes place in the night. But midnight is the hour marked out by God to bring about the decisive and decisive event: the Angel strikes and the people depart: it is the hour of the Passover. The morning vigil, which is spoken of on the night of the Red Sea crossing, is that of the consummation of the people's deliverance "In the early morning the sea returned to its usual level..." (Ex 14:27) and of the consummation of the Passover. (Ex 14:27) and of the joyful contemplation of God's great works: in that hour the song of victory is born (Ex 15:1). The prophecy of the Passover of the Lord Jesus is all too evident, when in the middle of the night, at the hour that He alone knows, He rose from the dead and at the crack of dawn showed Himself alive to His disciples: this is the hour of the Church's Alleluia. The book of Wisdom takes up the event of Easter in a celebratory tone and offers the Church's liturgy a further element to indicate the suitability of the midnight hour to implement in time the memorial and sacramental celebration of the Mystery in its two constitutive phases, Christmas and Easter. "While a profound silence enveloped all things, and the night was in the midst of its course, your almighty word from heaven, from your royal throne, implacable warrior, launched itself into the midst of that land of extermination, bearing as a sharp sword, your inexorable order" (Wis 18:14-15). The psalm also alludes to the unique Midnight Hour: "In the middle of the night I rise up to give you praise" (Sl 118:62). Truly, on Easter night, the new Man, the Lord Jesus, wakes up and rises from the sleep of death and, risen to new life, gives glory to the Father; just as already on Christmas night, the wailing of the divine Child began the new and perfect praise to the Father. Finally, in the Gospel parable of the ten virgins, the stroke of midnight marks the hour of the great event: "At midnight a cry went up: Behold the bridegroom, go out to meet him!" (Mt 25). The same hour is recalled by the Lord himself when he says: "And if he comes in the middle of the night or before dawn, he finds them so, blessed are they!" (Lk 12:38). The midnight hour foreshadowed in the parable of the virgins becomes, in the mystical interpretation of the Church, a hint of the possible return of the Lord, not only in the eschatological hour, but also in his first hour, when he was born among us and also when, awakening from the sleep of death, he returned glorious among the living. In this perspective, midnight became the discriminating hour and the most eloquent reference for both the Christmas and Easter night liturgy. A Jewish tradition says that Christ will come at midnight, as in the time of Egypt, when the Passover was celebrated and the exterminating angel came and the Lord passed over the houses and the doorposts of our foreheads were consecrated with blood. Hence, I believe, that apostolic tradition preserved to this day, according to which during the Easter Vigil it is not permissible to dismiss the crowds before midnight, when they are still awaiting the coming of Christ, while after that time everyone celebrates the feast day in a newfound security". S. GIROLAMO (cf. CANTALAMESSA, R., La Pasqua nella Chiesa antica, ed Internazionale, Torino, 1978, p. 113) 

6. Pastoral care and the "dogma" of comfort 

When the Vigil is celebrated in the evening, it is deprived of an essential component: offering God the time of sleep, sanctifying the night through the asceticism of 'waking'. We ask ourselves: does pastoral care really have to espouse the 'dogma' of comfort at all costs, giving up Easter night and Christmas night, as is currently happening? That at least on the two holy nights, of Easter and Christmas, the entire people of God, in normal parishes, should prepare themselves for the solemn celebration, keeping vigil in the night and generously offering God the night time, is this really pastorally impossible and impractical in our times? The most singular passage of the Easter Vigil, when the Gloria in excelsis is sung and the jubilus of the Alleluia is resumed, is often downplayed: after a rather brief liturgy of the Word, without having reached a congruous atmosphere of anxious anticipation and, without any ritual break, the angelic Hymn is sung and the bells are rung. We are far from that mystical and moved awe of which the ancient sources tell us. It is more eloquent on Christmas night when, at midnight, the solemn Eucharist 'in nocte' begins. Why then deprive the Easter proclamation on the holy night of the experience of fervent expectation, which gives vigour and spiritual joy to the proclamation of the resurrection, at the very beginning of the day on which the resurrection took place, the eighth day that will never set? This is not sentimentality, but celebratory richness, cohesive force and effective witness. 

7. Restore the sense of joy to the Easter Vigil 

If the Easter Vigil is to be given back the joyful and moving sense of expectation, it must be allowed time to set a progressive course towards a precise end, which in ancient times was the first dawning of the day of resurrection and which today should necessarily be the stroke of midnight at the threshold of the great and holy Easter Sunday. Since the liturgy has been irreversibly enriched by the solemn Easter Mass, and since this day is now clothed with royal and great solemnity, it is no longer desirable to propose to all the people a Vigil that extends into the morning, as in ancient times, and then necessarily reduce Easter Sunday to a liturgically 'vacant' day. In this context, midnight should once again become the Hour accepted by all as the discriminating factor between the two parts of the Vigil. Otherwise what happens is what can currently be seen in the various evening hours of Holy Saturday: one already returns from the Easter Vigil in one church, while the other leaves for the Vigil in another church. Poor Easter! Thus it is reduced to a private affair, lost in the Saturday evening routine. The celebration of the Vigil, done in unison by all Christian communities on the crest of midnight, offers an excellent opportunity for a choral witness: the Church, summoned in the middle of the holy night, awaits and announces the resurrection of the Lord. The Church, celebrating the Easter Vigil in unison, almost physically perceives its being one heart and one soul, especially when, at midnight, it acclaims the risen Christ and proclaims him to the world. To express this symphony concretely, midnight becomes a necessary and discriminating criterion. In this context, it will also be possible to give in unison the Easter proclamation to the outside world with the sound of bells.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

Palm Sunday (year C) [13 April 2025].

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. Let us enter Holy Week with Jesus welcomed in Jerusalem and let us prepare ourselves in the Easter Triduum to follow him on the path of passion death and resurrection. 

*First reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah (50:4-7)

This text is taken from the part of the book of Isaiah that collects the so-called 'Servant Songs', which are particularly important for two reasons: first, because of the message Isaiah wanted to convey to his contemporaries, and because they were applied by the early Christians to Christ, although Isaiah was certainly not thinking of Jesus when he wrote this text probably in the 6th century BC during his exile in Babylon. To the people exiled under very harsh conditions, who were in danger of succumbing to great discouragement, he reminds them that Israel is the servant of God sustained and nourished every morning by the Word, but persecuted because of their faith and, in spite of everything, able to withstand every trial. He clearly describes the extraordinary relationship that unites with his God the Servant (Israel) whose main characteristic is listening to the Word, 'the open ear', as Isaiah writes. Listening to the Word, letting oneself be instructed by it, means living in trust. Listening is a word that in the Bible means trusting, because there are two attitudes between which our existence continually oscillates: trust in God, serene abandonment to His will because we know from experience that His will is only good; or mistrust, suspicion of divine intentions and rebellion in the face of trials, a rebellion that can lead us to believe that He has abandoned us or, worse, that He can find satisfaction in our suffering. All the prophets repeat this invitation: 'Listen, Israel' or 'listen today to the Word of God'. On their lips, the exhortation 'listen' is an invitation to trust in God, whatever happens. In this regard, St Paul will explain that God makes everything contribute to the good of those who love and trust him (cf. Rom 8:28) because out of every evil, difficulty, trial, he knows how to draw good; out of every hatred, he opposes an even stronger love; in every persecution, he gives the strength of forgiveness; out of every death, he gives birth to life. The whole Bible is the narration of the story of a mutual trust: God trusts his servant and entrusts him with a mission; in return, Israel accepts the mission with trust. And it is this trust that gives him the strength to resist all the opposition he will inevitably encounter. In this text, the mission consists in being able to "address a word to the challenged" by testifying to the faithfulness of the Lord who gives the necessary strength and the appropriate language. Indeed, it is the Lord himself who nourishes this trust, the source of all boldness in the service of others: "The Lord God opened his ear to me and I did not resist, I did not draw back".  Everything then becomes a gift: the mission, the strength and the trust that makes one unwavering. This is the characteristic of the believer: recognising that everything is a gift from God. When he then makes the permanent gift of the Lord's strength bear fruit, the believer is able to face everything, even persecution, which is never absent, and indeed every authentic prophet who speaks on behalf of God is rarely recognised and appreciated in life.Isaiah invites his contemporaries to resist: the Lord has not forsaken you, on the contrary, he has entrusted you with his mission and do not be surprised if you are mistreated because the Servant who listens to the Word of God and puts it into practice, certainly becomes uncomfortable and with his conversion provokes others: some listen to his call, others reject him and, in the name of their good reasons, persecute him. This is why the Servant draws strength only from the One who enables him to face everything: "I have presented my back to the scourgers, my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard ... the Lord God assists me so I will not be shamed". Isaiah then uses a common expression in Hebrew: 'for this I make my face hard as stone' which expresses determination and courage; not pride or conceit, but pure confidence because he knows where his strength comes from.  Jesus is a perfect portrait of the Servant of God at the heart of persecution and also at the moment when the acclamations of the Palm Sunday crowd marked and accelerated his condemnation. St Luke takes up exactly this expression when he writes 'Jesus hardened his face to go to Jerusalem' (Lk 9:51), which in our translations becomes 'Jesus resolutely took the road to Jerusalem'.

*Responsorial Psalm from Psalm 21(22) (2:8-9,17-20,22b-24)

Psalm 21/22 holds some surprises, starting with the opening words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", much quoted, which, taken out of context, is misinterpreted. To understand its true meaning, one must read the entire psalm, composed of thirty-two verses, which closes with a thanksgiving: "I will proclaim your name to my brothers, I will praise you in the midst of the assembly". He who in the first verse cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" thanks God in the end for the salvation he has received. Not only has he not died, but he gives thanks precisely because God has not forsaken him. At first glance, this psalm seems to be written for Jesus: "They have dug out my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones," a clear allusion to the crucifixion he experienced under the cruel eyes of the executioners and the crowd: "A pack of dogs surrounds me, a band of evildoers encircles me...they mock me who see me...they divide my garments, on my tunic they cast lots." Actually, it was not written for Jesus Christ, but composed for the exiles who had returned from Babylon, and it compares their deliverance to the resurrection of a condemned man, since the exile was a real death sentence for Israel who ran the risk of being erased from history. Now he is compared here to a condemned man who risked death on the cross, a torture that was very common at the time: he suffered outrages, humiliation, the nails, abandonment in the hands of the executioners, but miraculously emerges unharmed. In other words: having returned from exile, Israel indulges in the joy he proclaims to all, shouting louder than when he wept in his anguish. The reference to the crucifixion is thus not the focus of the psalm, but serves to emphasise the thanksgiving of Israel, which in the midst of its anguish never ceased to cry out for help and never doubted for a moment. The great cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is certainly a cry of anguish in the face of God's silence, but it is not a cry of despair, nor does it express doubt; rather, it is the prayer of one who suffers and dares to cry out his pain. How much light this psalm sheds on our prayer in times of suffering of any kind: we have the right to cry out, and the Bible encourages us to do so. Returning from exile, Israel remembers the past pain, the anguish, the apparent silence of God when he felt abandoned in the hands of his enemies, yet he continued to pray. Prayer is clear evidence of his constant trust; he kept remembering the Covenant and the benefits he had received from God. In its entirety, this psalm resembles an 'ex-voto' as when one is in grave danger, one prays and makes a vow and, when grace is obtained, fulfils the promise by taking the ex-voto to a church or shrine.  Psalm 21/22 describes the horror of the exile, the anguish of Israel and Jerusalem besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, the sense of helplessness in the face of men's hatred that provokes an ardent supplication: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' and finally gratitude to God for one's salvation: 'I will proclaim your name to my brothers, I will praise you in the midst of the assembly. Praise the Lord you his faithful".  Palm Sunday does not include the last verses, but we hear them often in the liturgy: "The poor shall eat and be satisfied, they shall praise the Lord who seek him; your hearts shall live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to the Lord; all the families of the peoples shall bow down before you ... They shall proclaim his righteousness; to the people that are born they shall say, 'Behold the work of the Lord'."

*Second Reading from the Second Letter of St Paul to the Philippians (2:6-11)

This text is often called the Hymn of the Letter to the Philippians, because one gets the impression that Paul did not write it in his own hand, but quoted a hymn in use in the liturgy. First of all, note the insistence on the theme of the Servant: "he emptied himself by assuming the condition of a servant": the first Christians, faced with the scandal of the cross, often meditated on the Servant Songs contained in the book of Isaiah, because they offered food for thought for understanding the mystery of the person of Christ. "Christ Jesus, though he was in the condition of God, did not consider it a privilege to be like God". It is tempting to read: although he was in the condition of God, although in reality, it is the other way around, and one must therefore read: 'precisely because he was in the condition of God, he did not consider it a privilege to be like God'. One of the dangers of this text is the temptation to read it in terms of reward, as if the reasoning were: Jesus behaved admirably and therefore received an extraordinary reward. Grace, as its very name suggests, is gratuitous, but we are always tempted to speak of merits. The wonder of God's love is that He does not wait for our merits to fill us; this is the discovery that the men of the Bible made through Revelation. Therefore, to be faithful to the text, we must read it in terms of gratuitousness. We risk misunderstanding it if we forget that everything is God's gift, everything is grace, as Teresa of the Child Jesus used to say. The gratuitous gift of God is for St Paul an obvious truth, a conviction that permeates all his letters, so obvious that he does not even feel the need to reiterate it explicitly, so that we can summarise his thought in this way: God's plan, the design of his mercy is to make us enter into his intimacy, his joy and his love, an absolutely gratuitous plan. There is nothing surprising in this, since it is a project of love, a gift to be accepted: it is participation in the divine life, indeed with God, everything is a gift. One excludes oneself from this gift when one assumes an attitude of pretension, if one behaves like the progenitors in the Garden of Eden who appropriated the forbidden fruit. Jesus, on the contrary, did nothing more - "becoming obedient" - than welcome God's gift without demanding it. "Although he was in the condition of God, he did not consider it a privilege to be like God" and it is precisely because he is of divine condition that he does not claim anything. He knows what gratuitous love is, he knows that it is not right to claim, he does not consider it good to claim the right to be like God. It is the same situation as in the episode of the temptations (see the gospel of the first Sunday of Lent): Satan proposes to Jesus only things that are part of God's plan, but Jesus refuses to appropriate them by his own strength. because he wants to entrust himself to the Father so that He can give them to him. The tempter provokes him: "If you are the Son of God, you can afford everything, your Father cannot refuse you anything: turn stones into bread when you are hungry... throw yourself down from the temple, he will protect you... worship me, and I will give you dominion over the whole world". Jesus, however, expects everything from God alone: he has received the Name that is above every other name, the Name of God. For to say that Jesus is Lord is to affirm that he is God. In the Old Testament, the title 'Lord' was reserved for God and so was genuflection 'that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend'. Here is an allusion to a passage from the prophet Isaiah: "Before me every knee shall bow, let every tongue proclaim, 'Jesus Christ is Lord!' shall swear an oath" (Is 45:23). Jesus lived in humility and trust; trust that St Paul calls obedience. To obey, in Latin 'ob-audire', literally means to put the ear (audire) before (ob) the word: it is the attitude of perfect dialogue, without shadows, it is total trust.  The hymn concludes: 'Let every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Glory is the revelation of infinite love made person. In other words, we too, like the centurion, seeing Christ love us supremely, accepting to die to reveal to us how far God's love goes, proclaim, 'Yes, indeed, this was the Son of God'... because God is love.

* Gospel. Passion of Jesus Christ according to St Luke (22.14 - 23.56)

Every year, for Palm Sunday, the account of the Passion returns in one of the three synoptic gospels; this year, it is that of Luke and I confine myself to commenting on the episodes proper to this gospel. While it is true that the four Passion narratives are similar, when one takes a closer look, one realises that each evangelist has particular accents, and this is because they are all witnesses to the same event and they each recount the events from their own point of view, and the Passion of Christ is recounted in four different ways: they do not all choose the same episodes and phrases. Here, then, are the episodes and words that we find only in Saint Luke. 1.After the Last Supper, before going to Gethsemane, Jesus had foretold to Peter his triple denial. In truth, all the gospels narrate this, but only Luke records this sentence of Jesus: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has sought you out to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. And thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren" (22:32). A gentleness of Jesus, which will help Peter after his betrayal to get up again instead of despairing. Again only Luke notes the gaze Jesus casts on Peter after his denial: three times in succession, Peter states that he does not know him in the high priest's house. Immediately afterwards Jesus, turning around, fixed his gaze on Peter and here we hear the echo of the first reading where Isaiah writes: 'The Lord God has given me a disciple's tongue, that I may speak a word to the distrustful'. This is what Jesus wants to do with Peter, to comfort him in advance so that when he denies him he does not fall into despair. Another episode in this gospel is Jesus before Herod Antipas. At Jesus' birth, Herod the Great reigned over the whole territory under the authority of Rome, but at his death (in 4 BC.), the territory was divided into several provinces, and at the time of Jesus' death (in the year 30 AD), Judea, i.e. the province of Jerusalem, was ruled by a Roman procurator, while Galilee was under the authority of a king recognised by Rome, who was a son of Herod the Great: his name was Herod Antipas, who had long wanted to meet Jesus and hoped to see him perform a miracle. Now he asks him many questions, but Jesus remains silent. Herod insults and taunts him by having him clothed in a shining mantle and sends him back to Pilate, strengthening the friendship between Herod and Pilate that day. 

2.There are then three sentences that we find only in Luke's Passion narrative. Two words of Jesus and, if Luke notes them, it is because they reveal what is important to him: the first is his prayer while the Roman soldiers are crucifying him: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'. But what are they doing? They have expelled the Holy One par excellence from the Holy City; they have cast out their God, putting the Master of life to death; the Sanhedrin, the court of Jerusalem, has condemned God in the name of God. And what does Jesus do instead? He forgives his enemies by showing how far God's love goes. He who has seen me has seen the Father, Jesus had said the day before. The second sentence: 'Today with me you will be in Paradise'. If you are the Messiah, he is mocked by the leaders... If you are the king of the Jews, he is mocked by the Roman soldiers... If you are the Messiah, he is insulted by one of the two evildoers crucified with him. The other crucified with him begins to tell the truth: we deserve this punishment but not Jesus, and turns to Jesus: 'remember me when you enter your kingdom'. He recognises Jesus as the Saviour, he invokes him with a humble and trusting prayer: he seems to have understood everything. Finally, only Luke reports this last sentence: "Already the Sabbath lights were shining" (23:54) thus concludes the Passion narrative with an insistent evocation of the Sabbath. He speaks of the women who had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee and now went to the tomb to observe how he had been buried, bringing aromas and perfumes for the burial rites. The lights of the Sabbath were already shining: everything ends on a note of light and peace: the Sabbath is a foreshadowing of the world to come, the day on which God had rested from all the work of creation (cf. Genesis); the day on which, out of fidelity to the Covenant, the Scriptures were scrutinised in anticipation of the new creation. Luke makes us understand that in the labour of Christ's Passion the new humanity was born, which is the beginning of the kingdom of grace. The risen crucified one shows the way forward: the way of love and forgiveness at any cost.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

Integral Trust: emblematic Action, which generates uncontaminated persons

(Jn 13:1-15)

According to a felicitous expression of Origen, Eucharist is the wound in Christ's side that is always open; but Vatican II did not spend a single word on the many Eucharistic devotions.

In order for us to fully understand his Person, the Council fathers were well aware that Jesus did not leave a statue or a relic. He preferred to express Himself in a ‘gesture’, which challenges us.

God does not identify persons in a standard way, nor does He superimpose His thoughts on people's history and sensibilities.

By bending over us, He himself transcends roles, the club’ spirit, the very ideas, and the certificates. Action - this one yes - “exemplary”.

In the supreme freedom of service, «washing» is a Baptismal figure: of the Son’s Person-Mission on behalf of mankind, all now ‘enabled’.

The Master unites to Himself a group of even unconvinced disciples, but ‘made pure’ - not because He aims to form a school distinct from others, or even unilateral one.

He calls by Name and creates assembly to introduce us into Love, through the passage from slavery to the freedom of the Gratis (descending).

Peter craves to command: he doesn’t want to introduce himself into a logic that manifests God servant of all, independent of their past.

Lowering Himself to the level of the slave who puts down his clothes, Jesus wants to humanize us by recovering instead the opposites, rooted in each one... even admitting the contestation.

And He does not take off his apron: it’s the only uniform that belongs to Him. That kind of clothing stays on Him - He wears it in Heaven too.

He did not play the role of the servant, to return to Heaven to be the master. He doesn't condition anyone.

The Life of the Father pursues us on every path, to make us feel adequate: One-Body-Only with the Son.

This is the «service» of the disciples, to be carried out with life and the announcement of the «good news»: to make known that the Father is the unconditional Lover of woman and man.

Uniquely the esteem in which we hold His sons and their stories - without prejudice - leads to acts of conviviality and inexplicable recoveries.

Jesus washing ‘feet’ depicts the secret of the blissful life that expands the way of the I into the way of the Thou: in being genuine and free even to descend, to the point of bending down to serve.

Without labyrinths of norms or lofty cries of principle; without compromising the most genuine spontaneity and streamlining - without giving in to mistrust of the others’ imperfection.

In the Baptismal attitude... celebrating existence in all its forms, beyond boundaries; trusting in life, in its natural and opposite polarities.

By allowing for other developments and expansions.

Opening our eyes to the world - cornerstone of new relationships, replacing one-sided customs, or external fashions.

Embracing a richer destiny.

By loving contradictions.

A ban to perfection’s models and to the exasperation of "skills". Rather, the search for solutions that rely on, without interfering.

Rediscovering one's humanizing nature.

Recognizing diversity.

By approving, redeeming and evaluating ‘pure’ each particular path [the 'washed' feet of each one].

[Holy Thursday in Coena Domini, April 17, 2025]

Year of Grace and fraternity: the seal to salvation history

Lk 4:16-21 (14-37)

Jesus' transgressions and ours (reinforcing the plot)

(Lk 4:14-21)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore he has anointed me to proclaim the Good News to the poor" (Lk 4:18).

In ancient Israel, the patriarchal family, clan and community were the basis of social coexistence.

They guaranteed the transmission of the identity of the people and provided protection for the afflicted.

Defending the clan was also a concrete way of confirming the First Covenant.

But at the time of Jesus, Galilee suffered both the segregation dictated by Herod Antipas' policy and the oppression of official religiosity.

The spineless collaborationism of the ruler had accentuated the number of homeless and unemployed.

The political and economic situation forced people to retreat to material and individual problems or to the immediate family.

At one time, the identity bond of clan and community guaranteed an (internal) character of a nation in solidarity, expressed in the defence and relief given to the less affluent of the people.

Now, this fraternal bond was weakened, a little congealed, almost contradicted - not least because of the strict attitude of the religious authorities, fundamentalist and lovers of a saccharine purism, opposed to mixing with the less affluent classes.

The Law [written and oral] ended up being used not to favour the welcoming of the marginalised and needy, but to accentuate detachment and ghettoisation.

Situations that were driving the least protected sections of the population to collapse.

In short, traditional devotion - loving the alliance between throne and altar - instead of strengthening the sense of community was used to accentuate hierarchies; as a weapon that legitimised a whole mentality of exclusions (and confirmed the imperial logic of divide and rule).

Jesus, on the other hand, wants to return to the Father's Dream: the ineliminable one of fraternity, the only seal to salvation history.

For this reason, his not fleeting criterion was to connect the Word of God to the life of the people, and in this way overcome divisions.

Thus, according to Lk the first time Jesus enters a Synagogue he messes up.

He does not go to pray, but to teach what God's Grace is (undefiled by chicanery and false teachings) in people's real existence.

He chooses a passage that precisely reflects the situation of the people of Galilee, oppressed by the power of the rulers, who were making the weak suffer confusion and poverty.

But his first Reading disregards the liturgical calendar.

Then he dares to preach in his own way and personalising the passage from Isaiah, from which he allows himself to censor the verse announcing God's vengeance.

So he doesn't even proclaim the expected passage of the Law.

And He poses as if He were the master of the place of worship - in fact He is: the Risen One who 'sits' is teaching His [still Judaizing] people.

Moreover - we understand from the tone of the Gospel passage - for the Son of God, the Spirit is not revealed in the extraordinary phenomena of the cosmos, but in the Year of Grace ("a year acceptable to the Lord": v.19).

It is divine because it is personal and social, the new energy that creates the authentic man.

This is the platform that works the turning point.

It becomes an engine, a motive and context, for a transformation of the soul and of relationships - at that time weighed down by even theological servility [of merits].

In a warp of vital relationships, the better understanding of the Gift becomes a springboard for a harmonious future of liberation and justice.

Christ believes that the Father's Kingdom arises by making the present, then mired in oppression, anguish and slavery, grow from within.

The Tao Tê Ching (XLVI) says: "When the Way is in force in the world, swift horses are sent to fertilise the fields".

The emancipation offered by the Spirit is addressed not to the great, but precisely to those who suffer forms of need, defect and penury: in Jesus... now all open to the jubilee figure of the new Creation.

In short, there seems to be total antagonism and unsuitability between the Lord and the practitioners of traditional religion - heavy, selective, devoted to legalisms and reprisals; pyramidal, with no way out.

Obviously, both leaders and habitualists ask themselves - on a ritual and venerable basis: is it possible that the divine likeness could manifest itself in a man who is considerate towards the less affluent, who disregards official customs, does not believe in retaliation, and displays forms of uncontrolled spontaneity?

It is a reminder for us. The person of true Faith does not allow himself to be conditioned by habitual, useless and quiet conformities.

Common thinking - habituated and agreed upon but subtly competitive - becomes a backwards energy, too normal and swampy; not propulsive for the personal and social soul.If, on the other hand, we allow ourselves to be accompanied by the Dream of a super-eminent gestation from the Father, we will be animated through the royal and sacred Presence that directs us to fly over repetitions, or selections, marginalisations and fallacious recriminations.

As if we shift our being into a horizon and a world of friendly relations that then acts as a magnet to reality and anticipates the future.

Like the Master and Lord, instead of reasoning with induced thoughts and being sequestered by the heaviness of rejections and fears, we begin to think with the images of personal Vocation, with the empathic codes of our bursting Call.

The unknown evolutionary resources that are triggered, immediately unravel a network of paths that the "locals" may not like, but avoid the perennial conflict with missionary identity and character.

The unrepeatable and wide-ranging Vision-Relation (v.18a) - without reduction - then becomes strategic, because it possesses within itself the call of the Quintessence, and all the resources to solve the real problems.

To listen to the proclamation of the Gospels (v.18b) is to listen to the echo of oneself and the little people: an intimate and social choice.

And to be in it without the dead leaves of one-sidedness - to wander freely in that same Call; not neglecting precious parts of oneself, nor amputating eccentricities, or the intuition proper to the subordinate classes.

This is to be able to manifest the quiet Root (but in its energetic state), our Character (in the lovable, non-separatist Friend) - to avoid stultifying it with another bondage.

All in the instinct to be and do happy, never allowing themselves to be imprisoned by the craving for security on the side; stagnant pursuit.

The Kingdom in the Spirit (cf. vv.14.18) - who knows what we need - has ceased to be a goal of mere future.

It is the surprise that Christ arouses in us around his proposal with the extra gear.

He does not neglect us: he extinguishes the accusatory brooding and redesigns creatively.

It still gives birth and motivates, it recovers the dispersions, and strengthens the plot.

To internalise and live the message:

How do I link the Faith with the cultural and social situation?

What is Christ's Today with your Today, in the Spirit?

What is your form of apostolate that frees the brothers from the debasement of dignity and promotes them?

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me (et vult Cubam)

3. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me, and sent me forth to proclaim a glad message" (Lk 4:18). Every minister of God must make these words spoken by Jesus of Nazareth his own in his own life. Therefore, being here among you, I want to bring you the good news of hope in God. As a servant of the Gospel, I bring you this message of love and solidarity that Jesus Christ, with his coming, offers to people of all times. It is neither an ideology nor a new economic or political system, but a path to peace, justice and genuine freedom.

4. The ideological and economic systems that have succeeded one another in recent centuries have often emphasised confrontation as a method, because they contained in their programmes the seeds of opposition and disunity. This has deeply conditioned the conception of man and relations with others. Some of these systems have also claimed to reduce religion to the merely individual sphere, stripping it of any social influence or relevance. In this sense, it is good to remember that a modern state cannot make atheism or religion one of its political orders. The State, far from any fanaticism or extreme secularism, must promote a serene social climate and adequate legislation that allows each person and each religious denomination to freely live their faith, express it in the spheres of public life and be able to count on sufficient means and space to offer their spiritual, moral and civic riches to the life of the nation.

On the other hand, in various places, a form of capitalist neo-liberalism is developing that subordinates the human person and conditions the development of peoples to the blind forces of the market, burdening the less favoured peoples with unbearable burdens from its centres of power. As a result, unsustainable economic programmes are often imposed on nations as a condition for receiving new aid. Thus we see, in the concert of nations, the exaggerated enrichment of the few at the cost of the increasing impoverishment of the many, so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

5. Dear brothers: the Church is a teacher in humanity. Therefore, in the face of these systems, it proposes the culture of love and life, restoring to humanity the hope and transforming power of love, lived in the unity willed by Christ. This is why it is necessary to walk a path of reconciliation, dialogue and fraternal acceptance of one's neighbour, whoever they may be. This can be said of the Church's social gospel.

The Church, in carrying out her mission, proposes to the world a new justice, the justice of the Kingdom of God (cf. Mt 6:33). On several occasions I have referred to social issues. It is necessary to continue talking about it as long as there is injustice in the world, however small it may be, since otherwise the Church would not prove faithful to the mission entrusted to it by Jesus Christ. What is at stake is man, the person in the flesh. Although times and circumstances change, there are always people who need the voice of the Church to acknowledge their anguish, pain and misery. Those who find themselves in such situations can be assured that they will not be defrauded, for the Church is with them and the Pope embraces, with his heart and his word of encouragement, all those who suffer injustice.

(John Paul II, after being applauded at length, added)

I am not against applause, because when you applaud the Pope can rest a little.

The teachings of Jesus retain their vigour intact on the threshold of the year 2000. They are valid for all of you, my dear brothers. In the search for the justice of the Kingdom, we cannot stop in the face of difficulties and misunderstandings. If the Master's invitation to justice, service and love is accepted as Good News, then the heart widens, criteria are transformed and the culture of love and life is born. This is the great change that society awaits and needs; it can only be achieved if first the conversion of each person's heart takes place as a condition for the necessary changes in the structures of society.

6. "The Spirit of the Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives (...) to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Lk 4:18). The good news of Jesus must be accompanied by a proclamation of freedom, based on the solid foundation of truth: "If you remain faithful to my word, you will indeed be my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8: 31-32). The truth to which Jesus refers is not just the intellectual understanding of reality, but the truth about man and his transcendent condition, his rights and duties, his greatness and limitations. It is the same truth that Jesus proclaimed with his life, reaffirmed before Pilate and, by his silence, before Herod; it is the same truth that led him to the saving cross and glorious resurrection.

Freedom that is not grounded in truth conditions man to such an extent that it sometimes makes him an object rather than a subject of the social, cultural, economic and political context, leaving him almost totally deprived of initiative with regard to personal development. At other times, this freedom is of an individualistic type and, not taking into account the freedom of others, locks man into his own selfishness. The conquest of freedom in responsibility is an indispensable task for every person. For Christians, the freedom of God's children is not only a gift and a task; its attainment also implies an invaluable witness and a genuine contribution to the liberation of the whole human race. This liberation is not reduced to social and political aspects, but reaches its fullness in the exercise of freedom of conscience, the basis and foundation of other human rights.

(Responding to the invocation raised by the crowd: "The Pope lives and wants us all to be free!", John Paul II added:)

Yes, live with that freedom to which Christ has set you free.

For many of today's political and economic systems, the greatest challenge continues to be to combine freedom and social justice, liberty and solidarity, without any of them being relegated to a lower level. In this sense, the Social Doctrine of the Church constitutes an effort of reflection and a proposal that seeks to enlighten and reconcile the relationship between the inalienable rights of every man and social needs, so that the person may fulfil his deepest aspirations and his own integral realisation according to his condition as a child of God and citizen. Consequently, the Catholic laity must contribute to this realisation through the application of the Church's social teachings in different environments, open to all people of good will.

7. In the Gospel proclaimed today, justice appears intimately linked to truth. This is also observed in the lucid thinking of the Fathers of the Fatherland. The Servant of God Father Félix Varela, animated by Christian faith and fidelity to his priestly ministry, sowed in the hearts of the Cuban people the seeds of justice and freedom that he dreamed of seeing germinate in a free and independent Cuba.José Martí's doctrine of love among all men has profoundly evangelical roots, thus overcoming the false conflict between faith in God and love and service to the homeland. Martí writes: 'Pure, disinterested, persecuted, martyred, poetic and simple, the religion of the Nazarene has seduced all honest men... Every people needs to be religious. It must be so not only in its essence, but also in its utility... A non-religious people is doomed to die, for nothing in it nourishes virtue. Human injustice despises it; heavenly justice must guarantee it'.

As you know, Cuba possesses a Christian soul, and this has led it to have a universal vocation. Called to overcome isolation, it must open up to the world, and the world must draw closer to Cuba, to its people, to its children, who undoubtedly represent its greatest wealth. The time has come to take the new paths that the times of renewal in which we live demand, as we approach the Third Millennium of the Christian era!

8. Dear brothers: God has blessed this people with authentic formers of the national conscience, clear and firm exponents of the Christian faith, which is the most valid support of virtue and love. Today the Bishops, together with priests, consecrated men and women and the lay faithful, strive to build bridges to bring minds and hearts closer together, propitiating and consolidating peace, preparing the civilisation of love and justice. I am here among you as a messenger of truth and hope. This is why I wish to repeat my appeal to let Jesus Christ enlighten you, to accept without reserve the splendour of his truth, so that all may follow the path of unity through love and solidarity, avoiding exclusion, isolation and confrontation, which are contrary to the will of the God-Love.

May the Holy Spirit enlighten with his gifts all those who have different responsibilities towards this people, whom I hold in my heart. May the "Virgen de la Caridad de El Cobre", Queen of Cuba, obtain for her children the gifts of peace, progress and happiness.

This wind today is very significant, because the wind symbolises the Holy Spirit. "Spiritus spirat ubi vult, Spiritus vult spirare in Cuba'. The last words are in Latin because Cuba also belongs to the Latin tradition. Latin America, Latin Cuba, Latin language! "Spiritus spirat ubi vult et vult Cubam". Goodbye.

(John Paul II, homily "José Martí" Square Havana 25 January 1998)

Person, extemporaneity, synagogues

Two Names of God

(Lk 4:21-30)

Today's Gospel - taken from the fourth chapter of St Luke - is a continuation of last Sunday's Gospel. We are still in the synagogue of Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up and where everyone knew him and his family. Now, after a period of absence, He has returned in a new way: during the Sabbath liturgy He reads a prophecy from Isaiah about the Messiah and announces its fulfilment, implying that the word refers to Him, that Isaiah has spoken of Him. This fact provokes the bewilderment of the Nazarenes: on the one hand, "all bore witness to him and were amazed at the words of grace that came out of his mouth" (Lk 4:22); St Mark reports that many said: "Where do these things come from him? And what wisdom is that which has been given him?" (6:2). On the other hand, however, his villagers know him all too well: 'He is one like us,' they say, 'His claim can only be a conceit' (cf. The Infancy of Jesus, 11). "Is not this the son of Joseph?" (Lk 4:22), as if to say: a carpenter from Nazareth, what aspirations could he have?

Precisely knowing this closure, which confirms the proverb 'no prophet is welcome in his own country', Jesus addresses the people in the synagogue with words that sound like a provocation. He cites two miracles performed by the great prophets Elijah and Elisha in favour of non-Israelites, to show that sometimes there is more faith outside Israel. At that point the reaction is unanimous: everyone gets up and throws him out, and even tries to throw him off a cliff, but He, with sovereign calm, passes through the midst of the angry people and leaves. At this point the question arises: why did Jesus want to provoke this rupture? In the beginning, people admired him, and perhaps he could have gained a certain consensus... But this is precisely the point: Jesus did not come to seek the consensus of men, but - as he will say at the end to Pilate - to 'bear witness to the truth' (Jn 18:37). The true prophet obeys no one but God and puts himself at the service of truth, ready to pay for it himself. It is true that Jesus is the prophet of love, but love has its truth. Indeed, love and truth are two names of the same reality, two names of God. In today's liturgy these words of St Paul also resonate: "Charity ... does not boast, is not puffed up with pride, is not disrespectful, does not seek its own interest, is not angry, does not take account of evil received, does not rejoice in injustice but rejoices in the truth" (1 Cor 13:4-6). Believing in God means renouncing one's prejudices and accepting the concrete face in which He revealed Himself: the man Jesus of Nazareth. And this way also leads to recognising and serving him in others.

In this, Mary's attitude is illuminating. Who more than she was familiar with the humanity of Jesus? But she was never scandalised by it as were the people of Nazareth. She kept the mystery in her heart and was able to welcome it again and again, on the path of faith, until the night of the Cross and the full light of the Resurrection. May Mary also help us to tread this path faithfully and joyfully.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 3 February 2013].

Jesus is annoying and generates suspicion in those who love outward schemes, because he proclaims only jubilee instead of harsh confrontation and vengeance. 

In the synagogue, her village is puzzled by this overly understanding love - just what we need.

The place of worship is where believers have been brought up backwards!

Their surly character is the unripe fruit of a hammering religiosity, which denies the right to express ideas and feelings.

The "synagogical" code has produced fake believers, conditioned by a disharmonious and split personality.

Even today and from an early age, this intimate laceration manifests itself in the over-controlling of openness to others.

Consequence: an accentuation of youthful uncertainty - under which who knows what broods - and a rigid adult character.

In short, religious hammering that does not make the leap of Faith blocks us, prevents us from understanding, and pollutes all of life.

Even in Jesus' time, archaic teaching exacerbated nationalism, the very perception of trauma or violation, and paradoxically, the very caged situations from which they wanted to escape.

Exclusive spirituality: it is empty - crude or sophisticated.

Selective thinking is the worst disease of worldviews - which are then always telling us how we should be.

Thus in concrete life, not a few believers prefer to have friends without conformist blindness or the same bonds of belonging.

On closer inspection, even the most devout secular realities manifest an accentuated and strange dichotomy of relationships - tribal and otherwise.

Pope Francis expressed it crisply:

"It is a scandal to have people who go to church, who are there every day and then live hating others and speaking ill of people: it is better to live as an atheist than to give a counter-witness to being a Christian".

The real world awakens and stimulates flexibility of standards, it does not inculcate some old-fashioned, hypnosis-like truism.

Today's global reality helps to blunt the edges of conventicle [which have their own regurgitations, in terms of seduction and sucking].

In the face of such beliefs and illusions, the Prophet marks distance; he works to spread awareness, not reassuring images - nor disembodied ideas.

'But critical heralds violently irritate the crowd of regulars, who suddenly turn from curiosity to vindictive indignation.

As in the small town, so - we read in a watermark - in the Holy City [Mount Zion] from which they immediately want to throw you down (Lk 4:29).

Wherever there is talk of the real person and eternal dreams: his, not others'.

In the hostility that surrounds them, the Lord's intimates openly challenge normalised beliefs, acquired from the environment and not reworked.

For them, it is not just the calculated analogy to a mean outline that counts. They see other goals and do not just want to 'get there'.

If they are overpowered, they leave behind them that trail of insight that will sooner or later make both harmful clansmen and useless opportunists reflect.

Thus, in Friends and Brothers it is the Risen One himself who escapes. And they resume their journey, crossing those who want to do away with them (v. 30) for reasons of self-interest or neighbourhood advantage.

At all times, witnesses make people think: they do not seek compliments and pleasant results, but they recover the opposite sides and accept others' happiness.

They know that Oneness must run its course: it will be wealth for all, and on this point they do not let themselves be inhibited by the nomenclature.

Though surrounded by the envious and deadly hatred of cunning idiots and established synagogues, they proclaim Love in Truth - neither burine hoaxes (approved as empty) nor ulterior motives (solid utility).

In fact, without milking and shearing the unwary, such missionaries give impetus to the courage and growth of others, to the autonomy of choices.

All this, favouring the coexistence of the invisible and despised; in an atmosphere of understanding and spontaneity.They love the luxuriance of life, so they discriminate between religion and Faith: they do not stand as repeaters of doctrines, prescriptions, customs.

Based on the Father's personal experience, the inspired faithful value different approaches, creating an unknown esteem.

They confront young sectarian monsters [the Pontiff would say], old marpions and their fences, with an open face, advocating new attitudes - different ways of relating to God.

Not to add proselytes and consider themselves indispensable.

Even though 'at home' (v. 24) they are inconvenient characters for the ratified mentality, the none-Prophets make Jesus' personalism survive, wrenching it from those who want it dormant and sequestered.

Like Him, at the risk of unpopularity and without begging for approval.

With the scars of what is gone, for a new Journey.

To internalise and live the message:

In the 'homeland' are you considered a local nobody, or a prophet? A ratified character, or uncomfortable? In the way, or unpopular?

Is your testimony transgressive or conformist? Does Jesus' personalism survive, wresting it from those who want it dormant and sequestered?

God wants faith, they want miracles: God for their own benefit

Last Sunday, the liturgy had proposed to us the episode in the synagogue of Nazareth, where Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah and at the end reveals that those words are fulfilled "today", in Him. Jesus presents Himself as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rested, the Holy Spirit who consecrated Him and sent Him to fulfil the mission of salvation on behalf of humanity. Today's Gospel (cf. Lk 4:21-30) is a continuation of that story and shows us the amazement of his fellow citizens at seeing that one of their countrymen, "the son of Joseph" (v. 22), claims to be the Christ, the Father's envoy.

Jesus, with his ability to penetrate minds and hearts, immediately understands what his countrymen think. They believe that, since He is one of them, He must prove this strange "claim" of His by performing miracles there, in Nazareth, as He did in the neighbouring countries (cf. v. 23). But Jesus does not want and cannot accept this logic, because it does not correspond to God's plan: God wants faith, they want miracles, signs; God wants to save everyone, and they want a Messiah for their own benefit. And to explain God's logic, Jesus brings the example of two great ancient prophets: Elijah and Elisha, whom God had sent to heal and save people who were not Jewish, from other peoples, but who had trusted his word.

Faced with this invitation to open their hearts to the gratuitousness and universality of salvation, the citizens of Nazareth rebel, and even assume an aggressive attitude, which degenerates to the point that "they got up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the edge of the mountain [...], to throw him down" (v. 29). The admiration of the first instant has turned into aggression, a rebellion against Him.

And this Gospel shows us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a rejection and a threat of death, paradoxically precisely from his fellow citizens. Jesus, in living the mission entrusted to him by the Father, knows well that he must face fatigue, rejection, persecution and defeat. A price that, yesterday as today, authentic prophecy is called upon to pay. The harsh rejection, however, does not discourage Jesus, nor does it stop the journey and fruitfulness of his prophetic action. He goes on his way (cf. v. 30), trusting in the Father's love.

Even today, the world needs to see in the Lord's disciples prophets, that is, people who are courageous and persevering in responding to the Christian vocation. People who follow the 'thrust' of the Holy Spirit, who sends them to announce hope and salvation to the poor and excluded; people who follow the logic of faith and not of miracles; people dedicated to the service of all, without privileges and exclusions. In a nutshell: people who are open to accepting the Father's will within themselves and are committed to faithfully witnessing it to others.

Let us pray to Mary Most Holy, that we may grow and walk in the same apostolic ardour for the Kingdom of God that animated Jesus' mission.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 3 February 2019].

Liberation from quietism and automatic mentality

(Lk 4:31-37)

In the third Gospel, the Lord's first signs are the quiet escape from death threats (waved by his people!) and the healing of the possessed.

In this way of narrating the story of Jesus, Lk indicates the priorities that his communities lived: first of all, it was necessary to suspend the intimate struggles, inculcated by the Judaizing tradition and its "knowing how to be in the world".

In the stubborn and conformist village of Nazareth, the Master fails to communicate his newness, and is forced to change residence.

He did not resign, indeed: Capernaum was at the crossroads of important roads, which facilitated contact and dissemination.Among people from all walks of life, the Son of God desired to create a consciousness that was highly critical of the homologised doctrines of religious leaders.

He did not mechanically quote the - modest - teachings of the authorities, but started from his own life experience and living relationship with the Father.

He did not seek support, neither for safe living nor for the proclamation - thus creating unclouded minds and an unusual thrill.

In this way, in souls he suspended the usual doubts of conscience, the usual battles inoculated by the customary-doctrinal-moral cloak, and his inner lacerations.

In a transparent and totally non-artificial way, Christ [in his] still escapes evil and struggles against the plagiarising, reductive forces of our personality.

In the mentality of automatisms without personal faith, at that time it seemed that one almost had to submit to the powers of external conviction.

All this to avoid being marginalised by the 'nation' [and by 'groups' governed by conformity].

This also applies to us.

The duty to participate in collective rituals - here the Sabbath in the synagogue - runs the risk of dampening the intimate nostalgia for "ourselves" that provides nourishment for vocational exceptionality.

Originality of the history of salvation we could become, without the ball and chain of certain rules of quiet living, at the minimum - rhythm of customary social moments and symbolic days [sometimes emptied of meaning].

(All in the scruffy, mechanical ways that we know by heart, and no longer want, because we feel they do not make us reach a higher level).

The Master in us still faces the power that reduces people to the condition of ease without originality: a grey and perpetual trance allergic to differences.

Apathy that produces swamps and anticipated camps, where no one protests, but neither does it astonish.

In the Gospel, the person who suddenly sparks sparks was always a quiet assembly-goer, who wearily dragged his spiritual life in small, colourless circles, lacking in breath and rhythm.

But the Word of the Lord has a real charge in it: the power of the bliss of living, of creating, of loving in truth - which does not hate eccentric characteristics.

Where such an Appeal comes in, all the demons you don't expect are unmasked and leap out of their lairs [previously simulated, agreed upon, artificially homologated].

Whoever encounters Christ is overthrown from the abulic seat, sitting there; he sees his certainties thrown to the wind

Revolt that allows hidden or repressed facets to play their part - even if they are not 'as they should be'.

In short, the Gospel invites us to embrace all that is within us, as it is, unabated; multiplying our energies - for within lurks the best of our Call to personal Mission.

In Christ, our multifaceted (albeit contradictory) faces can take the field together, no longer repressing the precious territories of soul, essence, character, of another persuasion - even a distant or unrepeatably singular one.

The habitué of the assemblies is indeed inconvenienced and questioned, but at least he does not remain dumbfounded as before: he makes a conspicuous advance from his slumbering, ritualistic existence - bent, repetitive, dull and fake.

He is freed face to face from all the propaganda and platitudes that previously kept him quiet, subjugated, on the leash of the 'authorities' and the conservative environment that repelled all enthusiasm.

The dirge of sacred place and time was a litany that all in all could have fit, but Jesus' critical proposal restores consciousness and freedom from inculcated territories, instilling esteem, capacity for thought and will to do.

Now no longer on the sidelines, but in the midst of the people (v.35).

From the weariness of purely cultic habituation, and even through a protest that breaks apathy, the divine Person and his Call awaken us. They force a life of saved, of new witness that seemed impossible.

Unceremoniously and to make us run free of the hypocrisies concealed within, the Lord also brings out all the rages, disagreements and alienations.

It is no longer enough to make up the numbers (lined up and covered), one must now choose.

The difference between common religiosity and Faith? The astonishment of a profound, personal, unexpected Happiness.

Indeed, away from habitual and mental burdens, we extinguish wars with ourselves and go hand in hand even with our faults - discovering their hidden fruitfulness.

To internalise and live the message:

Has the encounter with the living Jesus in the Church freed you from forms of alienation and returned you to yourself, or has it made you go back to asking for support, sacred confirmations and quiet - as if you were frequenting a relaxation zone?

Integral Trust: the emblematic Action, generating the undefiled

Jn 13:1-15 (.16-20)

Let us introduce the meaning of the Lord's washing of the feet, an emblematic gesture that the Synoptics evoke in the Breaking of Bread.

In ancient Israel, the patriarchal family, clan and community were the basis of social coexistence.

They guaranteed the transmission of the identity of the people, and provided protection for the afflicted.

Defending the clan was also a concrete way of confirming the First Covenant.

But at the time of Jesus, Galilee suffered both the segregation dictated by Herod Antipas' policy and the oppression of official religiosity.

The wimpy collaborationism of the ruler had accentuated the number of homeless and unemployed.

The political and economic conjuncture forced people to retreat into material and individual problems, or those of a small family.

At one time, the identity bond of clan and community guaranteed an internal character of a solidary nation, expressed in the defence and relief given to the less fortunate of the people.

Now, this fraternal bond was weakened, plastered over, almost contradicted - also because of the strict attitude of the religious authorities, fundamentalist and lovers of a saccharine purism, opposed to mixing with the less affluent classes.

The written and oral Law ended up being used not to favour the welcoming of the marginalised and needy, but to accentuate detachment and ghettoisation.

A situation that was leading the least protected sections of the population to collapse.

In short, the alliance-loving devotion between throne and altar - instead of strengthening the sense of community, was used to accentuate hierarchies; as a weapon that legitimised a whole mentality of exclusions (and confirmed the imperial logic of divide and rule).

Jesus, on the other hand, wants to return to the Father's Dream: the ineliminable one of fraternity, the only seal to salvation history.

According to a felicitous expression of Origen, the Eucharist is the wound in Christ's side that is always open; but Vatican II did not spend a single word on the multiple Eucharistic devotions.

In order for us to fully understand his Person, the Council fathers were well aware that Jesus did not leave a statue or a relic. He preferred to express himself in a gesture, which challenges us.

In the Jewish world, in the evening each family gathered around the table, and breaking bread was the most significant moment of their experience of conviviality - and memory of the handing over of self to others.

The one bread was divided and shared among all the family members - but even a poor hungry person could come to the door, which did not have to be locked.

Bread and wine, products that had assimilated the energies of heaven and earth, were recognised with spiritual sensitivity - gifts from the Creator for the life and joy of humanity.

In that culture, bread is basic food. But our life is only complete if there is also the element of celebration: there is wine.

Even today, bread is not cut with a knife, to respect its sacredness: only broken. It contains concrete existence.

That is why Jesus chose the banquet as a sign of his Person - life, word, risky business and new happiness, given in food.

At family dinners, bread and wine were not perceived in the same way as manna, that is, as raw, natural products. Nor was it nourishment to regain strength, and that's all.

In the wheat and grapes, all the varied contributions of the domestic hearth were also gathered.

Around the table, each man saw in the bread and wine the fruit of his labour: cleaning the soil, ploughing, sowing, sowing, reaping, pruning, harvesting and pressing.

The woman captured in the bread her labour: grinding, kneading, baking. Even minors could remember something of their own, because little boys would lend themselves (e.g. draw water).

Dinner was a celebration of harmony. The table was precisely a place where young people were educated in the perception of existing in unity, rather than in disinterest.

This was done with gratitude towards God's gifts and perception of one's own contribution, which had (really) reached its goal, in the spirit of synergy and singular commitment to communion.

Contributions, resources and skills agreed to put themselves in service, for the life of all.

In the Eucharistic gesture, Jesus says: new heavens and new earth do not correspond to the world in which each one hastens to reap for himself or his circle, in order to grab the maximum of resources.

His Kingdom? All invited and brothers in agreement, none master or ruler - destined to be in front or above [though quicker than the others] even in heaven.

Even the Apostles - called by Jesus with Himself but still remaining at a safe distance from Him (cf. e.g. Lk 9:10, 12) - are not the owners of the Bread, but those who are to give it to all (vv.13.16), to create abundance where there is none.

To animate the meetings on the theme of the Eucharist as a non-misleading icon, and to internalise how in the Catholic Church itself there has been a decisive evolution towards understanding the efficacy of the Sign, I use to compare two great works of art.

Raphael in the so-called Dispute of the Sacrament depicts a sacred and static world. Today we would say at a glance, almost plasticised.

An environment that seems all predictable and in any case characterised by a situated social, cultural and spiritual pattern; where everyone is placed according to origin, position, status, and rank.

Arcabas - a recently deceased French artist - paints a picture that seems devoid of exclusive, distinct and titled protagonists: as if cut above, or (better) focused on the simple gesture.

To put it eloquently: the garnish of lavish decorations or prominent roles is not about this life proposal!

In the contemporary painter's work, we grasp the sobriety of a Person and of a well-centred mission [which scratches, but makes one lose one's head far more than beautiful scripts].

For in the world of Love, the best is yet to come. In this way, we are relentlessly questioned.

Arcabas illustrates a simply laid table: a plate, certainly not from the best collection, a glass of wine with no frills; a tablecloth simply laid on the table and marked by its perfunctory folds, not even ironed, reminiscent of real everyday life.

And above all, the normal gesture of breaking bread, that of the step by step, with its crumbs that are neither fluffy nor white. To say: the Eucharistic Banquet is not for the hereafter - who knows when.

[For almost a thousand years, the Catholic Church celebrated with daily bread as the Orthodox Church still does, for example. As testimony, there are still very large dinner trays, today reduced to a saucer].

In short, here comes the 'Hour'... and the emblematic Action - in Jn, which does not formally recount the institution of the Eucharist.

Here is the meaning of breaking bread: what it entails to enter into co-existence, for the apostle overturns hierarchies and subverts the criteria of purity, uniformity, compactness, and glory.

In the Fourth Gospel, Christ proclaims only two Beatitudes:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, there is no greater servant than his lord, nor greater sent than he that sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them" (Jn 13:16-17).

And to Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (Jn 20:29b) - this, not because effort is a means to accumulate sorrows and merits, and so please God.

The two Beatitudes of Jn guarantee the tracks on which the believer finds his full realisation and the wonder of happiness: the practice of charity that recovers all the being dispersed, including others, in the adventure of Faith.

Before and during ritual meals, the pious of Israel performed ablutions with water, to celebrate the separation between the sacred and the profane, between the pure and the impure.

At the head of the table, hands were washed by a servant or the youngest of the guests.

With Jesus, tradition is shattered from within - to the amazed. 

For a Jew, washing others was something he had to refuse to do, even if enslaved, lest he dishonour the people. 

Instead, the Messiah prostrates himself and has the freedom to wash [not even his hands, but] his feet.

An absurd revelation of the Face of God, which crumbles countless mannerisms, hopes of artificial prestige; and acts of submission, grotesque acknowledgements - advanced by church princes.

Here is not only an invitation to serve one's neighbour... a gesture to imitate that proclaims the humble service character of the ministry.

It is also a sign of the purification of his own - like a new baptism that makes one immediately part of God's world.

This 'washing' is a figure of the Person and Mission of the Son on behalf of mankind, all of whom are now enabled to pass from this set-up to the Father's Kingdom.

And in the same way to pass the neighbour, the multitudes.

The Master unites a group of even unconvinced disciples to himself, but made pure - not because he aims to form a school distinct from others, or even one-sided.

He calls by Name and creates Assembly to introduce us into Love, into the passage from slavery to the freedom of the Free, which descends.

God does not identify people, nor does He superimpose His own thoughts on people's history and sensibilities.

By stooping, he crosses roles, club spirit, ideas themselves, and certificates. An initiative - this one - exemplary.

Indeed, in his Exodus, he traces the new path of the people, even of those who are against - and this baffles, it seems unacceptable. 

Peter is eager to command: he is not up to introducing himself into a logic that manifests even in community leaders a God who is a servant of men, independent of their origins, or their backgrounds.By lowering himself to the level of the slave who lays down his garments, the Lord wants to humanise us, recovering instead the opposites, rooted in a particular way and in each person.

He even admits contestation - highlighting it and healing it.

That is, unless one remains like Judas stubbornly attached to external seductions and false spiritual guides: to the clichés of social belonging-approval, and self-interest.

Finally, Jesus does not take off his apron, before putting his clothes back on: it is the only uniform that belongs to him.

That kind of dress stays with him: he wears it even in Paradise.

He does not play the part of the caretaker, to return to heaven to lord it over us. He does not condition anyone.

The Life of the Father pursues us on every path, to make us feel adequate: One-Body-Only with the Son, to whom he has delivered everything into his hands (v.3).

Total bloom for us too; indestructible, eminent, in itself devoid of occult deadly germs.

His Trust is passed on in salvation history; it is unfolded to the undecided and imperfect, his kinsmen in the Son.

Ready to lift us up to an existence that no longer extinguishes being - and us eager to make it flourish, instead of boycotting or borrowing it.

Adopted sons: not a diminution, but the distinguished recognition of an equality that does not jar.

In ancient times, when a ruler designated a successor to the throne, he not infrequently appointed as dignitary a valiant more trustworthy than his kinsman in the natural line (often scheming, spoilt, fed up with his own prosperity).

God does not force us together. By bending, it overrides the spirit of marginalisation, parties, characters; all salvation.

This is the 'service' of the disciples, to be performed with life and the proclamation of the good news: to make known that the Father is not the selective God of religion, but the unconditional lover of woman and man.

Love is communicated from peer to peer and has the same pace as life: it cannot be bridled by inherited opinions or fixed conventions, nor subjected to casuistic narratives.

Only the awareness of a freedom that remains will lead to gestures of clear-cut completeness.

Not for opportunist and individual advantage: for the sake of Joy in fullness of being and intensity of relationship.

In any external circumstance, only the esteem that the Father accords to each one leads the children and their stories towards acts of conviviality and inexplicable recoveries.

Jesus washing feet depicts the secret of the blissful life that expands the way of the I into that of the Thou: in being genuine and free even to descend, even to bend down to serve.

Without labyrinths of norms or lofty cries of principle; without compromising the most genuine spontaneity and slenderness - without yielding to mistrust of the imperfection of others.

Overriding the typical interdiction respectability, therefore without the usual rigmarole - so beloved of the owners, always distanced and apprehensive, on any front.

Herein arises frankness in the baptismal attitude... celebrating existence in all its forms, beyond boundaries; trusting in life, in its natural and opposite polarities.

Allowing for other developments and expansions. Opening one's eyes to the world - the cornerstone of new relationships, replacing one-sided customs, or external fashions.

Embracing a richer destiny; loving contradictions.

A ban on models and the exaggeration of 'capabilities'.

Rather, the search for solutions that trust, without interfering. By rediscovering its humanising nature.

Recognising diversity.

Approving, redeeming and evaluating 'pure' each particular path [the 'washed' feet of each].

To internalise and live the message:

How do you live your responsibility and personality in Christ according to vv.3-4?

After the Eucharist, do you do as Jesus did, or do you immediately lay down your apron?

Communion:

Root of being, dreaming energy that reinterprets history

Jn 13:16-20 (.21-38)

An 'envoy' is no more than the one who sends him (v.16). The new CEI translation specifies that Jesus does not elect Twelve Apostles as if they were leaders and phenomena destined to have fabulous positions.

His own are quite ordinary people, sent to proclaim; not directors provided with office, but with a humble charge: to be themselves and wash the feet of others. This is their fabric.

The ministerial Church is not that of characters with titles and roles, but of authentic service, not of manner: resigned and non-conformist.

We can only become a continuation of the Mystery that envelops the Person of Christ if we are aware that we are not dual photocopies, nor 'more' than others - let alone the Master.

In I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), Manzoni narrates that the marquis who succeeds Don Rodrigo ('a good man, not an original') serves the guests at Renzo and Lucia's wedding table.Then, however, he withdraws to dine aloof with Don Abbondio: 'he had as much humility as it took to put himself below those good people, but not to be their equal'.

It used to be done this way: social etiquette dictated it.

A mannered style, whereby, in order to please, one accepted to adapt to (extemporary) gestures of alms and benevolence, among very good people - obviously safeguarding the protagonism of positions.

But aligning ourselves with the models does not bring us out of the usual cages; on the contrary, it hides us in the illusion of a change that in reality is not taking place, because the bogus order remains, despite the altruism of appearances - worn for the sake of good intentions.

The portent to which we are called and sent is not to make room for convenient sentiments, but to move from our external summit to the level of others and to stand elbow to elbow, to give everyone the emotion of feeling adequate.

From service to Communion: a unique climate of energy [not always 'according to etiquette' but authentically ours and dreaming] that develops flourishes, triggering impossible recoveries.

From here, we read history anew.

Yet we wonder with what energies to implement it, if at times we ourselves feel incomplete, uncertain in operating; not up to the mark.

In the context of the washing of the feet, Jesus reminds us that the disciple should have no illusions: he will not have a splendid career, worldly recognition, or less persecution from the Master as a dowry.

According to an ancient mentality, to mistreat an ambassador or messenger was to offend those he represented; to accept him was to honour him.

Here we come to the root of the unveiling mission: welcoming the sent one honours Christ, and in him God himself (v.20).

The apostles are "sent" in this sense, like the Son by the Father. Within this flow, we become a revealing light, fully, without closures.

In short, one of the ways of washing one another's feet (v.14) is precisely to come and feel properly 'sent' - picturing Jesus, and God himself, passing through us.

It is the way of blessedness (v.17) - that of the living Lord - that is the core of the "outgoing Church": adding to beautiful and practical teachings the essential dimension.

Such is the plausible and amiable path, evangelising our Roots. Who does not ask for "resilience" in relationships, only from the "inferiors" of the world.

Salvation in a divine dimension, which takes on value; operated from within the conscience which finds esteem and face, and free ferment that opens hope, orienting.

The deep being of the Friend who has the freedom to come down is expressed in the action. He reveals himself to be the promoter of the unfortunate, not the subtle prevaricator.

Making each exodus, our vocational trait carries within it a precious treasure chest, the awareness of the intimate Source of the apostolate, and its precious concatenation that transforms the past into the future.

The resulting sense of completeness and radical meaning is effective. 

It is for those who discover, encounter, feel alive, their own missionary Source - and bear witness to it.

By simply and naturally expressing himself - without forcing or artificiality - he is at the same time for the brothers to be recognised.

In short, the service of the ministerial community is not in the dimension of servitude, but of a flow of primal energies, of fabric; wave upon genuine wave.

In all of this, development after development, we re-actualise the epiphany of the Logos in Christ, in the today of being people (shaky yet convinced, tenacious) bound by a fraternal figure of weight.

"I Am" of Ex 3:14 becomes - effortlessly - the communal and welcoming People of the servants filled with self-given dignity.

The eternal element of the Word is preserved and developed by his envoys and by the ministerial, "apostolic" church: both in its original and founding character, and in its connection to the history of each individual.

To internalise and live the message:

What does it mean for you to move from serving to communion? Do you consider this an annoying excess?

Is it enough for you to make others feel good at times, as a protagonist and in a complacent manner, or do you strive to make them feel adequate?

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

St John begins his account of how Jesus washed his disciples' feet with an especially solemn, almost liturgical language. "Before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn 13: 1). Jesus' "hour", to which all his work had been directed since the outset, had come. John used two words to describe what constitutes the content of this hour: passage (metabainein, metabasis) and agape - love. The two words are mutually explanatory; they both describe the Pasch of Jesus: the Cross and the Resurrection, the Crucifixion as an uplifting, a "passage" to God's glory, a "passing" from the world to the Father. It is not as though after paying the world a brief visit, Jesus now simply departs and returns to the Father. The passage is a transformation. He brings with him his flesh, his being as a man. On the Cross, in giving himself, he is as it were fused and transformed into a new way of being, in which he is now always with the Father and contemporaneously with humankind. He transforms the Cross, the act of killing, into an act of giving, of love to the end. With this expression "to the end", John anticipates Jesus' last words on the Cross: everything has been accomplished, "It is finished" (19: 30). Through Jesus' love the Cross becomes metabasis, a transformation from being human into being a sharer in God's glory. He involves us all in this transformation, drawing us into the transforming power of his love to the point that, in our being with him, our life becomes a "passage", a transformation. Thus, we receive redemption, becoming sharers in eternal love, a condition for which we strive throughout our life.

This essential process of Jesus' hour is portrayed in the washing of the feet in a sort of prophetic and symbolic act. In it, Jesus highlights with a concrete gesture precisely what the great Christological hymn in the Letter to the Philippians describes as the content of Christ's mystery. Jesus lays down the clothes of his glory, he wraps around his waist the towel of humanity and makes himself a servant. He washes the disciples' dirty feet and thus gives them access to the divine banquet to which he invites them. The devotional and external purifications purify man ritually but leave him as he is replaced by a new bathing: Jesus purifies us through his Word and his Love, through the gift of himself. "You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you", he was to say to his disciples in the discourse on the vine (Jn 15: 3). Over and over again he washes us with his Word. Yes, if we accept Jesus' words in an attitude of meditation, prayer and faith, they develop in us their purifying power. Day after today we are as it were covered by many forms of dirt, empty words, prejudices, reduced and altered wisdom; a multi-facetted semi-falsity or falsity constantly infiltrates deep within us. All this clouds and contaminates our souls, threatens us with an incapacity for truth and the good. If we receive Jesus' words with an attentive heart they prove to be truly cleansing, purifications of the soul, of the inner man. The Gospel of the washing of the feet invites us to this, to allow ourselves to be washed anew by this pure water, to allow ourselves to be made capable of convivial communion with God and with our brothers and sisters. However, when Jesus was pierced by the soldier's spear, it was not only water that flowed from his side but also blood (Jn 19: 34; cf. I Jn 5: 6-8). Jesus has not only spoken; he has not left us only words. He gives us himself. He washes us with the sacred power of his Blood, that is, with his gift of himself "to the end", to the Cross. His word is more than mere speech; it is flesh and blood "for the life of the world" (Jn 6: 51). In the holy sacraments, the Lord kneels ever anew at our feet and purifies us. Let us pray to him that we may be ever more profoundly penetrated by the sacred cleansing of his love and thereby truly purified!

If we listen attentively to the Gospel, we can discern two different dimensions in the event of the washing of the feet. The cleansing that Jesus offers his disciples is first and foremost simply his action - the gift of purity, of the "capacity for God" that is offered to them. But the gift then becomes a model, the duty to do the same for one another. The Fathers have described these two aspects of the washing of the feet with the words sacramentum and exemplum. Sacramentum in this context does not mean one of the seven sacraments but the mystery of Christ in its entirety, from the Incarnation to the Cross and the Resurrection: all of this becomes the healing and sanctifying power, the transforming force for men and women, it becomes our metabasis, our transformation into a new form of being, into openness for God and communion with him. But this new being which, without our merit, he simply gives to us must then be transformed within us into the dynamic of a new life. The gift and example overall, which we find in the passage on the washing of the feet, is a characteristic of the nature of Christianity in general. Christianity is not a type of moralism, simply a system of ethics. It does not originate in our action, our moral capacity. Christianity is first and foremost a gift: God gives himself to us - he does not give something, but himself. And this does not only happen at the beginning, at the moment of our conversion. He constantly remains the One who gives. He continually offers us his gifts. He always precedes us. This is why the central act of Christian being is the Eucharist: gratitude for having been gratified, joy for the new life that he gives us.

Yet with this, we do not remain passive recipients of divine goodness. God gratifies us as personal, living partners. Love given is the dynamic of "loving together", it wants to be new life in us starting from God. Thus, we understand the words which, at the end of the washing of the feet, Jesus addresses to his disciples and to us all: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (Jn 13: 34). The "new commandment" does not consist in a new and difficult norm that did not exist until then. The new thing is the gift that introduces us into Christ's mentality. If we consider this, we perceive how far our lives often are from this newness of the New Testament and how little we give humanity the example of loving in communion with his love. Thus, we remain indebted to the proof of credibility of the Christian truth which is revealed in love. For this very reason we want to pray to the Lord increasingly to make us, through his purification, mature persons of the new commandment.

In the Gospel of the washing of the feet, Jesus' conversation with Peter presents to us yet another detail of the praxis of Christian life to which we would like finally to turn our attention. At first, Peter did not want to let the Lord wash his feet: this reversal of order, that is, that the master - Jesus - should wash feet, that the master should carry out the slave's service, contrasted starkly with his reverential respect for Jesus, with his concept of the relationship between the teacher and the disciple. "You shall never wash my feet", he said to Jesus with his usual impetuosity (Jn 13: 8). His concept of the Messiah involved an image of majesty, of divine grandeur. He had to learn repeatedly that God's greatness is different from our idea of greatness; that it consists precisely in stooping low, in the humility of service, in the radicalism of love even to total self-emptying.
And we too must learn it anew because we systematically desire a God of success and not of the Passion; because we are unable to realize that the Pastor comes as a Lamb that gives itself and thus leads us to the right pasture.

When the Lord tells Peter that without the washing of the feet he would not be able to have any part in him, Peter immediately asks impetuously that his head and hands be washed. This is followed by Jesus' mysterious saying: "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet" (Jn 13: 10). Jesus was alluding to a cleansing with which the disciples had already complied; for their participation in the banquet, only the washing of their feet was now required. But of course this conceals a more profound meaning. What was Jesus alluding to? We do not know for certain. In any case, let us bear in mind that the washing of the feet, in accordance with the meaning of the whole chapter, does not point to any single specific sacrament but the sacramentum Christi in its entirety - his service of salvation, his descent even to the Cross, his love to the end that purifies us and makes us capable of God. Yet here, with the distinction between bathing and the washing of the feet, an allusion to life in the community of the disciples also becomes perceptible, an allusion to the life of the Church. It then seems clear that the bathing that purifies us once and for all and must not be repeated is Baptism - being immersed in the death and Resurrection of Christ, a fact that profoundly changes our life, giving us as it were a new identity that lasts, if we do not reject it as Judas did. However, even in the permanence of this new identity, given by Baptism, for convivial communion with Jesus we need the "washing of the feet". What does this involve? It seems to me that the First Letter of St John gives us the key to understanding it. In it we read: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1: 8ff.). We are in need of the "washing of the feet", the cleansing of our daily sins, and for this reason we need to confess our sins as St John spoke of in this Letter. We have to recognize that we sin, even in our new identity as baptized persons. We need confession in the form it has taken in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In it the Lord washes our dirty feet ever anew and we can be seated at table with him.

But in this way the word with which the Lord extends the sacramentum, making it the exemplum, a gift, a service for one's brother, also acquires new meaning: "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet" (Jn 13: 14). We must wash one another's feet in the mutual daily service of love. But we must also wash one another's feet in the sense that we must forgive one another ever anew. The debt for which the Lord has pardoned us is always infinitely greater than all the debts that others can owe us (cf. Mt 18: 21-35). Holy Thursday exhorts us to this: not to allow resentment toward others to become a poison in the depths of the soul. It urges us to purify our memory constantly, forgiving one another whole-heartedly, washing one another's feet, to be able to go to God's banquet together.

Holy Thursday is a day of gratitude and joy for the great gift of love to the end that the Lord has made to us. Let us pray to the Lord at this hour, so that gratitude and joy may become in us the power to love together with his love. Amen.

[Pope Benedict, Homily in Coena Domini 20 March 2008]

1. “I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15).

With these words, Christ declares the prophetic meaning of the Passover Meal which he is about to celebrate with the disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

In the First Reading from the Book of Exodus, the liturgy shows how the Passover of the Old Covenant provides the context for the Passover of Jesus. For the Israelites, the Passover was a remembrance of the meal eaten by their forefathers at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the liberation from slavery. The sacred text prescribed that some of the lamb’s blood should be placed on the doorposts and the lintel of the houses. And it went on to stipulate how the lamb was to be eaten: “your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste... For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down all the first-born... The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass you by, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you” (Ex 12:11-13).

The blood of the lamb won for the sons and daughters of Israel liberation from the slavery of Egypt, under the leadership of Moses. The remembrance of so extraordinary an event became a festive occasion for the people, who thanked the Lord for freedom regained, a divine gift and an enduringly relevant human task: “This day will be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord” (Ex 12:14). It is the Passover of the Lord! The Passover of the Old Covenant!

2. “I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). In the Upper Room, Christ ate the Passover Meal with his disciples in obedience to the Old Covenant prescriptions, but he gave the rite new substance. We have heard how Saint Paul explains it in the Second Reading, taken from the First Letter to the Corinthians. This text, which is thought to be the oldest account of the Lord’s Supper, recalls that Jesus, “on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ?This is my body which is [given] for you. Do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way also the cup at the end of the meal, saying, ?This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:23-26).

These are solemn words which hand on for all time the memorial of the institution of the Eucharist. Each year, on this day, we remember them as we return spiritually to the Upper Room. This evening I re-evoke them with particular emotion, because fresh in my mind and heart is the image of the Upper Room, where I had the joy of celebrating the Eucharist during my recent Jubilee pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This emotion is still stronger, because this year is the Year of the Jubilee of the two thousandth anniversary of the Incarnation. Seen in this light, our celebration this evening takes on an especially profound meaning. In the Upper Room, Jesus filled the old traditions with new meaning and foreshadowed the events of the following day, when his Body, the spotless body of the Lamb of God, was to be sacrificed and his Blood poured out for the world’s redemption. The Word took flesh precisely with this event in view, looking to the Passover of Christ, the Passover of the New Covenant!

3. “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). The Apostle urges us to make constant memorial of this mystery. At the same time, he invites us to live each day our mission as witnesses and heralds of the love of the Crucified Lord, as we await his return in glory.

But how are we to make memorial of this saving event? How are we to live as we await Christ’s return? Before instituting the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, Christ bent down and knelt, as a slave would do, to wash the disciples’ feet in the Upper Room. We watch him as he accomplishes this gesture, which in the Hebrew culture was the task of servants and the humblest persons in the household. Peter at first refuses, but the Master convinces him, and he too in the end, together with the other disciples, allows his feet to be washed. Immediately afterwards, however, clothed once more and seated at table, Jesus explains the meaning of his gesture: “You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:12-14). These are words which link the Eucharistic mystery to the service of love, and may therefore be seen as a preparation for the institution of the ministerial priesthood.

In instituting the Eucharist, Jesus gives the Apostles a share as ministers in his priesthood, the priesthood of the new and eternal Covenant. In this Covenant, he and he alone is always and everywhere the source and the minister of the Eucharist. The Apostles in turn become ministers of this exalted mystery of faith, destined to endure until the end of the world. At the same time they become servants of all those who will share in so great a gift and mystery.

The Eucharist, the supreme Sacrament of the Church, is joined to the ministerial priesthood, which also comes to birth in the Upper Room , as the gift of the great love of the One who, knowing “that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father [and] having loved his own who were in the world. . . loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1).

The Eucharist, the priesthood and the new commandment of love! This is the living memorial which we have before our eyes on Holy Thursday.

“Do this in memory of me”: this is the Passover of the Church! This is our Passover!

[Pope John Paul II, Homily in Coena Domini 20 April 2000]

This is touching. Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Peter did not understand anything, he refused. But Jesus explained. Jesus - God - did this! And He Himself explains to the disciples: 'Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me the Master and the Lord, and rightly so, for I am. If therefore I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you too must wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done' (Jn 13:12-15). It is the example of the Lord: He is the most important and washes the feet, because among us the one who is the highest must be at the service of others. And that's a symbol, that's a sign, isn't it? Washing feet is: 'I am at your service'. And we too, among ourselves, it is not that we must wash each other's feet every day, but what does this mean? That we must help one another. Sometimes I have been angry with one, with another ... but ... let it be, let it be, and if he asks you for a favour, do it. To help one another: this is what Jesus teaches us and this is what I do, and I do it from my heart, because it is my duty. As a priest and as a bishop I must be at your service. But it is a duty that comes from my heart: I love it. I love this and I love doing it because the Lord has taught me so. But you too, help us: always help us. Each other. And so, by helping each other, we will do each other good. Now we are going to do this ceremony of washing our feet and we think, each of us think: "Am I really willing, am I willing to serve, to help the other?" Let us only think this. And we think that this sign is a caress from Jesus, which Jesus does, because Jesus came precisely for this: to serve, to help us.

QUESTION FROM A YOUNG MAN:

Thank you Father for coming today. But I want to know one thing: why did you come here today to Casal del Marmo? Enough, just that.

ANSWER FROM THE POPE:

It's a feeling that came from the heart; I felt that. Where are those who will perhaps help me more to be humble, to be a servant as a bishop must be. And I thought, I asked: "Where are those who would like a visit?" And they told me 'Casal del Marmo, maybe'. And when they told me that, I came here. But from the heart came that alone. The things of the heart have no explanation, they only come. Thank you, eh!

FINAL SALUTES

Now I take my leave. Thank you so much for your welcome. Pray for me and do not let hope be stolen from you. Always ahead! Thank you very much!

[Pope Francis, homily during the Lord's Supper, "Casal del Marmo" Penal Institute for Minors in Rome, 28 March 2013]

(Mt 26:14-25)

Mt Mk Lk situate the institution of the Eucharist within the Jewish Passover supper. A theological re-elaboration to affirm (in the Faith) the meaning of the authentic Liberation Easter in Christ.

Compared to the Synoptics, the fourth Gospel is more in keeping with the sense of the Broken Bread: source of Life for all.

Jn places the death of the Lord at the moment in which the priests slaughtered the lambs [destined for the Passover] on the esplanade of the Temple.

The Face of Christ is that of the betrayed man.

But He lets it happen, because friends belong together - and knows: the inviolability of the loved one may not persist, even out of greed. Even at the expense of who first welcomed us.

All this happens with a sense of peaceful loss - not as a result of preordained plan, but so that the disciples reflect on their own situation.

It’s as if [to activate us] through the doubt about Judas and the whole group around, the Lord was still silently saying - precisely to us, but without moralizing: «Where are you?».

Because of the persecutions, some faithful of Mt community had allowed themselves to be intimidated and had abandoned their brothers of faith.

What attitude to adopt towards them?

The scandalous story of the first disciples’ failure opens incessant glimmers to the all times’ assemblies: the logic of the Kingdom is not affected by anything.

Wide-open doors even for those who deny and flee the Master.

Religious way without the Faith’s leap instills in sensitive people a progressive and marked sense of unworthiness: it imposes an unnerving waiting, of pressing perfections.

What counts is the splendid ability and attitude: how much person does for God.

But divine Love is not subject to conditions. Therefore, in the genuine and more reliable path, the surprise is first of all worth it: what the Lord creates for us.

He’s the Coming One, and the Subject who operates, disposes, guides - the One who reweaves again the plot. And with unexpected setbacks or leaps, He snatches us away from the insufficiency obsession.

Without this more than wise Friendship, one gives in and it can happen to sell Christ in exchange for the convictions of others, for futile junk; trivial profits, shoddy happinesses.

Jesus continues to dip the morsel in his Blood and hand it to us.

Little by little we’ll learn to stand up for his values, so that he lives through us as Bread broken and distributed.

Little by little we’ll even manage not to fall silent and not run away from the gift of life, by transmuting ourselves into humanizing Food.

The only character who instead ruins and self-destructs himself (Mt 27,5) is the one who is fully compromised with external seductions, and false spiritual guides.

To internalize and live the message:

If asked about what characterizes, do you undertake to flaunt the others’ beliefs and external or already traced out targets? Or do you unravel the freedom to be and become yourself in Christ?

[Holy Week Wednesday, April 16, 2025]