104. Fifth Saturday of Lent

Meditations no. 150 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Contemplate our Lord’s Passion in a special way during these days.

Until recently we have been accompanying Jesus Christ along the roads and through the villages. During these past weeks, we have seen two of his greatest miracles: the raising of Lazarus, and the cure of the man born blind. We have also heard from his lips the divine words telling us of his love for souls, of his desires to give himself up for them: I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!

Jesus walks more hurriedly towards Jerusalem. He knows that the Cross awaits him there. In fact, during these days the chief priests and Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people …” So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death.

From our Lord’s attitude, and the hatred of the Jews, the disciples could sense that the end was approaching. Let us also go, that we may die with him, Thomas said. And St Mark narrates that Jesus was walking ahead of them, and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.

It is only natural to tremble when faced with sacrifice and suffering. But now we have a clearer picture, through the eyes of faith, than the disciples had. The drama of Calvary is now a historical fact. We are well aware of the immense fruit that Christ’s Passion gained for us. We have more reasons for wanting to unite ourselves to our Lord’s sacrifice through our own personal participation, in order to be sanctified by it and to co-redeem with him.

So let us make the resolution to redouble our efforts to follow Christ more closely on the road to Calvary. It will be easier for us to do so if we try to contemplate him step by step, through the liturgy of these days leading up to the Crucifixion. In thinking about Christ’s Death, we find ourselves invited to take a good hard look at our everyday activities and to be serious about the faith we profess. Holy Week cannot be a kind of “religious interlude”; time taken out from a life which is completely caught up in human affairs. It must be an opportunity to understand more profoundly the Love of God, so that we’ll be able to show that love to other people through what we do and say.

Faith and a spirit of prayer and penance to make this contemplation fruitful.

The meaning of the Cross can only be understood by someone who looks at it with faith. Then what was a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles turns into the holy altar where Jesus Christ became, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

It is not easy to have a faith that is always operative and ardent. We read in the Gospel how our Lord reproached the Jews for their blindness: If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? And he adds the reason for this inability of theirs to see things in a supernatural way: He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. St Gregory comments: Let each ask himself if he has received in his heart the words of God, and he will know where he is from.

The Truth himself commands us to long for our heavenly home, to despise the glory of this world, to give of our own possessions, and not to covet what belongs to others. Therefore let each look into himself carefully to see if this word of God is valued in his heart, and he will know whether he belongs to God … Go over your lives in conscience then, my dearest brethren, and after serious reflection, fear those words that are uttered by the lips of Truth: “The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God.”

Faith alone is not enough to understand the full meaning of what Jesus tells us from the Cross. We must prepare our spirit through prayer and penance. Therefore, St Leo the Great says, the present days demand even greater devotion because of their proximity to the sublime mysteries of divine mercy. For this reason, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the holy Apostles ordered more rigorous fasts to be kept during these days so that, in being united to Christ’s Cross, we might also suffer something of what he suffered for us.

This supernatural acceptance of suffering was, precisely, the greatest of all conquests. By dying on the Cross Jesus overcame death. God brings life from death. The attitude of a child of God is not one of resignation to a possibly tragic fate; it is the sense of achievement of someone who has a foretaste of victory. In the name of this victorious love of Christ, we Christians should go out into the world to be sowers of peace and joy through everything we say and do.

Let us contemplate and relive the scenes of Holy Week slowly and lovingly.

During this week which Christians traditionally call Holy Week, we are given another chance to reflect on and to relive the last hours of Jesus’ life. Let us contemplate Jesus Christ in his immeasurable suffering and follow him along the difficult path he is now treading.

We can draw great profit from considering how God deigned to lower himself so much and suffer so greatly on our behalf in order to teach us all virtue. St John Chrysostom recommends: Let us always read the Lord’s Passion. What splendid gain and great profit we shall obtain from it! For when you see how they jeeringly pretend to adore him and make him an object of scorn, and then, after mocking him, how they strike him on the face and torture him to the last, even if you were harder than stone, you would become softer than wax, and cast all pride out of your soul.

We should react like the Apostles, who ended up dying for the love of Jesus Christ. We should react like the saints. The saints, you tell me, would burst into tears of sorrow at the thought of the Passion of our Lord. Whereas I…

Perhaps that is because you and I witness the scenes, but do not live them.

We should strive to relive Jesus’ Passion during these days, following our Father’s teachings. How would we behave if we saw our parents being unjustly accused, ill-treated, if they were imprisoned through no fault of their own? Surely we would go and console them; we’d show them our affection by keeping them company; we’d make it plain to them that we didn’t believe the accusations against them; and we’d be prepared to fight so that truth prevailed.

Well, this is exactly what we have to do for God. We need to let our hearts react: to see and live the Passion, to offer our backs when they scourge him, to offer our heads for the crown of thorns.

This is how we should live through Holy Week. All the things brought to our mind by the different expressions of piety which characterize these days are of course directed to the Resurrection, which is, as St Paul says, the basis of our faith. But we should not tread this path too hastily, lest we lose sight of a very simple fact which we might easily overlook. We will not be able to share in our Lord’s Resurrection unless we unite ourselves with him in his Passion and Death. If we are to accompany Christ in his glory at the end of Holy Week, we must first enter into his holocaust and be truly united with him, as he lies dead on Calvary.

From this contemplation of the suffering of Jesus, we will draw great supernatural strength. Wherever the Death of Christ is present, sin cannot reign. The Cross is of such strength that if we place it before our eyes and keep it faithfully in our minds, so that our soul lovingly contemplates Christ’s very Death, no evil desire or passion, no anger or envy, can remain.

Holy Week is approaching. May we learn how to be like the Most Holy Virgin at the foot of the Cross with her eyes fixed on her Son.