GOOD FRIDAY: LORD'S PASSION, WAY OF THE CROSS AT COLOSSEUM

VATICAN CITY, APR 6, 2007 (VIS) - In the Vatican Basilica at 5 p.m. today, Good Friday, the Pope presided at the celebration of the Lord's Passion. Following the reading of the Passion according to St. John, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa O.F.M. Cap., preacher of the Pontifical Household, pronounced his customary Good Friday homily. The ceremony continued with the universal prayer, veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion.

  At 9.15 p.m., the Holy Father travelled to the Colosseum where he led the 'Via Crucis' or Way of the Cross. The meditations this year were prepared by Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, prefect of the Ambrosian Library of Milan, Italy.

  Benedict XVI carried the cross for the first and last stations. Over the other stations, it was carried by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general for the diocese of Rome, a family from the city, four young women from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Korea, China and Angola, a young man from Chile and two Franciscans from the Custody of the Holy Land.

  At the end of the ceremony, the Holy Father made some off-the-cuff remarks to those present: "Following Jesus on the way of His Passion we see not only the Passion of Jesus, but all the suffering people of the world. This is the profound intention of the 'Via Crucis' prayer: to open our hearts and to help us see with the heart.

  "The Fathers of the Church considered insensitivity and hardness of heart as the greatest sin of the pagan world, and they used to like this prophecy of the prophet Ezekiel: 'I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.' Conversion to Christ, becoming Christian, meant receiving a heart of flesh, a heart sensitive to the passion and suffering of others.

  "Our God is not a distant God, untouchable in His beatitude. Our God has a heart. Indeed, he has a heart of flesh, He became flesh precisely so as to suffer with us and to be with us in our suffering. He became man in order to give us a heart of flesh and to reawaken in us the love for the suffering and the needy.

  "At this time," he concluded, "we pray to the Lord for all those suffering in the world. We pray to the Lord that He may truly give us a heart of flesh, that He may make us messengers of His love not only with words but with all of our lives. Amen."
BXVI-HOLY WEEK/GOOD FRIDAY/...                VIS 20070411 (430)