Easter Vigil

 Gn1:1-22; Gn22:1-18; Ex14,15-15,1; Is 55:1-11; Ba 3:9-15.32-4.4;

Ez 36,16-28; Rm 6: 3-11; Lk 24: 1-12

Easter Sunday

Acts 10, 34.37-43; Ps 117; 1Cor 5: 6-8; Jn 20: 1-9

1. «I am Christ who have destroyed death, who have won the enemy and put the Hades under my feet, who have restrained the powerful and have lifted up man to the sublimity of heavens», an ancient Easter homily states. In two splendid mosaics – one present in our basilica and the other in that of Torcello which is much older – we can contemplate the powerful scene of the Anastatis (Resurrection). The Risen, with a vigorous arm, frees Adam and in him all men, from the chains of death trampling on the devil who vainly tempts to keep his victim. However, the victim manages to escape from his hands to enter in the new heavens and on a new earth. Christ is the undeniable protagonist of the scene.

Easter is the feast of Christ’s centrality in the life of man.

He is the centre of the cosmos and of history, the reading key of all the events of the existence of each one of us, of the whole human family and of the entire world.

2. «Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen» (Lk 24; 5-6). The New Testament does not describe directly the moment of the Resurrection, the central event of history. It is expressed through signs and apparitions. First of all it reports the declaration of the Angel to the women who were looking for Christ in the tomb. The announcement was so extraordinary that at the beginning it seemed to be incredible. «but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them» (Lk 24;11). Infact that which associates the versions of the account of the resurrection given by the four Evangelists is, first of all, dismay, total surprise with which the disciples, women and men, have lived the event: «Terrified, the women bowed their heads to the ground… Peter, however, went off to the tomb, running. He bent down and looked in and saw the linen cloths but nothing else; he then went back home, amazed at what had happened» (Lk 24: 5&12). The Gospels report objectivity these first reactions of the disciples in recognizing the fact of the resurrection. For this reason they are more credible and they render reasonable our faith.

The Risen could have chosen to return along the streets, under the arcades of the Temple and to make himself recognized by the crowds who had seen him hanging on the cross. Instead he has singled out another method to attest himself as the eternal Living. «God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses that God had chosen beforehand» (Acts 10: 40-41). Jesus did not manifest himself to the world, but to the disciples, in order to heal them, in the first place, their incredulity which was making them blind, full of fear and paralysed.

Mary of Magdala is the first – according to the account of John – to verify the empty tomb, but she thinks that someone had taken away and hid the body of Jesus. Peter enters into the tomb, he sees the linen cloths lying on the ground and also the shroud rolled up apart and he remains astonished. The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, after having entered with Peter «saw and believed» (Jn 20:9). In order to “see” the fact in all its entity it is necessary to dispose and open the heart to embrace God’s design. The choice of the Risen to pass through witnesses to reach the whole humanity teaches us, who follow Him along the course of history, that Easter demands our personal and free adhesion. It is based upon precise historical dates indicated by the direct witnesses. Only because they have met Him “saw Him again” Risen they have passed from fear which was imprisoning them to announce Him in the public square to the point of giving their own life.

3. Faith in Christ, dead and risen is first of all a gift, the most precious gift [«This dear joy upon which every virtue is founded» as the poetical genius of Dante states (Dante, Paradise XXIV, 89-90)] which we cannot produce by ourselves, as we cannot confer life to ourselves. We can only receive it. For this reason the Church collocates the baptismal liturgy in the heart of the paschal Vigil. «You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when we were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death. But we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more» (Rm 6: 3.8-9). Imitating in Baptism the death and the resurrection of Jesus which indicates that change of life which is a gift of the Risen and anticipation of our personal resurrection. The gift of faith is for all men. Therefore, we are challenged to accept, custody and love this precious gift. Grace and liberty. Gladness for the greatest gift and an appeal to actualise it in our daily life; in this way the deep needs of our heart can be accomplished and our brother man including the sophisticated post-modern man, can encounter He who expects.

4. «Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ; let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth» (1Cor 5: 7-8). The resurrection of the Lord is, therefore, first fruit and a pledge of our resurrection. What we will be, infact, has not been completely manifested, but the resurrected Jesus will open our minds and hearts to a sure and reliable hope. «This present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into the future» (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 7).

5. The sign that our present, as that of the first disciples who met Him resurrected, is touched by the future reality is called witness. «He has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to bear witness that God has appointed him to judge everyone, alive or dead. It is to him that the prophets bear this witness: that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name» (Acts 10, 42-43). No one manages to keep for himself such a powerful gift which – as the Virgin, the Apostles and the Saints show us – overflows gratuitously from every fibre of the christian. However, to be a witness does not only, nor mainly mean to give good example, but rather to know and to communicate through our life the true news of the Resurrection.

In our days the witness (martyrion) of an increasing number of christians (in Iraq, in India and in other Eastern Counties, in Africa …) arrives to the spreading of blood. With regards to this Tertullian affirms: «We multiply ourselves every time we are reaped by you: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians [Plures efficimur quoties metimur a vobis: sanguis martyrum semen christianorum]» (Apol., 50,13: CCL 1,17). Easter intensifies the bond of communion with the martyrs and make us their humble disciples. The grace of the Risen helps us not to forget them. It urges us to proclaim in front of the whole world the power of their defenceless martyrdom and to denounce publicly the unacceptable abuse of power.

Even in the euro-Atlantic societies, willing to be plural, it has become urgent for the faithful christians to expose themselves in communicating, with humility, that the encounter with the ‘Pass’ Lord, dead and risen, appeared and ascended into heaven, is the full sense of life. The Church, our loving mother, helps us to pursue this daily.

Inevitably, from the practice of an authentic faith derives also the beneficial contribution of the christian citizens to common life. With humble frankness they should propose, not imposing, good relations at every level, and proof in every daily life virtuous practices in the sphere of affections, of work and rest. This is a contribution that, in the respect of the procedures agreed on, the christian can give to democratic life. It is a need closely connected to the faith in the Risen.

Reborn during this Easter, let us walk joyfully along the ways of the world following the Beloved Saviour of the human family. The christian, willing or not, is destined – whatever the cost, in every circumstance and in every relationship, according to the ways and the times established by the Spirit – to give witness of the universal character, valid for all men brothers, of the Easter announcement: «Surrexit Christus spes mea».

What do men and women of today long for if not such a trustful hope? Amen.

The Palm Sunday’s homily of the Patriarch His Eminence cardinal Angelo Scola given in the Basilica of Saint Mark.

1. As we have often mentioned, Holy Week, starting with this solemn celebration, is the typical week: the events that our Mother the Church makes us live on today and during the Easter Triduum give sense to time and history, enlightening the existence of each one of us and of all men of every time.
The passion of Our Lord is not a myth, but it consumes itself «under Pontius Pilate» and standing on the solid base of history. However, in the same time, the manifestation of what sorrowfully accompanies the whole history of humanity from the beginning to the end: God is beaten and held in contempt while He humbles himself to the extreme level for us and to take over himself our sins (kenosis is the total emptying of oneself).
Let us therefore com-move ourselves and get involved in the life of this Man. Truth is not a doctrine, but it is first of all this Man, the Man of sorrows who for love experiences suffering.

2. The account of the Passion according to Mark is a kind of a transcript of the events. The evangelist offers us facts, an objective narration, highly dramatic, without any reference to feelings. Through violent actions and pressing dialogues is described the fight between good – yet this Man «did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross» (Phil 2: 6-8) – and evil without excluding the tremendous blows.

3. Mark is not afraid of scandalizing us with his strong expressions. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus is afraid («and a sudden fear came over him, and great distress» Mk 14: 33), he stagers exhausted («threw himself on the ground» Vs. 35). In the account of the arrest and in the pressing events one perceives the violent fury overwhelming over him: «Even while he was still speaking, Judas one of the Twelve, came up with a number of men armed with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the scribes and the elders» (Vs. 43). In Mark’s narration, unlike that of the other synoptic Gospels, Jesus does not say anything to the traitor nor to the disciple hitting the servant of the high priest.
His silence impresses in front of the deafening clamour of evil («Several, indeed, brought false evidence against him» (Vs. 57); «And they all gave their verdict: he deserved to die. Some of »hem started spitting at him and, blindfolding him, began hitting him with their fists and shouting, “Play the prophet!” And the attendants rained blows on him» Vs. 64-65). Peter, after having followed him from a distance, terrified he persists in his betrayal («but he denied it saying: I do not know, I do not understand , what you are talking about» (Vs. 71). At the end of the scene Jesus is abandoned by all.

4. After the supplication of the Son of God crucified «My God, my God , why have you abandoned me?» (Mk 15:34), «But Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last» (Vs. 37): the life of the Saviour of the world ends with an appalling cry giving voice to the inconceivable and unspeakable injustice. Yet, it does not manage to detach Him from the relationship that connects him with the Father. Suffering, even dreadfully, which without Him is an inescapable principle of suspicion leading to hostility and separation, while with Jesus man recoups the possibility to open himself and to abandon himself totally. This firm certainty of God’s love is witnessed in the passage of Isaiah which we have just listened in the First Reading. The servant of Yahweh, prophecy of Christ the Lord – the Passion according to Mark is full of scripture quotations – is he who receives everything from the Father:- «The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear. For my part, I made no resistance, neither did I turn away… The Lord comes to my help» (Is 50; 4-7).

5. “Waste” is the measure of love. The whole Passion is under the sign of “auto-waste” of God’s love for man.
The woman anointing Jesus’ head is not called by her name. She does not pronounce one word. Her gesture speaks for her. And it was so loud that Jesus himself declares: «Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached all over the world, what she has done will be told in memory of her» (Vs. 9).The expression «in memory of he» recalls the words pronounced in the Eucharistic Supper «Do this in memory of me» and seals the forever an essential component of love.

6. «The centurion, who was standing in front of him, had seen how he had died and he said: “In truth this man was a son of God”» (Mk 15:39).
In this moment of pitch dark Jesus’ mystery is fully revealed. The witness is he who has limpid eyes and a simple heart to recognize Him and proclaim Him to all.
We beseech the Holy Virgin to accompany us in following Jesus our beloved Saviour, in this Holy Week. Amen!

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/04/05/the-truth-is-not-only-morality-is-this-man/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/04/01/drawn-in-his-sacrificial-act-the-passion-sundays-homily/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/04/01/drawn-in-his-sacrificial-act-the-passion-sundays-homily/#comments Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:34:26 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=101 “Each one of us, even the absent-minded, here summoned by the Eucharistic Sacrament of love, are involved in the heart of the action, becoming aware that we have an active part in this story which did not happen only long ago but it continues to happen in every instant. We are not spectators. Let us then identify ourselves, as much as possible, in an alert consciousness with Christ who undergoes the titanic clash between good and bad: ” I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard. I did not cover my face against insult and spittle” (First Reading). The Servant of Yahweh is the figure of Jesus…

Reading during the Procession Lk 19: 28-40
The Mass. Scripture Readings: Is 50:4-7; Psalm 22(21): 8-9.17-18.19-20. 23-24;
Phil 2: 6-11; Lk 22: 14-23,56

1. The Greatest Tragedy of history
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Gospel according to St. Luke, before the procession). Jesus enters triumphantly in Jerusalem, acclaimed as the Messiah by the crowd. However, Jesus refuses to silence his disciples as some of the furious Pharisees ask him to do: “If these keep silence the stones will cry out”. He only required a donkey stating that he needed it, as a King, and as a King he has ridden over the clocks on the road.
Yet, he knows exactly what is expecting him. Having just gone through the door of the city, a short distance away from the clocks placed on his way, from the merry waving of the palm branches, from the approved acclamations, the power of evil lies in ambush. The flight and the betrayal of his friends, solitude and anguish, the cry Crucify Him!, the mockery of the leaders of the people, his dreadful dead were expecting him…
The violent and furious opposition of evil seems to have the best over the power of good. The Gospel passage which during this celebration has been given in recitative, instead of being proclaimed, is the greatest tragedy of history; every tragedy is only the echo repeated and repeated infinitively.
Each one of us, even the absent-minded, here summoned by the Eucharistic Sacrament of love, are involved in the heart of the action, becoming aware that we have an active part in this story which did not happen only long ago but it continues to happen in every instant. We are not spectators.

2. “Christ was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross”
Let us then identify ourselves, as much as possible, in an alert consciousness with Christ who undergoes the titanic clash between good and bad: ” I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard. I did not cover my face against insult and spittle” (First Reading). The Servant of Yahweh is the figure of Jesus. In the third Canticle of the Servant according to Isaiah the lament is subdued, not as in Jeremiah and in other figures of the Old Testament; therefore a positive consent to suffering is put in evidence. Not the search of suffering, which would be inhuman, but the surrendering oneself when faced with suffering. This is a revolution not only in Israel, but in all the ancient world. On which bases can this surrendering happen? Because the Servant is sure that God is on his side: “The Lord comes to my help, so that I am not untouched by the insults. So, too, I set my face like flint; I know I shall not be shamed”(Second Reading).
And the Second Reading induces us into the heart of the appalling struggle between good and bad. Though being the Son of God, “Christ did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and become as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross”(Second Reading). “I am among you as one who serves” (Gospel).
Today’s liturgy lead us to understand the authentic focus of the whole history. In this radical lowering of himself, in this becoming obedient and accepting death on a cross the greatest and total love is accomplish, as the Pope has reminded us in his encyclical letter: “His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form” (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 12).

God does not answer to evil by opposing himself to evil front to front through the use of power, but defining it from every side through the suffering love of the Innocent par excellence. This is why in the course of history evil often seems to be winning, but at the end God destroys it. Jesus dissolves evil through his victorious redemption (John Paul II, Memory and Identity).

3. Drawn in his sacrificial act

Let us go further onto another step with Jesus. “I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Gospel). With the Last Supper Jesus initiates consciously and freely (every act of love is not human if it is not conscious and free) towards his Passion. At the ecclesial meeting of Verona last October the Holy Father has reminded us: “in the Last Supper he has anticipated and accepted death on the cross for our sake and therefore transforming death in his self-giving, the gift which gives us life, frees and saves….Giving himself to his disciples in the bread and the wine, his body and his blood, Jesus anticipates his death and resurrection”. During this celebration as well as in every Eucharist, we are drawn in the sacrificial act of Jesus. The victory of the Risen over evil becomes a commitment to each one of us. Our personal and communitarian struggle against evil becomes possible day after day through the active participation of the Self Total Gift accomplished by Jesus. Thinking over the Passion of Jesus with this conviction we will manage to deal with the evil experience as a trial, never as a defeat.

4. The itinerary of trial

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Responsorial Psalm); in the rending cry of the Psalmist every human suffering is acknowledged. The impotence of freeing ourselves from evil – starting with the dreadful experience of physical illness over which not even science can do anything, to the moral and spiritual which threat to destroy us – produces the experience of solitude and isolation. And when a man feels abandoned he is tempted by despair, “to plug off” that is to put an end to life. The Son of God who made himself obedient until death on the cross, drunk to the end the chalice of this fearful anguish to teach us the positive side: the hopeful abandonment in the arms of the Father.
Jesus, the Crucified Innocent has experienced personally the human itinerary of trial: from the feeling of being abandoned – first of all the terrible experience of the “Silence of God” – to the confident abandoning himself into the arms of the Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Gospel). This is the itinerary of Christian death – the most con-venient to man – that the Church continually proposes to every man. The Church does not propose it only through words, but through an effective witness of love which supports and encourages. This is why the Holy Father and the Pastors are tireless in recalling to everyone, but especially to the governments, the need to respect life, every life from its conception to its natural end.

5. The Dawn of Resurrection
Today, our meditation of the “Passio” would not be complete if we do not foresee the hope that pervades the whole account. The words of Jesus on the Cross: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing….” “Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise…”"Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (Gospel) illuminate something about the grace he procured by his suffering. Neither death nor evil are the last words; solely resurrection and mercy are the last words. The dawn of resurrection which can already be seen in the new humanity of those who recognize Him and follow Him. “Me, but no longer me”: this is the formula of Christian existence based on Baptism, the formula of resurrection within time, the formula of the Christian “novelty” called to transform the world” (Benedict XVI, during the ecclesial meeting of Verona).

“The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue (a better translation than ‘beginners). So that I may know how to reply to the wearied” (First Reading). The Church Mother and Teacher proclaims unceasingly and openly this fascinating vocation. Therefore, together with the affirming of the value of life, the Church upholds vigorously the sound and fecund union between a man and a woman in a family based on the sacred bond of matrimony. Every direct or indirect attempt to weaken this precious ecclesial and social cell is a wound inflicted to the whole community.

6. At the foot of the Cross, with Mary

The journey done by Saint Luke proposes again at the end, with another image, the same tragedy of the beginning: the struggle between good and bad. The two criminals hanging on the right and on the left side of Jesus represent the two alternatives given to the fallen humanity: refusing Christ (evil) or abandoning ourselves to Christ (good). This tragedy is still acted today. Let us ask Mary, the mother who has followed Him courageously until the Calvary, under the cross, to sustain us in our abandoning ourselves to Him. Let us beseech her with the incomparable words of the “Stabat Mater” with which the Church invites us to pray in these days: “I yearn to be with you under the Cross, to enjoy your companionship” Amen!

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/04/01/drawn-in-his-sacrificial-act-the-passion-sundays-homily/feed/ 0