GENERAL AUDIENCEPOPE FRANCIS
Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 1st April 2015
Wednesday, 1st April 2015
The
Easter Triduum
Dear
Brothers and Sisters, Good morning,
Tomorrow is Holy Thursday. In
the afternoon, with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we will begin the Easter
Triduum of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, which is the
culmination of the whole liturgical year and the pinnacle of our Christian life
as well.
The Triduum begins with the
commemoration of the Last Supper. Jesus, on the eve of his passion, offered his
body and blood to the Father under the species of bread and wine and, which he
gave to the Apostles as nourishment with the command that they perpetuate the
offering in his memory. The Gospel of this celebration, recalling the washing
of the feet, expresses the same meaning of the Eucharist under another
perspective. Jesus — like a servant — washes the feet of Simon Peter and the
other eleven disciples (cf. Jn 13:4-5). By this prophetic gesture, He expresses
the meaning of his life and of his passion as service to God and to his
brothers: “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve” (Mk
10:45).
This also occurred in our
Baptism, when the grace of God washed us of sin and clothed us in Christ’s
nature (cf. Col 3:10). This takes place every time we celebrate the memory of
the Lord in the Eucharist: we enter into communion with Christ Servant by
obeying his command — to love one another as He has loved us (cf. Jn 13:34;
15:12). If we approach Holy Communion without being sincerely ready to wash the
feet of one another, we don’t recognize the Body of the Lord. It is the
service, Jesus gives himself entirely.
Then, the day after tomorrow, in
the liturgy of Good Friday we shall meditate on the mystery of
Christ’s death and adore the Cross. In the final moments of his life, before
giving up his spirit to the Father, Jesus said: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30).
What do these words mean, when Jesus says: “It is finished”? It means that the
work of salvation is finished, that all of the Scriptures have found their
total fulfillment in the love of Christ, the immolated Lamb. Jesus, by his
Sacrifice, has transformed the greatest iniquity into the greatest love.
Over the course of the centuries
there have been men and women who by the witness of their lives reflected a ray
of this perfect love, full and undefiled. I would like to recall a heroic
witness of our times, Don Andrea Santoro, a priest of the Diocese of Rome and a
missionary in Turkey. A few days before being assassinated in Trebisonda, he
wrote: “I live among these people so that Jesus can live among them through
me... only by offering one’s flesh is salvation possible. The evil that stalks
the world must be borne and pain must be shared till the end in one’s own flesh
as Jesus did” (A. Polselli, Don Andrea Santoro, le eredità , CittÃ
Nuova, Rome 2008, p. 31). May the example of a man of our times, and so many
others, sustain us in the offering of our own life as a gift of love to our
brothers and sisters, in the imitation of Jesus.
And today too there are many men
and women, true martyrs who offer up their lives with Jesus in order to confess
the faith, for this motive alone. It is a service, the service of Christian
witness even to the pouring out of blood, a service that Christ rendered for
us: he redeemed us to the very end. And this is the meaning of those words “It
is finished”. How beautiful it will be when we all, at the end of our lives,
with our errors and our faults, as well as our good deeds and our love of
neighbour, can say to the Father as Jesus did: “It is finished”; not with kind
of perfection with which He said it, but to say: “Lord, I did everything that I
could do. It is finished”. Adoring the Cross, looking to Jesus, let us think of
love, of service, of our lives, of the Christian martyrs, and it will do us
good too to think of the end of our lives. No one knows when that will be, but
we can ask for the grace to be able to say: “Father, I did what I could do. It
is finished”.
Holy
Saturday is the
day on which the Church contemplates the “repose” of Christ in the sepulchre
after the victorious battle of the Cross. On Holy Saturday the Church, yet
again, identifies with Mary: all her faith is gathered in Her, the first and
perfect disciple, the first and perfect believer. In the darkness that
enveloped creation, She alone stayed to keep the flame of faith burning, hoping
against all hope (cf. Rm 4:18) in the Resurrection of Jesus.
And on the great Easter
Vigil, in which the Alleluia resounds once more, we
celebrate Christ Risen, the centre and the purpose of the cosmos and of
history; we keep vigil filled with hope in expectation of his coming return,
when Easter will be fully manifest. At times the dark of night seems to
penetrate the soul; at times we think: “there is nothing more to be done”, and
the heart no longer finds the strength to love.... But it is precisely in the
darkness that Christ lights the fire of God’s love: a flash breaks through the
darkness and announces a new start, something begins in the deepest darkness.
We know that the night is “most night like” just before the dawn. In that very
darkness Christ conquers and rekindles the fire of love. The stone of sorrow is
rolled away leaving room for hope. Behold the great mystery of Easter! On this
holy night the Church gives us the light of the Risen One, that in us there
will not be the regret of the one who says: “if only...”, but the hope of the
one who opens himself to a present filled with future: Christ has
conquered death, and we are with Him. Our life does not end at the stone of the
sepulchre, our life goes beyond with hope in Christ who is Risen from that very
tomb. As Christians we are called to be sentinels of the dawn, who can discern
the signs of the Risen One, as did the women and the disciples who ran to the
tomb at dawn on the first day of the week.
Dear brothers and sisters,
during these days of the Holy Triduum let us not limit ourselves to
commemorating the passion of the Lord, but let us enter into the
mystery, making his feelings and thoughts our own, as the Apostle Paul
invites us to do: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ
Jesus (Phil 2:5). Then ours will be a “Happy Easter”.
Special
greetings
I offer an affectionate greeting
to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today’s Audience,
including those from England, Denmark, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong and the
United States. May the Risen Lord confirm you in faith and make you witnesses
of his love and resurrection. May God bless you!
I address a special thought to young
people, to the sick and to newlyweds. Tomorrow
will be the 10th anniversary of the death of St John Paul II: may his example
and his witness be ever living among us. Dear young people, learn
to confront life with his ardour and his enthusiasm; dear sick people,
carry your cross of suffering with joy in the way that he taught us; and you,
dearnewlyweds, always put God at the centre, that your married life may
have greater love and greater happiness.
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Copyright - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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