Luke  19:28-40
Isaiah  50:4-7
Psalm  21
Philippians  2:6-11
Luke  22:14 – 23,56
 
Reflections

The beginning of Holy Week, the great week of the love to its extreme consequences (Jn 13:1), this year is marked by the narration of the passion and death of Christ told by the evangelist Luke (Gospel). That Passion is not just a story of the past: the same events are repeated today. Yesterday’s characters (Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, Pharisees, priests, Peter, Judas, the Cyrene, the pious women, the soldiers, the centurion, Joseph of Arimathaea…) are symbolic of what is happening today with regard to Christ and those who suffer, with whom He identifies himself (see Mt 25:35ff). Each person, each one of us may find him/herself to be, today, in good or evil, one or the other of the characters we meet in the passion of Christ. Today, each one of us may be, for instance, like the pious women who accompany Jesus in his suffering; or like the Cyrene, capable of carrying someone else’s burden; or like Mary at the foot of the Cross.

 
Three modern witnesses for the missionary world can certainly guide us in the understanding and celebration of the Paschal Mystery on which the Holy Week is centred. Their word is born from the personal experience of identification with Christ who died and rose again. So their witness has a universal echo: they help us to live Easter in the width and the depth that originate in the Heart of Christ.

“With eyes fixed on Jesus Christ”

St. Daniel Comboni (1831-1881), a missionary who worked intensely for the salvation of Africa, in the Rules for his Institute (1871), warmly urged the future missionaries to lovely contemplate Christ crucified so as to develop a necessary “Spirit of Sacrifice”:

«The constant thought of the great purpose of their apostolic vocation must engender in the students of the Institute the spirit of sacrifice. They will develop in themselves this most essential disposition by keeping their eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, loving him tenderly and seeking always to understand more fully the meaning of a God who died on the Cross for the salvation of souls. If they contemplate and appreciate a mystery of such great love with living faith, they will consider themselves blessed to be able to offer themselves, to lose everything and to die for him and with him.» (From the Writings of Daniel Comboni, n. 2720-2722).

 

“I am thirsty!”

The total dedication of Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) to the missionary cause originated from contemplation of the words of Jesus on the Cross: 'I am thirsty!'. Her attention to those who were lowest on the social scale was born in her through the desire to slake the thirst of Jesus.

«‘I am thirsty!’ said Jesus when, on the Cross, he was deprived of all consolation. Renew your zeal to slake his thirst in the pitiful features of the poorest of the poor: 'You did it to Me'. Never separate these words of Jesus: 'I am thirsty' and 'You did it to me'».

(Mother Teresa of Calcutta: free translation from Italian).

 

Celebrate Easter with a heart as big as the world

This is the teaching of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero (1917-1980), archbishop of San Salvador, killed while celebrating Mass in the evening of 24th March, 1980.

«Only the person who knows how to love, how to pardon, can celebrate Easter with Christ, and can bring to bear the greatest power that God has placed in the human heart: Love. The Church feels that its heart is like that of Mary, as big as the world, with no enemies and no resentments.»

(From the catecheses of Archbishop Oscar A. Romero, Holy Week 1978).

 
The Pope's words

(*)  “Since Jesus gives himself completely, then as the Risen One he can belong to all and become present to all. His Kingdom is universal. This is possible only because it is not a kingship of political power, but is based solely on the free adherence of love – a love which, for its part, is a response to the love of Jesus Christ who gave himself for all. Universality and catholicity mean that no-one can propose himself, his culture, his generation and his world as an absolute. It means that we all have to accept one another, renouncing something of ourselves. Universality includes the mystery of the cross – going beyond ourselves, obeying the communal word of Jesus Christ in the communal Church. Universality is always a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of something that is ours. Universality and the cross go together. Only thus is peace created.”

Benedict XVI

Homily of Palm Sunday, 05.04.2009

 

 In the footsteps of Missionaries

- 28/3: Bl. Christopher Wharton (+1600); 29/3: Bl. John Hambley (+1587); 31/3: Bl. Christopher Robinson (+1597) and other English priests martyred during the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

- 30/3: Bl. Ludovico da Casoria A. Palmentieri (1814-1885), a Franciscan priest and educator. Along with others he worked intensely to liberate African children from slavery.

- 30/3: St Leonard Murialdo (1828-1900), a priest from Turin, educator, founder of the Institute of the “Josephites” for the education of abandoned children.

- 31/3/1767: The expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, Portugal and their colonies in Latin America. Six years later it followed the suppression of the Company of Jesus, admirable in the evangelisation of the whole world.

- 1/4: Bl. Lodovico Pavoni (1784-1848), a priest from Brescia: a pioneer in the social field, founder, dedicated to the human, Christian and professional education of young people.

- 2/4: St. Francis of Paola (1416-1507), a hermit who lived an austere life and founded the Order of the Friars Minims.

- 2/4: Bl. Diego Luis de San Vitores (1627-1672), a Spanish Jesuit priest, and Bl. Peter Calungsod (1654-1672), a lay catechist born in the Philippines. They were both killed out of hatred of the Catholic faith and thrown into the sea near the island of Guam (Mariannes, Oceania).

- 2/4: Bl. Maria Laura Alvarado (1875-1967), lived her whole life in Venezuela. She was a foundress, dedicated to the care of orphans, old people and the poor.