Today we have an impression of oblivion, of the Lord.

The pit seems to be able to hide and silence Him, so much so that there is no need to contest him - it would be enough to neglect or pity him.

Instead, we want to meditate again on the revolution of Christ and his new Light, to recognize it as ours, assimilate and live it - right from the roots of being and on our journey.

God's Silence is part of Revelation: Glory and Life which correspond to us; in a democratic, multifaceted, not one-sided way.

Silence that respects our ‘flower’.

Thus, amidst the ups and downs of our lives as well, here is the laying and the mysterious plotting of ‘seeds’ - a whole series of alternatives:

A different Face of God, creator and redeemer of our intelligence and freedom; educator never sullen - nor dominator ready to unleash reprisals.

Not sovereign who governs by enacting laws, but Parent who transmits his own Life.

We do not meet Him by rising and forcing, for it is He who ceaselessly proposes, reveales Himself, and Comes.

He does not stand “at the head” and you at the back; he does not place himself above while you remain below.

It does not put itself “in front” so that someone is destined to fall behind [with the strongest, quickest and most organised ones always close, with no possibility of turnover and replacement].

An activity of denunciation of false religion: that of repetitive fulfilments - and of fixed or too sophisticated, disembodied ideas - beneath a cloak of plagiarism, fear, intimidation.

The Lord is righteous, for He understands us. Let's banish empty, futile, dissipative manners.

Whoever finds himself socially constrained is never himself and cannot love, as he is conditioned; overwhelmed one by comparisons and external needs.

A new authenticity of woman and man, no longer identified in roles and characters to be played and compared, but autonomous and realized by a personal Call.

Not attracted ones by the combination of culture-devotion-power-interest, but fascinated by the Wisdom that dwells in every slight and small Uniqueness.

So free and unambitious, they can willingly stoop to the less fortunate. Without intimate dissociation.

A new face of society, one that is neither competitive nor the prerogative of the cunning, interest groups, or circles, but characterised by the exchange of ‘gifts’.

Conviviality of the differences that accentuates and lets life flourish, of each and every one.

In short, we are not a typology of eternal failures.

The Father  wants people who travel towards themselves, and dreams a humanizing Family.

Lovable, because He does not absorb our energies, but rather transmits them.

Holy Saturday, Burial of the Lord [April 4, 2026]

FIRST MEDITATION

With increasing insistence one hears in our time about the death of God. For the first time, in Jean Paul, it is only a nightmarish dream: the dead Jesus announces to the dead, from the roof of the world, that on his journey into the afterlife he has found nothing, neither heaven nor merciful God, but only infinite nothingness, the silence of the gaping void. It is still a horrible dream that is put aside, groaning in awakening, like a dream, even though one will never be able to erase the anguish suffered, which was always lurking, gloomy, in the depths of the soul. A century later, in Nietzsche, it is a deadly seriousness that expresses itself in a shrill cry of terror: 'God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" Fifty years later, it is spoken of with academic detachment and preparations are made for a 'theology after the death of God', we look around to see how we can continue, and we encourage people to prepare to take God's place. The terrible mystery of Holy Saturday, its abyss of silence, has thus acquired an overwhelming reality in our time. For this is Holy Saturday: the day of God's concealment, the day of that unprecedented paradox that we express in the Creed with the words 'descended into hell', descended into the mystery of death. On Good Friday we could still look upon the pierced. Holy Saturday is empty, the heavy stone of the new tomb covers the deceased, all is past, faith seems to be definitively unmasked as fanaticism. No God saved this Jesus posing as his Son. One can be reassured: the cautious who had previously been a little hesitant in their hearts as to whether perhaps it might be different, were instead right.

Holy Saturday: day of God's burial; is not this in a striking way our day? Does not our century begin to be one big Holy Saturday, the day of God's absence, in which even the disciples have a chilling emptiness in their hearts that grows wider and wider, and therefore prepare themselves full of shame and anguish to return home and set off gloomy and broken in their despair towards Emmaus, not realising at all that he who was believed dead is in their midst?

God is dead and we have killed him: did we really realise that this phrase is taken almost literally by Christian tradition and that we often repeated something similar in our viae crucis without realising the tremendous gravity of what we were saying? We have killed him, enclosing him in the stale shell of habitual thoughts, exiling him in a form of piety without the content of reality and lost in the round of catchphrases or archaeological preciosities; we have killed him through the ambiguity of our lives, which has spread a veil of darkness over him as well: for what could have made God more problematic in this world if not the problematic nature of his believers' faith and love?

The divine darkness of this day, of this century that is increasingly becoming a Holy Saturday, speaks to our conscience. We too have to deal with it. But in spite of everything it has something consoling about it. The death of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time an expression of his radical solidarity with us. The darkest mystery of faith is at the same time the clearest sign of a hope that has no boundaries. And one more thing: only through the failure of Good Friday, only through the silence of death on Holy Saturday, could the disciples be brought to an understanding of what Jesus really was and what his message really meant. God had to die for them so that he could truly live in them. The image they had formed of God, in which they had tried to force him, had to be destroyed so that through the rubble of the ruined house they could see heaven, he himself, who always remains the infinitely greater. We need God's silence in order to experience anew the abyss of his greatness and the abyss of our nothingness that would open up if he were not there.

There is a scene in the Gospel that anticipates in an extraordinary way the silence of Holy Saturday and thus appears once again as the portrait of our historical moment. Christ sleeps in a boat that, battered by the storm, is about to sink. The prophet Elijah had once mocked the priests of Baal, who in vain cried out for their god to let fire descend on the sacrifice, urging them to cry out louder, just in case their god was asleep. But is God not really asleep? Does not the prophet's mockery ultimately also touch the believers of the God of Israel who travel with him in a sinking boat? God is sleeping while his things are about to sink, is this not the experience of our life? Does not the Church, the faith, resemble a small boat about to sink, struggling futilely against the waves and the wind, while God is absent? The disciples cry out in extreme despair and shake the Lord to wake him up, but he is astonished and rebukes their little faith. Is it any different for us? When the storm has passed, we will realise how much our little faith was laden with foolishness. And yet, O Lord, we cannot help but shake you, God who is silent and asleep, and cry out to you: wake up, do you not see that we are sinking? Awaken us, do not let the darkness of Holy Saturday last for ever, let a ray of Easter fall on our days too, accompany us as we set out in despair towards Emmaus so that our hearts may light up at your nearness. Thou who hast led in hidden ways the ways of Israel to be at last a man with men, do not leave us in the dark, do not let thy word be lost in the great waste of words of these times. Lord, give us your help, for without you we will sink.

Amen.

SECOND MEDITATION

God's hiding in this world constitutes the true mystery of Holy Saturday, a mystery already hinted at in the enigmatic words that Jesus "descended into hell". At the same time, the experience of our time has offered us a completely new approach to Holy Saturday, for the concealment of God in the world that belongs to him and that should with a thousand tongues proclaim his name, the experience of the powerlessness of God who is nevertheless the Almighty - this is the experience and misery of our time.

But even if Holy Saturday in this way has come closer to us, even if we understand the God of Holy Saturday more than the powerful manifestation of God amid thunder and lightning, of which the Old Testament speaks, the question of knowing what is really meant when it is said mysteriously that Jesus "descended into hell" remains unsolved. Let us say it with all clarity: no one can really explain it. Nor does it become any clearer by saying that here hell is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word shêol, which simply means the whole realm of the dead, and thus the formula would originally only mean that Jesus descended into the depths of death, really died and participated in the abyss of our destiny of death. For the question then arises: what really is death and what actually happens when we descend into the depths of death? We must pay attention here to the fact that death is no longer the same thing after Christ has undergone it, after he has accepted and penetrated it, just as life, the human being, are no longer the same thing after in Christ human nature was able to come into contact, and indeed did come into contact, with God's own being. Before, death was only death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit with different depths, something like 'hell', the nocturnal side of existence, impenetrable darkness. Now, however, death is also life, and when we cross the glacial solitude of death's threshold, we always meet again with the One who is life, who wanted to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal loneliness of his anguish in the Garden of Olives and his cry on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", became a sharer in our solitudes.

If a child were to venture alone into the dark night through a forest, he would be afraid even if he were shown hundreds of times that there is no danger. He is not afraid of something definite, to which a name can be given, but in the darkness he experiences insecurity, the orphan condition, the sinister character of existence itself. Only a human voice could console him; only the hand of a loved one could drive away the anguish like a bad dream. There is an anguish - the real anguish, lurking in the depths of our loneliness - that cannot be overcome through reason, but only through the presence of a person who loves us. For this anguish has no object to which we can give a name, but is only the terrible expression of our ultimate loneliness. Who has not felt the frightening sensation of this condition of abandonment? Who would not feel the holy and consoling miracle that a word of affection arouses in these circumstances? Where, however, there is such loneliness that can no longer be reached by the transforming word of love, then we speak of hell. And we know that not a few men of our time, apparently so optimistic, are of the opinion that every encounter remains on the surface, that no man has access to the ultimate and true depth of the other and that therefore in the ultimate depth of every existence lies despair, indeed hell. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this poetically in one of his dramas and at the same time expounded the core of his doctrine on man. One thing is certain: there is a night in whose dark abandonment no word of comfort penetrates, a door that we must pass through in absolute solitude: the door of death. All the anguish of this world is ultimately the anguish caused by this loneliness. That is why in the Old Testament the term for the realm of the dead was identical to the term for hell: shêol. Death in fact is absolute solitude. But that solitude that can no longer be illuminated by love, that is so deep that love can no longer access it, is hell.

"Descended into hell": this Holy Saturday confession means that Christ has passed through the door of solitude, that he has descended into the unreachable and insuperable depths of our condition of loneliness. This means, however, that even in the extreme night in which no words penetrate, in which we are all like children cast out, weeping, there is a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes us and leads us. Man's insuperable loneliness was overcome from the moment he found himself in it. Hell has been conquered from the moment that love has also entered the region of death and the no-man's-land of solitude has been inhabited by him. In its depths man does not live by bread, but in the authenticity of his being he lives by the fact that he is loved and allowed to love. From the moment when the presence of love is given in the space of death, then life penetrates death: to your faithful, O Lord, life is not taken away, but transformed - the Church prays in the funeral liturgy.

No one can ultimately measure the extent of these words: 'descended into hell'. But if we are once given to approach the hour of our ultimate solitude, we will be allowed to understand something of the great clarity of this dark mystery. In the certain hope that in that hour of extreme loneliness we will not be alone, we can already now presage something of what is to come. And in the midst of our protest against the darkness of God's death we begin to become grateful for the light that comes to us from this very darkness.

THIRD MEDITATION

In the Roman breviary, the liturgy of the sacred triduum is structured with special care; the Church in its prayer wants, so to speak, to transfer us into the reality of the Lord's passion and, beyond words, into the spiritual centre of what happened. If one were to attempt to mark the prayerful liturgy of Holy Saturday in a few lines, then one would have to speak above all of the effect of profound peace that transpires from it. Christ has penetrated into concealment (Verborgenheit), but at the same time, in the very heart of impenetrable darkness, he has penetrated into security (Geborgenheit), indeed he has become the ultimate security. By now the psalmist's bold word has become true: and even if I wanted to hide in hell, you are there too. And the more one goes through this liturgy, the more one sees shining in it, like a morning dawn, the first lights of Easter. If Good Friday places before our eyes the disfigured figure of the pierced man, the liturgy of Holy Saturday draws rather on the image of the cross dear to the ancient Church: the cross surrounded by rays of light, a sign, in the same way, of death and resurrection.

Holy Saturday thus reminds us of an aspect of Christian piety that has perhaps been lost in the course of time. When we look at the cross in prayer, we often see in it only a sign of the Lord's historical passion on Golgotha. The origin of the devotion to the cross, however, is different: Christians prayed to the East to express their hope that Christ, the true sun, would rise over history, to express therefore their faith in the return of the Lord. The cross is at first closely linked with this orientation of prayer, it is represented as a banner, so to speak, that the king will raise in his coming; in the image of the cross, the advanced point of the procession has already arrived in the midst of those who pray. For early Christianity, the cross is thus above all a sign of hope. It implies not so much a reference to the Lord past, as to the Lord who is to come. Certainly it was impossible to escape the intrinsic necessity that, with the passage of time, our gaze should also turn to the event that took place: against every flight into the spiritual, against every misrecognition of the incarnation of God, it was necessary to defend the unimaginable prodigality of God's love who, out of love for the wretched human creature, became a man himself, and what a man! It was necessary to defend the holy foolishness of God's love, who chose not to utter a word of power, but to tread the path of powerlessness in order to pillory our dream of power and overcome it from within.

But then have we not forgotten a little too much about the connection between cross and hope, the unity between the East and the direction of the cross, between past and future that exists in Christianity? The spirit of hope that hovers over the prayers of Holy Saturday should once again penetrate our entire being as Christians. Christianity is not only a religion of the past, but, to no lesser extent, of the future; its faith is at the same time hope, since Christ is not only the dead and the risen, but also the one who is to come.

O Lord, enlighten our souls with this mystery of hope so that we may recognise the light that is radiated by your cross, grant us that as Christians we may go forward into the future, towards the day of your coming.

Amen.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of death Thou hast made light; in the abyss of deepest loneliness dwells now forever the mighty protection of Thy love; in the midst of Thy hiddenness we can now sing the hallelujah of the saved. Grant us the humble simplicity of faith, which does not allow itself to be misled when Thou callest us in the hours of darkness, of abandonment, when everything seems to appear problematic; grant us, in this time in which a mortal struggle is being fought around Thee, sufficient light so that we may not lose Thee; sufficient light so that we may give it to those who need it even more. Let the mystery of Thy paschal joy, as the dawn of the morning, shine in our days; grant that we may be truly paschal men in the midst of the Holy Saturday of history. Grant that through the bright and dark days of this time we may always with glad hearts find ourselves on the way to Thy future glory.

Amen.

[Pope Benedict, excerpt from "The Sabbath of History"; https://www.sabinopaciolla.com/benedetto-xvi-il-mistero-terribile-del-sabato-santo/]

Do you seek Jesus the Crucified? (Mt 28:5).

This is the question the women will hear when, "at dawn on the first day of the week" (Mt 28:1), they come to the tomb.

Crucified!

Before the Sabbath he was condemned to death and expired on the cross crying: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46).

So they laid Jesus in a tomb, in which no one had yet been laid, in a tomb lent by a friend, and they went away. They all departed, in haste, to fulfil the rule of the religious Law. For they were to begin the feast, the Passover of the Jews, the memory of the exodus from the slavery of Egypt: the night before the Sabbath.

Then the Easter Sabbath passed and the second night began.

2. And behold, we have all come to this temple, as have so many of our brothers and sisters in the faith to the various temples throughout the globe, that holy night may descend upon our souls and hearts: the night after the Sabbath.

You are here, sons and daughters of the Church that is in Rome, sons and daughters of the Church that is spread across countries and continents, guests and pilgrims. Together we experienced Good Friday: the Stations of the Cross among the remains of the Colosseum - and the adoration of the Cross until the moment when a large stone was rolled over the door of the tomb - and a seal was put on it.

Why have you come now?

Do you seek Jesus Crucified?

Yes. We seek Jesus Crucified. We look for him on this night after the Sabbath, which preceded the arrival of the women at the tomb, when they with great astonishment saw and heard: "He is not here..." (Mt 28:6).

We have therefore come early, already late in the evening, to keep vigil at his tomb. To celebrate the Easter Vigil.

And we proclaim our praise on this wonderful night, pronouncing with the deacon's lips the "Exsultet" of the vigil. And we listen to the sacred readings, which compare this one night to the day of Creation and especially to the night of the exodus, during which the blood of the lamb saved the first-born sons of Israel from death and brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And then in the moment of renewed threat the Lord led them out to dry in the midst of the sea.

Let us therefore keep vigil on this unique night at the sealed tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, knowing that all that has been foretold by the Word of God throughout the generations will be fulfilled on this night, and that the work of man's redemption will reach its zenith on this night.

Let us therefore keep vigil, and though the night is deep, and the tomb sealed, let us confess that the Light has already been kindled in it, and it walks through the darkness of the night and the darkness of death. It is the light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

3. We have come to immerse ourselves in his death; both we who long ago received the Baptism that immerses in Christ, and also those who will receive Baptism on this night. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith; hitherto they were catechumens, and this night we can welcome them into the community of the Church of Christ, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith and in the community of the Church, and they come from different countries and continents: Korea, Japan, Italy, Nigeria, Holland, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo.

We greet them cordially and joyfully proclaim the "Exsultet" in honour of the Church, our Mother, which sees them gathered here in the full light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

And let us proclaim with them the praise of the baptismal water, into which, through Christ's death, the power of the Holy Spirit has descended: the power of the new life that gushes forth for eternity, for eternal life (cf. Jn 4:14).

4. So even before dawn breaks and the women arrive at the tomb from Jerusalem, we have come here to seek Jesus Crucified,

for: "Our old man was crucified with him, so that... we would no longer be slaves to sin..." (Rom 6:6);

for: we do not consider ourselves "dead to sin, but living for God, in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:11): "As for his death, he died to sin once for all; but now by the fact that he lives, he lives for God" (Rom 6:10);

for: "Through Baptism we ... have been buried together with him in death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in a new life (Rom 6:4);

for: "If we have been completely united with him by a death like his, we shall also be completely united with him by his resurrection" (Rom 6:5);

for we believe: that "if we have died with Christ... we shall also live with him" (Rom 6:8);

and because we believe that "Christ risen from the dead, he no longer dies; death no longer has power over him" (Rom 6:9).

5. That is precisely why we are here. That is why we keep vigil at his tomb.

Let the Church keep vigil. And watch over the world. The hour of Christ's victory over death is the greatest hour in history.

[Pope John Paul II, homily at the Easter Vigil 18 April 1981]

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

[Pope Francis, homily at the Easter Vigil 30 March 2013]

Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord [29 March 2026]

May God bless us and may the Virgin Mary protect us! We enter Holy Week, of which Palm Sunday already gives us a foretaste of the joy and sorrow, the mystery of love and hatred that leads to death: the whole Passion, death and resurrection of Christ. To relive is not merely to remember, but also to open our hearts ever more to this mystery of salvation.

*First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (50:4–7)

Isaiah was certainly not thinking of Jesus Christ when he wrote this text, probably in the 6th century BC, during the exile in Babylon. Let me explain: since his people were in exile, in very harsh conditions, and could easily have succumbed to discouragement, Isaiah reminds them that they are always God’s servants. And that God is counting on them, his servants (that is, his people), to bring his plan of salvation for humanity to fulfilment. The people of Israel are therefore this Servant of God, nourished every morning by the Word, yet also persecuted precisely because of their faith and capable, despite everything, of withstanding all trials. In this text, Isaiah clearly describes the extraordinary relationship that unites the Servant (Israel) with his God. Its main characteristic is listening to the Word of God, ‘the open ear’, as Isaiah puts it. ‘Listening’ is a word that has a very particular meaning in the Bible: it means to trust. We usually contrast these two fundamental attitudes between which our lives constantly oscillate: trust in God, a serene surrender to his will because we know from experience that his will is always good; or mistrust, suspicion of God’s intentions, and rebellion in the face of trials—a rebellion that can lead us to believe that God has abandoned us or, worse still, that He might take some satisfaction in our sufferings.

The prophets repeat: “Listen, Israel” or: “Will you listen to the Word of God today?” And on their lips, the exhortation “listen” always means: trust in God, whatever happens. And Saint Paul explains why: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God (Rom 8:28).

From every evil, from every difficulty, from every trial, God brings forth good; to every hatred he opposes an even stronger love; in every persecution, he grants the strength of forgiveness; and from every death, he brings forth life, the resurrection. It is a story of mutual trust. God trusts his Servant and entrusts him with a mission; in turn, the Servant accepts the mission with trust. And it is precisely this trust that gives him the strength needed to remain steadfast even in the opposition he will inevitably encounter. Here the mission is that of a witness: “So that I may sustain with my words those who are weary,” says the Servant. In entrusting him with this mission, the Lord also grants the necessary strength and the appropriate language: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a disciple.” And even more: he himself nourishes this trust, which is the source of all boldness in the service of others: “The Lord God makes my ear attentive”, which means that listening (in the biblical sense, that is, trust) is itself a gift from God. Everything is a gift: the mission, the strength, and even the trust that makes one unshakeable. This is precisely the hallmark of the believer: to recognise everything as a gift from God. He who lives in this permanent gift of God’s strength can face anything: “I did not resist, I did not turn back.” Faithfulness to the mission received inevitably entails persecution. True prophets, those who truly speak in the name of God, are rarely appreciated during their lifetime. In concrete terms, Isaiah says to his contemporaries: hold fast. The Lord has not abandoned you; on the contrary, you are on a mission for him. Do not be surprised, then, if you are mistreated. Why? Because the Servant who truly listens to the Word of God—that is, who puts it into practice—soon becomes a thorn in the side. His very conversion calls others to conversion. Some heed this call… others reject it and, convinced of their own righteousness, persecute the Servant. And every morning the Servant must return to the source, to the One who enables him to face everything. Isaiah uses a somewhat strange expression: “I set my face like flint” to express resolve and courage. Isaiah was speaking to his people, persecuted and humiliated during the exile in Babylon; but, naturally, when one re-reads the Passion of Christ, this text stands out in all its clarity: Christ corresponds perfectly to this portrait of the Servant of God. Listening to the Word, unshakeable trust and thus the certainty of victory even in the midst of persecution: all this characterised Jesus precisely at the moment when the acclamations of the crowd on Palm Sunday marked and hastened his condemnation.

*Responsorial Psalm (21/22)

Psalm 21 (22) begins with the famous cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. This phrase has often been taken out of context and interpreted as a cry of despair, whereas in reality the psalm must be read in its entirety. Indeed, after describing suffering and anguish, it ends with a great song of thanksgiving: “You have answered me! I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters’. The one who at first feels forsaken ultimately recognises that God has saved him and has not left him alone. Some images in the psalm seem to describe the crucifixion: ‘They have pierced my hands and my feet’, ‘they divide my garments’, ‘a band of evildoers surrounds me’. This is why the New Testament applies this psalm to the Passion of Jesus. However, the text originated in a specific historical context: the return of the people of Israel from the Babylonian exile. The exile had been like a death sentence for the people, who had risked disappearing; the return to their own land is therefore likened to the liberation of a condemned man who had narrowly escaped death. The image of the crucifixion serves to express the humiliation, violence and sense of abandonment experienced by the people, but the focus of the psalm is not suffering but rather the salvation received. The cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is therefore not a cry of despair or doubt, but the prayer of one who suffers and continues to turn to God with trust. Even in the midst of trial, Israel does not cease to pray and to remember the covenant and the blessings received from the Lord. For this reason, the psalm can be likened to a votive offering: in times of danger, God’s help is invoked, and once saved, thanks are given publicly. The psalm recalls the tragedy endured, but above all proclaims gratitude towards God who has delivered his people. The final verses thus become a great hymn of praise: the poor shall be satisfied, those who seek the Lord shall praise him, and all nations shall acknowledge his lordship. God’s salvation will also be proclaimed to future generations. For this reason, in Christian tradition, this psalm has been recognised as a prophecy of Christ’s Passion: on the cross, Jesus echoes the first verse of the psalm, but just as for Israel, so too for him the final word is not suffering, but salvation and life.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Philippians (2:6–11)

During the exile in Babylon, in the 6th century BC, the prophet Isaiah had bestowed upon the people of Israel the title of Servant of God. Their mission, amidst the trials of exile, was to remain faithful to the faith of their fathers and to bear witness to it among the pagans, even at the cost of humiliation and persecution. Only God could give them the strength to fulfil this mission. When the early Christians were confronted with the scandal of the cross, they sought to understand Jesus’ destiny and found the explanation in the words of St Paul: Jesus ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant’. He too faced opposition, humiliation and persecution, drawing his strength from the Father and living in total trust in Him. Although he was of divine nature, Jesus did not seek glory and honours. As Paul says, “though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited”. Precisely because he is God, he claims nothing for himself, but lives in gratuitous love and becomes man to show mankind the way to salvation. His exaltation is not a deserved reward, but a free gift from God. God’s logic is not that of merit or calculation, but that of grace, which is always a free gift. According to Paul, God’s plan is a plan of love: to bring humanity into his life, into his joy and into his communion. This gift is not earned, but received with gratitude. When man demands or claims, he closes himself off from grace, as happened symbolically with the sin in the Garden of Eden. Jesus, on the other hand, lives in the opposite attitude: the total acceptance of the Father’s will, what Paul calls obedience. For this reason, God exalted him and gave him the Name that is above every name: the name of Lord, a title which in the Old Testament belonged only to God. Before him “every knee shall bow”, to quote the words of the prophet Isaiah (Is 45:23). Jesus lived his entire life in humility and trust, even in the face of human violence and death. His obedience – which literally means “to place one’s ear before the word” – expresses a total and trusting listening to the Father’s will. For this reason, Paul’s hymn concludes with the Church’s profession of faith: “Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. In Christ, the glory of God is fully manifested, that is, the revelation of his infinite love. Seeing Jesus love to the very end and give his life, one can recognise, like the centurion beneath the cross, that he is truly the Son of God.

*The Passion of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew (26:14–27:66)

Every year, on Palm Sunday, the liturgy reads the account of the Passion from one of the three Synoptic Gospels; this year it is that of Matthew. The four accounts of the Passion are similar in broad outline, but each evangelist highlights certain particular aspects. Matthew, in particular, recounts certain episodes and details that the others do not mention. First of all, Matthew is the only one to specify the exact sum for which Judas betrays Jesus: thirty pieces of silver, which according to the Law was the price of a slave. This detail shows the contempt with which men treated the Lord. Later, Judas himself, overcome with remorse, returns the money to the chief priests, saying that he has handed over an innocent man to his death. They, however, do not wish to take responsibility for it. Judas throws the coins into the temple and hangs himself; the priests use that money to purchase the potter’s field, intended for the burial of foreigners, later called the ‘Field of Blood’, thus fulfilling a prophetic word. During the trial before Pilate, Matthew recounts a unique episode: the intervention of Pilate’s wife, who sends word to her husband not to have anything to do with ‘that righteous man’, for she has suffered greatly in a dream because of him. Pilate himself appears unsettled and, seeing that the crowd is growing ever more agitated, performs the symbolic gesture of washing his hands, declaring himself innocent of that man’s blood. The crowd replies: ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children.’ Pilate then releases Barabbas and hands Jesus over to be crucified. At the moment of Jesus’ death, Matthew also recounts that the veil of the temple is torn, but adds extraordinary details: the earth trembles, the rocks split, the tombs open, and many righteous people rise and appear in the holy city after Jesus’ resurrection. Finally, Matthew highlights the authorities’ concern to guard the tomb, fearing that the disciples might steal the body and claim that Jesus has risen; this very message is what they will spread after Easter. The account highlights a great paradox: the blindness of the religious authorities, who persecute Jesus, whilst some pagans, almost unwittingly, bestow upon him the highest titles. Pilate’s wife calls him ‘righteous’, Pilate has ‘King of the Jews’ written on the cross, and even the title ‘Son of God’, initially used to mock him, ultimately becomes a true profession of faith when the Roman centurion exclaims: ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’. This confession already foreshadows the opening of salvation to the pagans and shows that Christ’s death is not a defeat, but a victory. Matthew highlights the contrast between the weakness of the condemned man and his true greatness: it is precisely in his apparent powerlessness that Jesus manifests the greatness of God, who is infinite love. And in this light, we come to understand ever more deeply the significance of Christ’s Passion, which we shall relive visually this week and in particular during the Holy Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and above all in the outpouring of Easter joy at Christ’s Resurrection.

+Giovanni D’Ercole

5th Lent Sunday (year A)  [22 March 2026]

May God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! This Sunday touches upon the theme of death and of life that does not die. In the face of such fear of dying, may this word of salvation kindle within us the invincible hope of living eternally in God, who is Love

*First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (37:12–14)

This text is very brief, but it is clear that it forms a single unit: it is framed by two similar expressions; at the beginning, ‘Thus says the Lord God’, and at the end, ‘The word of the Lord’. A frame that is evidently intended to give solemnity to what it encloses. Whenever a prophet deems it necessary to specify that he is speaking on behalf of the Lord, it is because his message is particularly important and difficult to hear. Today’s message is therefore what lies within this framework: a promise repeated twice and addressed to God’s people, for God says “O my people”; on both occasions the promise concerns two points: firstly, “I will open your graves”; secondly, “I will bring you back to the land of Israel”, or “I will let you rest in your own land”, which amounts to the same thing. These expressions allow us to situate the historical context: the people are in exile in Babylon, at the mercy of the Babylonians, annihilated (in the true sense of the word, reduced to nothing), as if dead; this is why God speaks of graves. The expression ‘I will open your graves’ therefore means that God will raise up his people. Reading chapter 37 of the Book of Ezekiel, we see that this brief text follows a vision of the prophet known as ‘the vision of the dry bones’ and provides an explanation of it: the prophet sees a vast army of the dead, lying in the dust; and God says to him: your brothers are so desperate in their exile that they believe themselves to be dead, finished… well, I, God, will raise them up. This entire vision and its explanation thus evoke the captivity of the exiled people and their restoration by God. For the prophet Ezekiel, it is a certainty: the people cannot be wiped out, because God has promised them an eternal Covenant that nothing can destroy; therefore, whatever the defeats, the ruptures, the trials, it is known that the people will survive and regain their land, because this is part of the promise. “I will open your graves… O my people, and bring you back to the land of Israel”: ultimately, there is nothing surprising about these words; Israel has always known that its God is faithful; and the expression “You shall know that I am the Lord” precisely means that it is through his faithfulness to his promises that the true God is recognised. But why repeat almost the same things twice? In reality, the second promise does not merely repeat the first, but expands upon it:  It continues: I will open your graves and bring you out of your tombs and let you rest in your own land, and you shall know that I am the Lord: all this  is a return to the situation prior to the disaster of the Babylonian exile. In this second promise there is much more, something new and never seen before: “I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live”; here the New Covenant is announced: from now on the law of love will no longer be written on tablets of stone, but in hearts. Or, to use another expression of Ezekiel, human hearts will no longer be of stone, but of flesh.

Here there is no room for doubt: the repetition of the phrase “my people” clearly shows that these two promises herald a rebirth, a restoration of the people. This is not a matter of individual resurrection. Individual death did not compromise the future of the people; and for a long time it was the future of the people, and that alone, that mattered. When someone died, it was said that they had fallen asleep with their fathers, without imagining any personal survival; on the contrary, the survival of the people has always been a certainty, because the people are the bearers of God’s promises. To believe in individual resurrection, two elements are required: firstly, an interest in the individual’s fate — something that did not exist at the beginning of biblical history; an interest in one’s personal fate is a later development. Secondly, it is essential to believe in a God who does not abandon you to death. The certainty that God never abandons humanity did not arise suddenly; it developed in step with the concrete events of the history of the chosen people. The historical experience of the Covenant is what nourishes the faith of Israel; it is the experience of a God who frees humanity from all forms of bondage and intervenes ceaselessly to liberate them; a faithful God who never goes back on his word. It is this faith that guides all of Israel’s discoveries; indeed, it is their driving force. Four centuries after Ezekiel, around 165 BC, these two combined elements—faith in a God who continually liberates humanity and the discovery of the value of every human person—led to faith in individual resurrection. It became evident that God would liberate the individual from the most terrible and definitive form of slavery, that of death. This discovery came so late to the Jewish people that, in Christ’s time, it was not yet shared by all: the Sadducees, in fact, were known as those who did not believe in the resurrection. Perhaps, however, Ezekiel’s prophecy might have surpassed his own understanding, without him realising it. The Spirit of God spoke through his mouth, and we might think: Ezekiel did not know how great was what he was proclaiming

*Responsorial Psalm (129/130) 

In the Psalter there is a group of fifteen psalms bearing a particular name: Song of Ascents. Each of them begins with the words ‘Song of Ascents’, which in Hebrew signifies going to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. In the Gospels, moreover, the expression ‘going up to Jerusalem’ occurs several times with the same meaning: it evokes the pilgrimage for the three annual feasts and, in particular, the most important of these, the Feast of Tabernacles. These fifteen psalms therefore accompanied the entire pilgrimage. Even before arriving in Jerusalem, they already foreshadowed the unfolding of the festival. For some, one can even guess at which point in the pilgrimage they were sung; for example, Psalm 121/122 – ‘How joyful I was when they said to me: “We shall go to the house of the Lord”… now our feet stand within your gates, Jerusalem…’ – was probably the psalm of arrival. Psalm 129/130 is one of these Songs of Ascent; it was probably sung during the Feast of Tabernacles as part of a penitential celebration, which is why guilt and forgiveness feature so prominently in the psalm: ‘If you keep track of sins, O Lord, O Lord, who can stand before you?’.  The sinner who pleads here is certain of being forgiven; it is the people who together acknowledge God’s infinite goodness, his tireless faithfulness (his Hesed) and man’s radical inability to respond to the Covenant. These repeated acts of unfaithfulness are experienced as a true spiritual death: “From the depths I cry out to you”, a cry addressed to Him whose very being is Forgiveness: this is the meaning of the expression “with you is forgiveness”. God is Love and is Gift, and the two are one and the same. Now “forgiveness” is nothing other than a gift that goes beyond everything. To forgive means to continue to offer a Covenant, a possible future, beyond the other’s infidelities. Let us recall the story of David: after the killing of Bathsheba’s husband, the prophet Nathan announced God’s forgiveness to him even before David had uttered a single word of repentance or confession. The idea that God always forgives, however, does not please everyone; yet it is undoubtedly one of the central teachings of the Bible, right from the Old Testament. And Jesus forcefully takes up this same teaching: for example, in the parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel according to Luke (chapter 15), the father is already out on the road waiting for his son (a sign that he has already forgiven him) and opens his arms to him even before the son has opened his mouth. And the example of God’s totally gratuitous forgiveness was given to us by Jesus himself on the cross: those who were killing him did not utter a single word of repentance, yet he says: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’. It is precisely in his forgiveness, says the Bible, that God manifests his power. This too is a great discovery of Israel; consider what the Book of Wisdom states: “Your strength, Lord, is the source of justice… you who possess strength, judge with gentleness and rule us with great indulgence” (Wis 12:16, 18). The certainty of God’s mercy does not breed presumption or indifference towards sin, but humble and amazed gratitude: “With you is forgiveness, so that we may fear you.” This concise formula indicates the believer’s attitude before God, who is nothing but gift and forgiveness. This certainty of forgiveness, always offered beyond all fault, inspires in Israel an attitude of extraordinary hope. Repentant Israel awaits forgiveness “more than the watchmen await the dawn”. “He will redeem Israel from all its sins”: similar expressions recur frequently in biblical texts. They announce to Israel the definitive liberation, the liberation from all the sins of all time. Israel awaits even more: precisely because the people of the Covenant experience their own weakness and ever-recurring sin, but also God’s faithfulness, they await from God himself the definitive fulfilment of his promises. Beyond immediate forgiveness, what they await from age to age is the definitive dawn, which they hope for against all hope, like Abraham: the dawn of the Day of God. All the psalms are permeated by this messianic expectation. Christians know with even greater certainty that our world is moving towards its fulfilment: a fulfilment that has a name, Jesus Christ: “Our soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the dawn”.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans (8:8–11)

“I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live,” announces Ezekiel in the first reading, but from baptism, Saint Paul reminds us here, this is a reality, and he uses a figurative expression: the Spirit of God dwells within you. Taking this literally, one commentator speaks of a change of ownership. We have become the dwelling place of the Spirit: it is he who is now in charge. It would be interesting to ask ourselves, in all areas of our lives, both personal and communal, who is in charge, who is the master of the house within us; or, if we prefer, what is our purpose in life. According to Paul, there are not many alternatives: either we are under the influence of the Spirit, that is, we allow ourselves to be guided by him, or we do not allow ourselves to be inspired by the Spirit, and this he calls being under the influence of the flesh. Being under the influence of the Spirit is easy to understand: simply replace the word ‘Spirit’ with the word ‘Love’, as the Letter to the Galatians demonstrates when explaining the fruits of the Spirit: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Gal 5:22–23); in a word, love expressed in all the concrete circumstances of our lives. Paul is the heir to the entire tradition of the prophets: and they all affirm that our relationship with God is realised in the quality of our relationship with others; in the ‘Songs of the Servant’, the Book of Isaiah (chapters 42; 49; 50; 52–53) forcefully asserts that living according to the Spirit of God means loving and serving one’s brothers and sisters. Once life according to the Spirit—that is, life according to love—has been defined, it is easy to understand what Paul means by life according to the flesh: it is the opposite, namely indifference or hatred; in other words, love is turning away from oneself, whilst life under the influence of the flesh is centring on oneself. The question: ‘Who is in charge?’ here becomes ‘Who is the centre of our world?’ And those who are under the influence of the flesh cannot please God, says Paul. On the contrary, Christ is the beloved Son in whom God is well pleased, that is, he is in perfect harmony with God precisely because he too is all love. In this sense, the account of the Temptations, read on the first Sunday of Lent (Matthew chapter 4), is very eloquent because Jesus appears totally centred on God and on his Word and resolutely refuses to focus on his own hunger or even on the demands of his messianic mission. If the text of the temptations is presented to us every year at the start of Lent, it is because Lent is precisely a journey of shifting our focus away from ourselves in order to refocus on God and on others. Later on, in the same Letter to the Romans, Paul says that the Spirit of God makes us children: it is he who prompts us to call God ‘Father’. That which is love within us comes from God; it is our inheritance as children. The Spirit is your life, Paul says again: to put it another way, love is your life. After all, we know from experience that only love is creative. What is not love does not come from God and, precisely because it does not come from God, is destined for death. The great good news of this text is that everything within us that is love comes from God and therefore cannot die. As Paul says: ‘If God raised Jesus from the dead… he will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you’.

From the Gospel according to John (11:1–45)

We have got into the habit of calling this passage the resurrection of Lazarus, but, to tell the truth, it is not the most appropriate term; when we proclaim ‘I believe in the resurrection of the dead and in eternal life’, we mean something quite different. Lazarus’s death was, in a sense, merely a parenthesis in his earthly life; after Jesus’ miracle, his life resumed its ordinary course and was, more or less, the same as before. Lazarus simply had his earthly life extended. His body was not transformed and he had to die a second time; his first death was not what it will be for us, that is, the passage to true life. So one might ask: to what end? In performing this miracle, Jesus took great risks, for he had already drawn far too much attention to himself… and for Lazarus, it was merely a matter of postponing the final appointment. It is St John who answers our question: ‘what was the purpose of this miracle?’ He tells us that it is a very important sign: Jesus reveals himself as the one in whom we have eternal life and in whom we can believe, that is, upon whom we can stake our lives. After all, the chief priests and the Pharisees were not mistaken: they fully understood the gravity of the sign performed by Jesus, for the Gospel of John tells us that many, many began to believe in him precisely because of Lazarus’s resurrection, and it was then that they decided to put him to death. This miracle thus sealed Jesus’ death sentence; thinking about it two thousand years later, it seems paradoxical: being able to restore life deserved death. A sad example of the aberrations to which our certainties can lead… Let us return to the account of what we might call the ‘raising of Lazarus’, because it is not a true resurrection but rather an extension of earthly life. Let us make just two observations. 

First observation: for Jesus, only one thing matters, the glory of God; but to see the glory of God, one must believe (If you believe, you will see the glory of God, he tells Martha). Right from the start of the story, when they tell him: ‘Lord, the one you love is ill’, Jesus replies to the disciples: ‘This illness will not lead to death, but is for the glory of God’, that is, for the revelation of the mystery of God. Faith opens our eyes, removing the blindfold of mistrust that we had placed over our gaze. Second observation: here, faith in the resurrection takes its final step. In Israel, faith in the resurrection appeared late; it was clearly affirmed only in the second century BC, at the time of the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, and in Christ’s time it was not yet shared by everyone. Martha and Mary, evidently, are among those who believe in it. But in their minds it is still a resurrection at the end of time; when Jesus says to Martha: “Your brother will rise again”, she replies: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day”. Jesus, however, corrects her: he is not speaking in the future, but in the present: “I am the resurrection and the life… Whoever believes in me, even if they die, will live; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” To put it plainly, we sense that the Resurrection is already here.” “I am the resurrection and the life” means that death as separation from God no longer exists: it is overcome in Christ’s resurrection, so that believers, with Paul, can say: “O death, where is your victory?”. Now nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not even death. The true novelty of this Gospel is not that a dead person returns to life, but that life itself has a face: Jesus. When he says: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’, he is not merely promising a future event; he is affirming that those who live in communion with him are already entering a life that death cannot destroy. Lazarus will emerge from the tomb once more, only to die again; but those united with Christ will never return to the tomb as to a final prison. Biological death becomes a passage, not an end; a threshold, not an abyss. If we live in communion with God — that is, in love — we are already within eternity. For God is not merely the One who gives life: He is Life itself. And that which is united to Life cannot be annihilated.

As Saint Augustine writes: “Do you fear death? Love. Love kills death.”

And again, St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” (Rom 8:39). Herein lies the heart of the sign of Lazarus: whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him, and this communion knows no end. The true resurrection begins now.

+Giovanni D’Ercole

4th Lent Sunday   [15 March 2026]  Laetare

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! This Sunday is a pause of light in the penitential journey. In the Gospel, Jesus gives sight to the blind man. Laetare means this: light is already overcoming the shadows. Even though we are still in Lent, Easter is near. The blind man's joy is achieved through questioning, rejection and loneliness. Laetare is not an escape from pain, but joy that arises from trial. Laetare is the smile of the Church in the middle of the desert: if I allow myself to be enlightened by Christ, my night is not definitive. The man born blind thus becomes an icon of the catechumen, but also of every believer who, in the heart of Lent, discovers that the light is already present and that Christian joy is born from the encounter with Him.

*First Reading from the First Book of Samuel (16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a)

 Reading this biblical text, we understand that the great prophet Samuel had to learn to change his perspective. Sent by God to designate the future king from among the sons of Jesse in Bethlehem, he apparently had only the embarrassment of choice. Jesse first brought his eldest son, named Eliab: tall, handsome, with the appearance worthy of succeeding the current king, Saul. But no: God let Samuel know that his choice did not fall on him: Do not look at his appearance or his tall stature... God does not look as man looks: man looks at the appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (cf. 1 Sam 16:7).

So Jesse had his sons pass before the prophet one by one, in order of age. But God's choice did not fall on any of them. In the end, he had to call the last one, the one no one had thought of: David, whose only occupation was to tend the sheep. Well, it was he whom God had chosen to guard his people! The biblical account emphasises once again that God's choice falls on the smallest: "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong," St Paul will say (1 Cor 1:27), because "my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). Here is a good reason to change our way of looking at people! From this text we draw at least three lessons about kingship in Israel:

First: the king is God's chosen one, but the election is for a mission. Just as Israel is chosen for the service of humanity, so the king is chosen for the service of the people. This also entails the possibility of being deposed, as happened to Saul: if the chosen one no longer fulfils his mission, he is replaced. Second: the king receives anointing with oil; he is literally the 'messiah', that is, 'the anointed one'. God says to Samuel: 'Fill your horn with oil and set out! I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have chosen a king among his sons' (1 Sam 16:1). Third: anointing confers the Spirit of God. ' Samuel took the horn full of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward' (1 Sam 16:13). The king thus becomes God's representative on earth, called to rule according to God's will and not according to that of the world. There is also another great lesson: men judge by appearances, God looks at the heart.  Many biblical stories insist on this mystery: God often chooses the least. David was the youngest of Jesse's sons; no one thought he had a great future. Moses declared himself slow of speech (Ex 4:10). Jeremiah considered himself too young (Jer 1:6). Samuel himself was inexperienced when he was called. Timothy was in poor health. And the people of Israel were small among the nations. These choices cannot be explained by human criteria. As Isaiah says: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" (Is 55:8-9). The text summarises it thus: "What man sees does not count: for man sees the appearance, but the Lord sees the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). This truth protects us from two dangers: presumption and discouragement. It is not a question of merit, but of availability. No one possesses the necessary strength within themselves: God will give it at the right moment.

*Responsorial Psalm (22/23) 

We have just heard this psalm in its entirety: it is one of the shortest in the psalter, but it is so dense that the early Christians chose it as the privileged psalm for Easter night. On that night, the newly baptised, rising from the baptismal font, sang Psalm 22/23 as they made their way to the place of their Confirmation and First Eucharist. For this reason, it was called the 'psalm of Christian initiation'. If Christians were able to read the mystery of baptismal life in it, it is because this psalm already expressed in a privileged way the mystery of life in the Covenant, of life in intimacy with God for Israel. It is the mystery of God's choice, who elected this particular people for no apparent reason other than his sovereign freedom. Every generation marvels at this election and this Covenant offered: 'Ask the former generations that preceded you, from the day God created man on earth... has anything so great ever happened?' (Deut 4:32-35). This people, freely chosen by God, was given the privilege of being the first to enter into his intimacy, not to enjoy it selfishly, but to open the door to others. To express the happiness of the believer, Psalm 22/23 refers to two experiences: that of a Levite (a priest) and that of a pilgrim. We are familiar with the institution of the Levites: according to Genesis, Levi was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, from whom the twelve tribes of Israel took their name. But the tribe of Levi had a special place from the beginning: at the time of the division of the Promised Land, it did not receive any territory because it was consecrated to the service of worship. It is said that God himself is their inheritance; an image also taken up in another psalm: "Lord, my portion of inheritance and my cup... for me, the lot has fallen on delightful places" (Ps 15/16:5). The Levites lived scattered among the cities of the other tribes and lived on tithes; in Jerusalem, they were dedicated to the service of the Temple. The Levite in our psalm sings with all his heart: "Goodness and faithfulness shall follow me all the days of my life; I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for long days." His experience is an image of Israel's election: just as the Levite is happy to be consecrated to the service of God, so Israel is aware of its special vocation among humanity. Furthermore, Israel presents itself as a pilgrim going up to the Temple to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. On the way, it is like a sheep: its shepherd is God. In the culture of the ancient Near East, kings were called "shepherds of the people," and Israel also uses this language. The ideal king is a good shepherd, attentive and strong to protect the flock. But in Israel it was strongly affirmed that the only true king is God; the kings of the earth are only his representatives. Thus, the true shepherd of Israel is God himself: 'The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul'. The prophet Ezekiel developed this image at length. Similarly, the Old Testament often presents Israel as God's flock: "He is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock he leads" (Ps 94/95:7). This recalls the experience of the Exodus: it was there that Israel experienced God's care, who guided them and enabled them to survive amid a thousand obstacles. For this reason, when Jesus said, "I am the Good Shepherd" (Jn 10), his words had a shocking effect: they meant "I am the King-Messiah, the true king of Israel." Returning to the psalm: pilgrimage can be dangerous. The pilgrim may encounter enemies ("You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies"), he may pass through "the dark valley" of death; but he does not fear, because God is with him: "I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff give me security". Once he reaches the Temple, he offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving and participates in the ritual banquet that follows: a joyful feast, with an overflowing cup and the anointing of oil on his head. We can understand why the early Christians saw in this psalm the expression of their experience: Christ is the true Shepherd (Jn 10); in baptism he leads us out of the valley of death to the waters of life; the table and the cup evoke the Eucharist; the perfumed oil recalls Confirmation. Once again, Christians discover with amazement that Jesus does not abolish the faith experience of his people, but brings it to fulfilment, giving it fullness.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians (5:8-14) 

Often in Scripture, it is the end of the text that provides the key. Let us start with the last sentence: 'For this reason it is said: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."' The phrase "This is why it is said..." clearly shows that the author did not invent this song, but quoted it. It must have been a well-known baptismal hymn in the early Christian communities. Awake... rise... and Christ will give you light was therefore a song of our first brothers and sisters in faith: and this cannot leave us indifferent. Thus, we better understand the beginning of the text: it simply serves to explain the words of that hymn. It is as if, after a baptismal celebration, someone had asked the theologian on duty — Paul, or one of his disciples (since it is not entirely certain that the Letter to the Ephesians was written by him personally) —: "What do the words we sang during baptism mean?" And the answer is this: thanks to baptism, a new life has begun, a radically new life. So much so that the newly baptised were called neophytes, meaning 'new plants'. The author explains the song in this way: the new plant that you have become is profoundly different. When a graft is made, the fruit of the grafted tree is different from the original one; and that is precisely why the graft is made. The colour makes it easy to distinguish what belongs to the new plant and what is a remnant of the past. It is the same with baptism: the fruits of the new man are works of light; before the grafting, you were darkness, and your fruits were works of darkness. But old habits may resurface: this is why it is important to recognise them. For the author, the distinction is simple: the fruits of the new man are goodness, justice and charity. Anything that is not goodness, justice and charity is a sprout from the old tree. Who can make you bear fruits of light? Jesus Christ. He is all goodness, all justice, all charity. Just as a plant needs the sun to bloom, so we must expose ourselves to his light. The song expresses both the work of Christ and the freedom of man: 'Awake, arise' — it is freedom that is called into question. 'Christ will enlighten you' — only he can do this. For St Paul, as for the prophets of the Old Testament, light is an attribute of God. To say 'Christ will enlighten you' means two things: first of all, Christ is God. The only way to live in harmony with God is to remain united to Christ, that is, to live concretely in justice, goodness and charity. The text of Isaiah (Is 58) comes to mind: share your bread with the hungry, welcome the poor, clothe the naked... Then your light will rise like the dawn. This is the glory of the Lord, his light that we are called to reflect. As Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 3:18): we reflect the glory of the Lord and are transformed into his image. To reflect means that Christ is the light; we are its reflection. This is the vocation of the baptised: to reflect the light of Christ. For this reason, at baptism, a candle lit from the Paschal candle is given. Secondly, a light does not shine for itself: it illuminates what surrounds it. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes: 'You shine like stars in the world' (Phil 2:14-16). This is his way of translating the words of Jesus Christ: 'You are the light of the world'. The Letter to the Ephesians, written directly by Paul or by one of his disciples (according to the then common practice of "pseudepigraphy"), remains for the Church a fundamental testimony of the baptismal vocation, called to pass from darkness to light.

*From the Gospel according to John (9:1-41)

The worst blindness is not what one thinks. Here we hear an illustration of what St John writes at the beginning of his Gospel, in the so-called Prologue:

"The Word was the true light, the light that enlightens every man... He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not recognise him" (Jn 1:9-10). This is what we might call the drama of the Gospels. But John continues: 'Yet to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to become children of God'. This is exactly what happens here: the drama of those who oppose Jesus and stubbornly refuse to recognise him as the One sent by God; but also, fortunately, the salvation of those who have the grace to open their eyes, like the man born blind.

John insists on making us understand that there are two kinds of blindness: physical blindness, which this man had from birth, and, much more serious, blindness of the heart.

Jesus meets the blind man for the first time and heals him of his natural blindness. He then meets him a second time and opens his heart to another light, the true light. It is no coincidence that John takes care to explain the meaning of the name 'Siloam', which means 'Sent'. In other cases, he does not translate the terms: here he does so because it is important. Jesus is truly the One sent by the Father to enlighten the world. Yet we return to the same question: why was the one who was sent to bring God's light rejected by those who awaited him most fervently? The episode of the man born blind takes place immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles, a great solemnity in Jerusalem, during which the coming of the Messiah was ardently invoked. And the danger of certainties can be great. At the time of Jesus Christ, the expectation of the Messiah was very intense. There was only one question: is he truly the Father's Envoy or is he an impostor? Is he the Messiah, yes or no? His actions were paradoxical: he performed the works expected of the Messiah — he restored sight to the blind and speech to the mute — but he did not seem to respect the Sabbath. And it was precisely on the Sabbath that he healed the blind man. Now, if he were truly sent by God, many thought, he should observe the Sabbath. It was 'obvious'. But it is precisely this 'obviousness' that is the problem. Many had too rigid ideas about what the Messiah should be like and were not ready for God's surprise. The blind man, on the other hand, is not a prisoner of preconceptions. To the Pharisees who ask him for explanations, he simply replies: "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes... I washed and gained my sight." The Pharisees are divided: He is not from God, because he does not observe the Sabbath. How can a sinner perform such signs? The blind man reasons with simplicity and freedom: If this man were not from God, he could do nothing (cf. Jn 9:31-33). It is always the same story: those who close themselves off in their own certainties end up seeing nothing; those who take a step in faith are ready to receive grace. And then they can receive true light from Jesus. This episode takes place in a context of controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees. Twice Jesus had rebuked them for  "judging by appearances" (Jn 7:24; 8:15). It is natural to recall the episode of David's choice: "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). The worst blindness, therefore, is not that of the eyes, but that of a heart that does not want to be enlightened. The man born blind does not only receive sight: he receives a new way of seeing. At first he sees Jesus as "a man"; then as a "prophet"; finally he recognises him as "Lord" and prostrates himself before him. The real miracle is not only the opening of the eyes, but the opening of the heart. Here we also find the wisdom of The Little Prince (novel by A.M. de Saint-Exupéry): "What is essential is invisible to the eye." The Pharisees see with their eyes, but remain blind inside; the beggar, on the other hand, passing through rejection and trial, comes to see the Invisible. The conclusion is this: faith is a journey from external light to inner light. One can have healthy eyes and remain in darkness; or one can have been blind and become a witness to the light. The man born blind teaches us that true sight is recognising Christ as the Light of the world and allowing our hearts to be illuminated.

+Giovanni D'Ercole