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Thursday, April 24, 2014

VIA CRUCIS: A GLORIOUS CROSS LIKE DAWN FOLLOWING A LONG NIGHT


Vatican City, 18 April 2014 (VIS) – At 9.15 p.m. this evening, Good Friday, the Bishop of Rome presided at the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, service at the Colosseum, where thousands of faithful accompanied Christ's path to the Cross by the light of candles and torches. From the Palatine Hill the Holy Father listened to the reflections that accompanied each of the fourteen stations, dedicated this year to the economic crisis that afflicts many countries, to immigration, poverty, and the situation of women and the marginalised in today's world. The cross was carried to the various stations by a worker and a businessman, two immigrants, two homeless people, two detainees, two former drug addicts, two patients, two children, a family, two elderly people, two nuns, the Custodians of the Holy Land and, in the first and last stations, the Cardinal Archbishop of Rome, Agostino Vallini.

At the end the Pope addressed some unscripted remarks to the participants, affirming that “God placed on Jesus' Cross all the weight of our sins, all the injustice perpetrated by every Cain against his brother, all the bitterness of the betrayals of Judas and Peter, all the vanity of tyrants, all the arrogance of false friends. It was a heavy Cross, like the night of abandoned people, as heavy as the death of loved ones, heavy because it carried all the ugliness of evil. However it is also a glorious Cross, like the dawn after a long night, as it represents all of God's love, which is greater than our iniquity and our betrayals. In the Cross we see the monstrosity of man, when we allow ourselves to be guided by evil; but we also see the immensity of God's mercy; He does not treat us according to our sins, but according to His mercy”.

He continued, “Before the Cross of Christ, we see, we can almost touch with our hands how much we are eternally loved; before the Cross, we feel like 'children' and not 'things ' or objects, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus affirmed when he turned to Christ with this prayer: 'If it were not for you, O my Christ, I would feel as a finished creature. … O, our Jesus, guide us from the Cross to the Resurrection and teach us that evil will not have the last word, but rather love, mercy, and forgiveness. O Christ, teach us to exclaim anew, “Yesterday I was crucified with Christ; today I am glorified with Him”'.

“And in the end, all together, let us recall the sick, let us think of all those people abandoned beneath the weight of the Cross, so that they might find in the trial of the Cross the strength of hope, of the hope of the Resurrection and the love of God”.


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