1. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk 24:5).

These words of the two men dressed “in dazzling apparel” rekindle the hope of the women who had rushed to the tomb at the break of dawn. They had experienced the tragic events culminating in Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary; they had felt the sadness and the confusion. In the hour of trial, however, they had not abandoned their Lord.

They go secretly to the place where Jesus was buried in order to see him again and embrace him one last time. They are moved by love, that same love that led them to follow him through the byways of Galilee and Judea, all the way to Calvary.

What blessed women! They did not yet know that this was the dawn of the most important day of history. They could not have known that they, they themselves, would be the first witnesses of Jesus’ Resurrection.

2. “They found the stone rolled away from the tomb” (Lk 24:2).

So narrates the evangelist Luke, adding that, “when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (cf. 24:3). In one brief moment, everything changes. Jesus “is not here, but has risen”. This announcement, which changed the sadness of these pious women into joy, re-echoes with changeless eloquence throughout the Church in the celebration of this Easter Vigil.

A singular Vigil of a singular night. A Vigil, the mother of all vigils, during which the whole Church waits at the tomb of the Messiah, sacrificed on the Cross. The Church waits and prays, listening again to the Scriptures that retrace the whole of salvation history.

But on this night, it is not darkness that dominates but the blinding brightness of a sudden light that breaks through with the starling news of the Lord’s Resurrection. Our waiting and our prayer then become a song of joy: “Exultet iam angelica turba caelorum . . . Exult, O chorus of Angels!”

The perspective of history is completely turned around: death gives way to life, a life that dies no more. In the Preface we shall shortly sing that Christ “by dying destroyed our death, by rising restored our life”. This is the truth that we proclaim with our words, but above all with our lives. He whom the women thought was dead is alive. Their experience becomes our experience.

3. O Vigil imbued with hope, you fully express the meaning of the mystery! O Vigil rich in symbolism, you disclose the very heart of our Christian existence! On this night, everything is marvellously summed up in one name, the name of the Risen Christ.

O Christ, how can we fail to thank you for the ineffable gift which, on this night, you lavish upon us? The mystery of your Death and Resurrection descends into the baptismal waters that receive the old, carnal man and make him pure with divine youthfulness itself.

Into the mystery of your Death and Resurrection we shall shortly be immersed, renewing our baptismal promises; in a special way, the six catechumens will be immersed in this mystery as they receive Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist.

4. Dear Brother and Sister Catechumens, I greet you with all the warmth of my heart, and in the name of the Church gathered here I welcome you with brotherly affection. You come form different nations: Japan, Italy, China, Albania, the United States of America and Peru.

Your presence here in Saint Peter’s Square is indicative of the variety of cultures and peoples who have opened their hearts to the Gospel. On this night death gives way to life for you too, as for all the baptized. Sin is erased and a new life begins. Persevere to the end in fidelity and love. And do not be afraid when difficulties arise, for “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom 6:9).

5. Yes, dear Brothers and Sisters, Jesus lives and we live in him. For ever. This is the gift of this night, which has definitively revealed to the world the power of Christ, Son of the Virgin Mary, whom he gave to us as Mother at the foot of the Cross.

This Vigil makes us part of a day that knows no end. The day of Christ’s Passover, which for humanity is the beginning of a renewed springtime of hope.

“Haec dies quam fecit Dominus: exsultemus et laetamur in ea - This is the day that the Lord has made: let us rejoice in it and be glad”. Alleluia!

[Pope John Paul II, homily at the Easter Vigil 14 April 2001]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6). What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10). Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; Jesus is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you dear sister, for you dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness... and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive! Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.

3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look. But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: remember. “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8). This is the invitation to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms, to the beautiful surprises of God. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day, dear brothers and sisters, not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.

[Pope Francis, homily at the Easter Vigil 30 March 2013]

FIRST MEDITATION

With increasing insistence one hears in our time about the death of God. For the first time, in Jean Paul, it is only a nightmarish dream: the dead Jesus announces to the dead, from the roof of the world, that on his journey into the afterlife he has found nothing, neither heaven nor merciful God, but only infinite nothingness, the silence of the gaping void. It is still a horrible dream that is put aside, groaning in awakening, like a dream, even though one will never be able to erase the anguish suffered, which was always lurking, gloomy, in the depths of the soul. A century later, in Nietzsche, it is a deadly seriousness that expresses itself in a shrill cry of terror: 'God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" Fifty years later, it is spoken of with academic detachment and preparations are made for a 'theology after the death of God', we look around to see how we can continue, and we encourage people to prepare to take God's place. The terrible mystery of Holy Saturday, its abyss of silence, has thus acquired an overwhelming reality in our time. For this is Holy Saturday: the day of God's concealment, the day of that unprecedented paradox that we express in the Creed with the words 'descended into hell', descended into the mystery of death. On Good Friday we could still look upon the pierced. Holy Saturday is empty, the heavy stone of the new tomb covers the deceased, all is past, faith seems to be definitively unmasked as fanaticism. No God saved this Jesus posing as his Son. One can be reassured: the cautious who had previously been a little hesitant in their hearts as to whether perhaps it might be different, were instead right.

Holy Saturday: day of God's burial; is not this in a striking way our day? Does not our century begin to be one big Holy Saturday, the day of God's absence, in which even the disciples have a chilling emptiness in their hearts that grows wider and wider, and therefore prepare themselves full of shame and anguish to return home and set off gloomy and broken in their despair towards Emmaus, not realising at all that he who was believed dead is in their midst?

God is dead and we have killed him: did we really realise that this phrase is taken almost literally by Christian tradition and that we often repeated something similar in our viae crucis without realising the tremendous gravity of what we were saying? We have killed him, enclosing him in the stale shell of habitual thoughts, exiling him in a form of piety without the content of reality and lost in the round of catchphrases or archaeological preciosities; we have killed him through the ambiguity of our lives, which has spread a veil of darkness over him as well: for what could have made God more problematic in this world if not the problematic nature of his believers' faith and love?

The divine darkness of this day, of this century that is increasingly becoming a Holy Saturday, speaks to our conscience. We too have to deal with it. But in spite of everything it has something consoling about it. The death of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time an expression of his radical solidarity with us. The darkest mystery of faith is at the same time the clearest sign of a hope that has no boundaries. And one more thing: only through the failure of Good Friday, only through the silence of death on Holy Saturday, could the disciples be brought to an understanding of what Jesus really was and what his message really meant. God had to die for them so that he could truly live in them. The image they had formed of God, in which they had tried to force him, had to be destroyed so that through the rubble of the ruined house they could see heaven, he himself, who always remains the infinitely greater. We need God's silence in order to experience anew the abyss of his greatness and the abyss of our nothingness that would open up if he were not there.

There is a scene in the Gospel that anticipates in an extraordinary way the silence of Holy Saturday and thus appears once again as the portrait of our historical moment. Christ sleeps in a boat that, battered by the storm, is about to sink. The prophet Elijah had once mocked the priests of Baal, who in vain cried out for their god to let fire descend on the sacrifice, urging them to cry out louder, just in case their god was asleep. But is God not really asleep? Does not the prophet's mockery ultimately also touch the believers of the God of Israel who travel with him in a sinking boat? God is sleeping while his things are about to sink, is this not the experience of our life? Does not the Church, the faith, resemble a small boat about to sink, struggling futilely against the waves and the wind, while God is absent? The disciples cry out in extreme despair and shake the Lord to wake him up, but he is astonished and rebukes their little faith. Is it any different for us? When the storm has passed, we will realise how much our little faith was laden with foolishness. And yet, O Lord, we cannot help but shake you, God who is silent and asleep, and cry out to you: wake up, do you not see that we are sinking? Awaken us, do not let the darkness of Holy Saturday last for ever, let a ray of Easter fall on our days too, accompany us as we set out in despair towards Emmaus so that our hearts may light up at your nearness. Thou who hast led in hidden ways the ways of Israel to be at last a man with men, do not leave us in the dark, do not let thy word be lost in the great waste of words of these times. Lord, give us your help, for without you we will sink.

Amen.

SECOND MEDITATION

God's hiding in this world constitutes the true mystery of Holy Saturday, a mystery already hinted at in the enigmatic words that Jesus "descended into hell". At the same time, the experience of our time has offered us a completely new approach to Holy Saturday, for the concealment of God in the world that belongs to him and that should with a thousand tongues proclaim his name, the experience of the powerlessness of God who is nevertheless the Almighty - this is the experience and misery of our time.

But even if Holy Saturday in this way has come closer to us, even if we understand the God of Holy Saturday more than the powerful manifestation of God amid thunder and lightning, of which the Old Testament speaks, the question of knowing what is really meant when it is said mysteriously that Jesus "descended into hell" remains unsolved. Let us say it with all clarity: no one can really explain it. Nor does it become any clearer by saying that here hell is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word shêol, which simply means the whole realm of the dead, and thus the formula would originally only mean that Jesus descended into the depths of death, really died and participated in the abyss of our destiny of death. For the question then arises: what really is death and what actually happens when we descend into the depths of death? We must pay attention here to the fact that death is no longer the same thing after Christ has undergone it, after he has accepted and penetrated it, just as life, the human being, are no longer the same thing after in Christ human nature was able to come into contact, and indeed did come into contact, with God's own being. Before, death was only death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit with different depths, something like 'hell', the nocturnal side of existence, impenetrable darkness. Now, however, death is also life, and when we cross the glacial solitude of death's threshold, we always meet again with the One who is life, who wanted to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal loneliness of his anguish in the Garden of Olives and his cry on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", became a sharer in our solitudes.

If a child were to venture alone into the dark night through a forest, he would be afraid even if he were shown hundreds of times that there is no danger. He is not afraid of something definite, to which a name can be given, but in the darkness he experiences insecurity, the orphan condition, the sinister character of existence itself. Only a human voice could console him; only the hand of a loved one could drive away the anguish like a bad dream. There is an anguish - the real anguish, lurking in the depths of our loneliness - that cannot be overcome through reason, but only through the presence of a person who loves us. For this anguish has no object to which we can give a name, but is only the terrible expression of our ultimate loneliness. Who has not felt the frightening sensation of this condition of abandonment? Who would not feel the holy and consoling miracle that a word of affection arouses in these circumstances? Where, however, there is such loneliness that can no longer be reached by the transforming word of love, then we speak of hell. And we know that not a few men of our time, apparently so optimistic, are of the opinion that every encounter remains on the surface, that no man has access to the ultimate and true depth of the other and that therefore in the ultimate depth of every existence lies despair, indeed hell. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this poetically in one of his dramas and at the same time expounded the core of his doctrine on man. One thing is certain: there is a night in whose dark abandonment no word of comfort penetrates, a door that we must pass through in absolute solitude: the door of death. All the anguish of this world is ultimately the anguish caused by this loneliness. That is why in the Old Testament the term for the realm of the dead was identical to the term for hell: shêol. Death in fact is absolute solitude. But that solitude that can no longer be illuminated by love, that is so deep that love can no longer access it, is hell.

"Descended into hell": this Holy Saturday confession means that Christ has passed through the door of solitude, that he has descended into the unreachable and insuperable depths of our condition of loneliness. This means, however, that even in the extreme night in which no words penetrate, in which we are all like children cast out, weeping, there is a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes us and leads us. Man's insuperable loneliness was overcome from the moment he found himself in it. Hell has been conquered from the moment that love has also entered the region of death and the no-man's-land of solitude has been inhabited by him. In its depths man does not live by bread, but in the authenticity of his being he lives by the fact that he is loved and allowed to love. From the moment when the presence of love is given in the space of death, then life penetrates death: to your faithful, O Lord, life is not taken away, but transformed - the Church prays in the funeral liturgy.

No one can ultimately measure the extent of these words: 'descended into hell'. But if we are once given to approach the hour of our ultimate solitude, we will be allowed to understand something of the great clarity of this dark mystery. In the certain hope that in that hour of extreme loneliness we will not be alone, we can already now presage something of what is to come. And in the midst of our protest against the darkness of God's death we begin to become grateful for the light that comes to us from this very darkness.

THIRD MEDITATION

In the Roman breviary, the liturgy of the sacred triduum is structured with special care; the Church in its prayer wants, so to speak, to transfer us into the reality of the Lord's passion and, beyond words, into the spiritual centre of what happened. If one were to attempt to mark the prayerful liturgy of Holy Saturday in a few lines, then one would have to speak above all of the effect of profound peace that transpires from it. Christ has penetrated into concealment (Verborgenheit), but at the same time, in the very heart of impenetrable darkness, he has penetrated into security (Geborgenheit), indeed he has become the ultimate security. By now the psalmist's bold word has become true: and even if I wanted to hide in hell, you are there too. And the more one goes through this liturgy, the more one sees shining in it, like a morning dawn, the first lights of Easter. If Good Friday places before our eyes the disfigured figure of the pierced man, the liturgy of Holy Saturday draws rather on the image of the cross dear to the ancient Church: the cross surrounded by rays of light, a sign, in the same way, of death and resurrection.

Holy Saturday thus reminds us of an aspect of Christian piety that has perhaps been lost in the course of time. When we look at the cross in prayer, we often see in it only a sign of the Lord's historical passion on Golgotha. The origin of the devotion to the cross, however, is different: Christians prayed to the East to express their hope that Christ, the true sun, would rise over history, to express therefore their faith in the return of the Lord. The cross is at first closely linked with this orientation of prayer, it is represented as a banner, so to speak, that the king will raise in his coming; in the image of the cross, the advanced point of the procession has already arrived in the midst of those who pray. For early Christianity, the cross is thus above all a sign of hope. It implies not so much a reference to the Lord past, as to the Lord who is to come. Certainly it was impossible to escape the intrinsic necessity that, with the passage of time, our gaze should also turn to the event that took place: against every flight into the spiritual, against every misrecognition of the incarnation of God, it was necessary to defend the unimaginable prodigality of God's love who, out of love for the wretched human creature, became a man himself, and what a man! It was necessary to defend the holy foolishness of God's love, who chose not to utter a word of power, but to tread the path of powerlessness in order to pillory our dream of power and overcome it from within.

But then have we not forgotten a little too much about the connection between cross and hope, the unity between the East and the direction of the cross, between past and future that exists in Christianity? The spirit of hope that hovers over the prayers of Holy Saturday should once again penetrate our entire being as Christians. Christianity is not only a religion of the past, but, to no lesser extent, of the future; its faith is at the same time hope, since Christ is not only the dead and the risen, but also the one who is to come.

O Lord, enlighten our souls with this mystery of hope so that we may recognise the light that is radiated by your cross, grant us that as Christians we may go forward into the future, towards the day of your coming.

Amen.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of death Thou hast made light; in the abyss of deepest loneliness dwells now forever the mighty protection of Thy love; in the midst of Thy hiddenness we can now sing the hallelujah of the saved. Grant us the humble simplicity of faith, which does not allow itself to be misled when Thou callest us in the hours of darkness, of abandonment, when everything seems to appear problematic; grant us, in this time in which a mortal struggle is being fought around Thee, sufficient light so that we may not lose Thee; sufficient light so that we may give it to those who need it even more. Let the mystery of Thy paschal joy, as the dawn of the morning, shine in our days; grant that we may be truly paschal men in the midst of the Holy Saturday of history. Grant that through the bright and dark days of this time we may always with glad hearts find ourselves on the way to Thy future glory.

Amen.

[Pope Benedict, excerpt from "The Sabbath of History"; https://www.sabinopaciolla.com/benedetto-xvi-il-mistero-terribile-del-sabato-santo/]

Today we have an impression of oblivion, of the Lord.

The pit seems to be able to hide and silence Him, so much so that there is no need to contest him - it would be enough to neglect or pity him.

Instead, we want to meditate again on the revolution of Christ and his new Light, to recognize it as ours, assimilate and live it - right from the roots of being and on our journey.

God's Silence is part of Revelation: Glory and Life which correspond to us; in a democratic, multifaceted, not one-sided way.

Silence that respects our ‘flower’.

Thus, amidst the ups and downs of our lives as well, here is the laying and the mysterious plotting of ‘seeds’ - a whole series of alternatives:

A different Face of God, creator and redeemer of our intelligence and freedom; educator never sullen - nor dominator ready to unleash reprisals.

Not sovereign who governs by enacting laws, but Parent who transmits his own Life.

We do not meet Him by rising and forcing, for it is He who ceaselessly proposes, reveales Himself, and Comes.

He does not stand “at the head” and you at the back; he does not place himself above while you remain below.

It does not put itself “in front” so that someone is destined to fall behind [with the strongest, quickest and most organised ones always close, with no possibility of turnover and replacement].

An activity of denunciation of false religion: that of repetitive fulfilments - and of fixed or too sophisticated, disembodied ideas - beneath a cloak of plagiarism, fear, intimidation.

The Lord is righteous, for He understands us. Let's banish empty, futile, dissipative manners.

Whoever finds himself socially constrained is never himself and cannot love, as he’s conditioned; overwhelmed one by comparisons and external needs.

A new authenticity of woman and man, no longer identified in roles and characters to be played and compared, but autonomous and realized by a personal Call.

Not attracted ones by the combination of culture-devotion-power-interest, but fascinated by the Wisdom that dwells in every slight and small Uniqueness.

So free and unambitious, they can willingly stoop to the less fortunate. Without intimate dissociation.

A new face of society, one that is neither competitive nor the prerogative of the cunning, interest groups, or circles, but characterised by the exchange of ‘gifts’.

Conviviality of the differences that accentuates and lets life flourish, of each and every one.

In short, we are not a typology of eternal failures.

The Father  wants people who travel towards themselves, and dreams a humanizing Family.

Lovable, because He doesn’t absorb our energies, but rather transmits them.

Holy Saturday, Burial of the Lord [April 19, 2025]

Do you seek Jesus the Crucified? (Mt 28:5).

This is the question the women will hear when, "at dawn on the first day of the week" (Mt 28:1), they come to the tomb.

Crucified!

Before the Sabbath he was condemned to death and expired on the cross crying: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46).

So they laid Jesus in a tomb, in which no one had yet been laid, in a tomb lent by a friend, and they went away. They all departed, in haste, to fulfil the rule of the religious Law. For they were to begin the feast, the Passover of the Jews, the memory of the exodus from the slavery of Egypt: the night before the Sabbath.

Then the Easter Sabbath passed and the second night began.

2. And behold, we have all come to this temple, as have so many of our brothers and sisters in the faith to the various temples throughout the globe, that holy night may descend upon our souls and hearts: the night after the Sabbath.

You are here, sons and daughters of the Church that is in Rome, sons and daughters of the Church that is spread across countries and continents, guests and pilgrims. Together we experienced Good Friday: the Stations of the Cross among the remains of the Colosseum - and the adoration of the Cross until the moment when a large stone was rolled over the door of the tomb - and a seal was put on it.

Why have you come now?

Do you seek Jesus Crucified?

Yes. We seek Jesus Crucified. We look for him on this night after the Sabbath, which preceded the arrival of the women at the tomb, when they with great astonishment saw and heard: "He is not here..." (Mt 28:6).

We have therefore come early, already late in the evening, to keep vigil at his tomb. To celebrate the Easter Vigil.

And we proclaim our praise on this wonderful night, pronouncing with the deacon's lips the "Exsultet" of the vigil. And we listen to the sacred readings, which compare this one night to the day of Creation and especially to the night of the exodus, during which the blood of the lamb saved the first-born sons of Israel from death and brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And then in the moment of renewed threat the Lord led them out to dry in the midst of the sea.

Let us therefore keep vigil on this unique night at the sealed tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, knowing that all that has been foretold by the Word of God throughout the generations will be fulfilled on this night, and that the work of man's redemption will reach its zenith on this night.

Let us therefore keep vigil, and though the night is deep, and the tomb sealed, let us confess that the Light has already been kindled in it, and it walks through the darkness of the night and the darkness of death. It is the light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

3. We have come to immerse ourselves in his death; both we who long ago received the Baptism that immerses in Christ, and also those who will receive Baptism on this night. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith; hitherto they were catechumens, and this night we can welcome them into the community of the Church of Christ, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith and in the community of the Church, and they come from different countries and continents: Korea, Japan, Italy, Nigeria, Holland, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo.

We greet them cordially and joyfully proclaim the "Exsultet" in honour of the Church, our Mother, which sees them gathered here in the full light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

And let us proclaim with them the praise of the baptismal water, into which, through Christ's death, the power of the Holy Spirit has descended: the power of the new life that gushes forth for eternity, for eternal life (cf. Jn 4:14).

4. So even before dawn breaks and the women arrive at the tomb from Jerusalem, we have come here to seek Jesus Crucified,

for: "Our old man was crucified with him, so that... we would no longer be slaves to sin..." (Rom 6:6);

for: we do not consider ourselves "dead to sin, but living for God, in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:11): "As for his death, he died to sin once for all; but now by the fact that he lives, he lives for God" (Rom 6:10);

for: "Through Baptism we ... have been buried together with him in death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in a new life (Rom 6:4);

for: "If we have been completely united with him by a death like his, we shall also be completely united with him by his resurrection" (Rom 6:5);

for we believe: that "if we have died with Christ... we shall also live with him" (Rom 6:8);

and because we believe that "Christ risen from the dead, he no longer dies; death no longer has power over him" (Rom 6:9).

5. That is precisely why we are here. That is why we keep vigil at his tomb.

Let the Church keep vigil. And watch over the world. The hour of Christ's victory over death is the greatest hour in history.

[Pope John Paul II, homily at the Easter Vigil 18 April 1981]

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

[Pope Francis, homily at the Easter Vigil 30 March 2013]

Palm Sunday (year C) [13 April 2025].

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. Let us enter Holy Week with Jesus welcomed in Jerusalem and let us prepare ourselves in the Easter Triduum to follow him on the path of passion death and resurrection. 

*First reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah (50:4-7)

This text is taken from the part of the book of Isaiah that collects the so-called 'Servant Songs', which are particularly important for two reasons: first, because of the message Isaiah wanted to convey to his contemporaries, and because they were applied by the early Christians to Christ, although Isaiah was certainly not thinking of Jesus when he wrote this text probably in the 6th century BC during his exile in Babylon. To the people exiled under very harsh conditions, who were in danger of succumbing to great discouragement, he reminds them that Israel is the servant of God sustained and nourished every morning by the Word, but persecuted because of their faith and, in spite of everything, able to withstand every trial. He clearly describes the extraordinary relationship that unites with his God the Servant (Israel) whose main characteristic is listening to the Word, 'the open ear', as Isaiah writes. Listening to the Word, letting oneself be instructed by it, means living in trust. Listening is a word that in the Bible means trusting, because there are two attitudes between which our existence continually oscillates: trust in God, serene abandonment to His will because we know from experience that His will is only good; or mistrust, suspicion of divine intentions and rebellion in the face of trials, a rebellion that can lead us to believe that He has abandoned us or, worse, that He can find satisfaction in our suffering. All the prophets repeat this invitation: 'Listen, Israel' or 'listen today to the Word of God'. On their lips, the exhortation 'listen' is an invitation to trust in God, whatever happens. In this regard, St Paul will explain that God makes everything contribute to the good of those who love and trust him (cf. Rom 8:28) because out of every evil, difficulty, trial, he knows how to draw good; out of every hatred, he opposes an even stronger love; in every persecution, he gives the strength of forgiveness; out of every death, he gives birth to life. The whole Bible is the narration of the story of a mutual trust: God trusts his servant and entrusts him with a mission; in return, Israel accepts the mission with trust. And it is this trust that gives him the strength to resist all the opposition he will inevitably encounter. In this text, the mission consists in being able to "address a word to the challenged" by testifying to the faithfulness of the Lord who gives the necessary strength and the appropriate language. Indeed, it is the Lord himself who nourishes this trust, the source of all boldness in the service of others: "The Lord God opened his ear to me and I did not resist, I did not draw back".  Everything then becomes a gift: the mission, the strength and the trust that makes one unwavering. This is the characteristic of the believer: recognising that everything is a gift from God. When he then makes the permanent gift of the Lord's strength bear fruit, the believer is able to face everything, even persecution, which is never absent, and indeed every authentic prophet who speaks on behalf of God is rarely recognised and appreciated in life.Isaiah invites his contemporaries to resist: the Lord has not forsaken you, on the contrary, he has entrusted you with his mission and do not be surprised if you are mistreated because the Servant who listens to the Word of God and puts it into practice, certainly becomes uncomfortable and with his conversion provokes others: some listen to his call, others reject him and, in the name of their good reasons, persecute him. This is why the Servant draws strength only from the One who enables him to face everything: "I have presented my back to the scourgers, my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard ... the Lord God assists me so I will not be shamed". Isaiah then uses a common expression in Hebrew: 'for this I make my face hard as stone' which expresses determination and courage; not pride or conceit, but pure confidence because he knows where his strength comes from.  Jesus is a perfect portrait of the Servant of God at the heart of persecution and also at the moment when the acclamations of the Palm Sunday crowd marked and accelerated his condemnation. St Luke takes up exactly this expression when he writes 'Jesus hardened his face to go to Jerusalem' (Lk 9:51), which in our translations becomes 'Jesus resolutely took the road to Jerusalem'.

*Responsorial Psalm from Psalm 21(22) (2:8-9,17-20,22b-24)

Psalm 21/22 holds some surprises, starting with the opening words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", much quoted, which, taken out of context, is misinterpreted. To understand its true meaning, one must read the entire psalm, composed of thirty-two verses, which closes with a thanksgiving: "I will proclaim your name to my brothers, I will praise you in the midst of the assembly". He who in the first verse cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" thanks God in the end for the salvation he has received. Not only has he not died, but he gives thanks precisely because God has not forsaken him. At first glance, this psalm seems to be written for Jesus: "They have dug out my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones," a clear allusion to the crucifixion he experienced under the cruel eyes of the executioners and the crowd: "A pack of dogs surrounds me, a band of evildoers encircles me...they mock me who see me...they divide my garments, on my tunic they cast lots." Actually, it was not written for Jesus Christ, but composed for the exiles who had returned from Babylon, and it compares their deliverance to the resurrection of a condemned man, since the exile was a real death sentence for Israel who ran the risk of being erased from history. Now he is compared here to a condemned man who risked death on the cross, a torture that was very common at the time: he suffered outrages, humiliation, the nails, abandonment in the hands of the executioners, but miraculously emerges unharmed. In other words: having returned from exile, Israel indulges in the joy he proclaims to all, shouting louder than when he wept in his anguish. The reference to the crucifixion is thus not the focus of the psalm, but serves to emphasise the thanksgiving of Israel, which in the midst of its anguish never ceased to cry out for help and never doubted for a moment. The great cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is certainly a cry of anguish in the face of God's silence, but it is not a cry of despair, nor does it express doubt; rather, it is the prayer of one who suffers and dares to cry out his pain. How much light this psalm sheds on our prayer in times of suffering of any kind: we have the right to cry out, and the Bible encourages us to do so. Returning from exile, Israel remembers the past pain, the anguish, the apparent silence of God when he felt abandoned in the hands of his enemies, yet he continued to pray. Prayer is clear evidence of his constant trust; he kept remembering the Covenant and the benefits he had received from God. In its entirety, this psalm resembles an 'ex-voto' as when one is in grave danger, one prays and makes a vow and, when grace is obtained, fulfils the promise by taking the ex-voto to a church or shrine.  Psalm 21/22 describes the horror of the exile, the anguish of Israel and Jerusalem besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, the sense of helplessness in the face of men's hatred that provokes an ardent supplication: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' and finally gratitude to God for one's salvation: 'I will proclaim your name to my brothers, I will praise you in the midst of the assembly. Praise the Lord you his faithful".  Palm Sunday does not include the last verses, but we hear them often in the liturgy: "The poor shall eat and be satisfied, they shall praise the Lord who seek him; your hearts shall live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to the Lord; all the families of the peoples shall bow down before you ... They shall proclaim his righteousness; to the people that are born they shall say, 'Behold the work of the Lord'."

*Second Reading from the Second Letter of St Paul to the Philippians (2:6-11)

This text is often called the Hymn of the Letter to the Philippians, because one gets the impression that Paul did not write it in his own hand, but quoted a hymn in use in the liturgy. First of all, note the insistence on the theme of the Servant: "he emptied himself by assuming the condition of a servant": the first Christians, faced with the scandal of the cross, often meditated on the Servant Songs contained in the book of Isaiah, because they offered food for thought for understanding the mystery of the person of Christ. "Christ Jesus, though he was in the condition of God, did not consider it a privilege to be like God". It is tempting to read: although he was in the condition of God, although in reality, it is the other way around, and one must therefore read: 'precisely because he was in the condition of God, he did not consider it a privilege to be like God'. One of the dangers of this text is the temptation to read it in terms of reward, as if the reasoning were: Jesus behaved admirably and therefore received an extraordinary reward. Grace, as its very name suggests, is gratuitous, but we are always tempted to speak of merits. The wonder of God's love is that He does not wait for our merits to fill us; this is the discovery that the men of the Bible made through Revelation. Therefore, to be faithful to the text, we must read it in terms of gratuitousness. We risk misunderstanding it if we forget that everything is God's gift, everything is grace, as Teresa of the Child Jesus used to say. The gratuitous gift of God is for St Paul an obvious truth, a conviction that permeates all his letters, so obvious that he does not even feel the need to reiterate it explicitly, so that we can summarise his thought in this way: God's plan, the design of his mercy is to make us enter into his intimacy, his joy and his love, an absolutely gratuitous plan. There is nothing surprising in this, since it is a project of love, a gift to be accepted: it is participation in the divine life, indeed with God, everything is a gift. One excludes oneself from this gift when one assumes an attitude of pretension, if one behaves like the progenitors in the Garden of Eden who appropriated the forbidden fruit. Jesus, on the contrary, did nothing more - "becoming obedient" - than welcome God's gift without demanding it. "Although he was in the condition of God, he did not consider it a privilege to be like God" and it is precisely because he is of divine condition that he does not claim anything. He knows what gratuitous love is, he knows that it is not right to claim, he does not consider it good to claim the right to be like God. It is the same situation as in the episode of the temptations (see the gospel of the first Sunday of Lent): Satan proposes to Jesus only things that are part of God's plan, but Jesus refuses to appropriate them by his own strength. because he wants to entrust himself to the Father so that He can give them to him. The tempter provokes him: "If you are the Son of God, you can afford everything, your Father cannot refuse you anything: turn stones into bread when you are hungry... throw yourself down from the temple, he will protect you... worship me, and I will give you dominion over the whole world". Jesus, however, expects everything from God alone: he has received the Name that is above every other name, the Name of God. For to say that Jesus is Lord is to affirm that he is God. In the Old Testament, the title 'Lord' was reserved for God and so was genuflection 'that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend'. Here is an allusion to a passage from the prophet Isaiah: "Before me every knee shall bow, let every tongue proclaim, 'Jesus Christ is Lord!' shall swear an oath" (Is 45:23). Jesus lived in humility and trust; trust that St Paul calls obedience. To obey, in Latin 'ob-audire', literally means to put the ear (audire) before (ob) the word: it is the attitude of perfect dialogue, without shadows, it is total trust.  The hymn concludes: 'Let every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Glory is the revelation of infinite love made person. In other words, we too, like the centurion, seeing Christ love us supremely, accepting to die to reveal to us how far God's love goes, proclaim, 'Yes, indeed, this was the Son of God'... because God is love.

* Gospel. Passion of Jesus Christ according to St Luke (22.14 - 23.56)

Every year, for Palm Sunday, the account of the Passion returns in one of the three synoptic gospels; this year, it is that of Luke and I confine myself to commenting on the episodes proper to this gospel. While it is true that the four Passion narratives are similar, when one takes a closer look, one realises that each evangelist has particular accents, and this is because they are all witnesses to the same event and they each recount the events from their own point of view, and the Passion of Christ is recounted in four different ways: they do not all choose the same episodes and phrases. Here, then, are the episodes and words that we find only in Saint Luke. 1.After the Last Supper, before going to Gethsemane, Jesus had foretold to Peter his triple denial. In truth, all the gospels narrate this, but only Luke records this sentence of Jesus: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has sought you out to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. And thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren" (22:32). A gentleness of Jesus, which will help Peter after his betrayal to get up again instead of despairing. Again only Luke notes the gaze Jesus casts on Peter after his denial: three times in succession, Peter states that he does not know him in the high priest's house. Immediately afterwards Jesus, turning around, fixed his gaze on Peter and here we hear the echo of the first reading where Isaiah writes: 'The Lord God has given me a disciple's tongue, that I may speak a word to the distrustful'. This is what Jesus wants to do with Peter, to comfort him in advance so that when he denies him he does not fall into despair. Another episode in this gospel is Jesus before Herod Antipas. At Jesus' birth, Herod the Great reigned over the whole territory under the authority of Rome, but at his death (in 4 BC.), the territory was divided into several provinces, and at the time of Jesus' death (in the year 30 AD), Judea, i.e. the province of Jerusalem, was ruled by a Roman procurator, while Galilee was under the authority of a king recognised by Rome, who was a son of Herod the Great: his name was Herod Antipas, who had long wanted to meet Jesus and hoped to see him perform a miracle. Now he asks him many questions, but Jesus remains silent. Herod insults and taunts him by having him clothed in a shining mantle and sends him back to Pilate, strengthening the friendship between Herod and Pilate that day. 

2.There are then three sentences that we find only in Luke's Passion narrative. Two words of Jesus and, if Luke notes them, it is because they reveal what is important to him: the first is his prayer while the Roman soldiers are crucifying him: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'. But what are they doing? They have expelled the Holy One par excellence from the Holy City; they have cast out their God, putting the Master of life to death; the Sanhedrin, the court of Jerusalem, has condemned God in the name of God. And what does Jesus do instead? He forgives his enemies by showing how far God's love goes. He who has seen me has seen the Father, Jesus had said the day before. The second sentence: 'Today with me you will be in Paradise'. If you are the Messiah, he is mocked by the leaders... If you are the king of the Jews, he is mocked by the Roman soldiers... If you are the Messiah, he is insulted by one of the two evildoers crucified with him. The other crucified with him begins to tell the truth: we deserve this punishment but not Jesus, and turns to Jesus: 'remember me when you enter your kingdom'. He recognises Jesus as the Saviour, he invokes him with a humble and trusting prayer: he seems to have understood everything. Finally, only Luke reports this last sentence: "Already the Sabbath lights were shining" (23:54) thus concludes the Passion narrative with an insistent evocation of the Sabbath. He speaks of the women who had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee and now went to the tomb to observe how he had been buried, bringing aromas and perfumes for the burial rites. The lights of the Sabbath were already shining: everything ends on a note of light and peace: the Sabbath is a foreshadowing of the world to come, the day on which God had rested from all the work of creation (cf. Genesis); the day on which, out of fidelity to the Covenant, the Scriptures were scrutinised in anticipation of the new creation. Luke makes us understand that in the labour of Christ's Passion the new humanity was born, which is the beginning of the kingdom of grace. The risen crucified one shows the way forward: the way of love and forgiveness at any cost.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

5th Sunday in Lent (year C) [6 April 2025]

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us. Tomorrow, Wednesday 2 April, will be the 20th anniversary of the death of St John Paul II. We remember him in prayer, invoking his protection and intercession.

*First Reading From the book of the prophet Isaiah (43:16-21)

At first glance, this text consists of two mutually contradictory parts: the first is a reference to the past, to leaving Egypt, while in the second, the prophet exhorts us to leave the past behind. But which past is it? Let us try to better understand by examining these two parts one after the other. The incipit is as always solemn: "Thus says the Lord" to introduce words of great importance which are immediately followed by the reference to the famous passage in the sea, the miracle of the Sea of Rushes during the Hebrews' flight from Egypt: "The Lord opened a way in the sea and a path in the midst of mighty waters". The reference to the memorable night of the deliverance from Egypt narrated in chapter 14 of the book of Exodus always returns. In the first reading, Isaiah offers further details: "the Lord brought forth chariots and horses, army and heroes at once, and they all lay dead and never rose again, they went out like a lamp. God saved his people by destroying the Egyptians and it is interesting to note that Isaiah uses the name 'Lord' (the Tetragrammaton YHVH), a name that qualifies the God of Sinai as the deliverer of his people. Here is God's work in the past that constitutes the source of hope for Israel's future, and Isaiah points out: 'Behold, I do a new thing'. To understand what this is all about and to whom the prophet foretells a new world, we need to go back to the historical context. The deuteroIsaiah, whom we are reading here, lived in the 6th century BC, during the exile in Babylon (from 587 to 538 BC), a period marked by a terrible trial: deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who had defeated the small kingdom of Judah of which Jerusalem was the capital, the Jews hoped one day to escape from Babylon, but there were serious difficulties because they had to cross the Syrian desert, hundreds of kilometres long and in terrible conditions for fugitives. The prophet therefore has the difficult task of restoring courage to his contemporaries: he does so in this book called the Book of the Consolation of Israel, because chapter 40 begins: 'Console, console my people, says your God'. And when he says: 'your God' he recalls the Covenant that was never broken because God did not abandon them. In fact, one of the formulas of the Covenant was: 'You shall be my people and I will be your God' and whenever the expression my God or your God is echoed, the possessive is an encouraging reminder of the Covenant and, at the same time, a profession of faith. Isaiah intends to keep the exiles' hope alive by reminding them that God has not only not abandoned them, on the contrary, he is already preparing their return to their homeland. Nothing can be seen yet, but it will happen and why is it certain? Because God is faithful to his Covenant and since he chose this people he has never ceased to deliver them and keep them alive, through all the vicissitudes of their history. He has freed them from Pharaoh; he has protected them all along the way; he made them pass through the sea dry when they came out of Egypt.Israel's hope thus rests on its past: this is the meaning of the word 'memorial', constant remembrance of God's work that continues today, and from this we derive the certainty that it will continue into the future. Past, present, future: God is always present alongside his people. This is one of the meanings of God's name: 'I am', that is, I am with you in all circumstances. And precisely during the difficult period of exile, when there was the risk of giving in to despair, Isaiah develops a new metaphor, that of the sprout: "Behold, I am doing a new thing: right now I am sprouting, do you not notice?" Starting from the extraordinary experience of a tiny seed capable of becoming a great tree, it is easy to understand how the word "sprout" has become in Israel and today for us a symbol of hope, and it is important to learn to recognise the sprouts of the new world, the Kingdom that God is building.

*Responsorial Psalm [125 (126)]

 This psalm echoes the first reading, where the prophet Isaiah announces the return of the people exiled in Babylon and sings of this miracle just as the Jews had sung of the prodigy of the exit from Egypt. These are the events: in 587 BC. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had conquered Jerusalem and deported the population, but, in turn, was defeated by Cyrus, king of Persia well known for his successes. Nebuchadnezzar's troops pillaged, plundered, raped, massacred and devastated, systematically deporting the population. Cyrus, on the other hand, adopted a completely different policy: he preferred to rule over prosperous peoples and allowed all deported populations to return to their homelands by providing the means to do so. And so, having conquered Babylon in 539 B.C., he allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem as early as 538 B.C., also granting them economic aid and even returning the objects looted from the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers.

The psalm does not say 'when the king of Persia Cyrus restored the lot of Zion' but 'when the Lord restored the lot of Zion', a way of affirming that God remains the Lord of history who pulls all the strings and therefore there is no other god - again a nod to the fight against idolatry. This psalm, probably written long after the return from exile, evokes the joy and excitement of liberation and return. How many times during exile did one dream of this moment! When it was realised, one almost dared not believe it: 'When the Lord restored the lot of Zion, it seemed to us as if we were dreaming ... our mouths were filled with a smile, our tongues with joy'.  One even imagines that the other peoples are also amazed by this miracle: "Then it was said among the nations: 'The Lord has done great things for them'. In this sentence, two elements emerge: an infinite gratitude for the gratuitousness of God's choice and the chosen people's awareness of having been chosen for the world: their vocation is to be witnesses of God's work, an awareness matured precisely during exile. In the psalm, astonishment at God's choice is expressed with the words: 'great things', that is, God's work of deliverance, particularly the liberation from Egypt. Words like feat, work, great things, wonders, which are often found in the psalms, are always a reference to the Exodus. Here, a new work of God's deliverance is added: the end of the exile experienced by the people as a true resurrection. To express this, the psalmist uses two images: The streams in the desert: "Restore, Lord, our lot, like the streams in the Negheb", desert south of Jerusalem, where myriads of flowers bloom in spring. The other image is the seed: 'he who sows in tears, will reap in joy'. the sown grain seems to rot and die... but when the ears sprout, it is like a rebirth, an eloquent image because the return of the exiles meant a true rebirth for the land as well. A final observation: when the return from the Babylonian exile is sung in this psalm, it had already taken place a long time ago, but Israel does not speak of the past just to recount it, but to communicate a message and a teaching for the future: this return to life, historically placed, becomes a reason to hope for other future resurrections and deliverances. Every year, during the Feast of Tents in the autumn, this song was sung during the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As the pilgrims ascend, they sing of the deliverance that has already taken place and pray to God to hasten the day of final deliverance, when the promised Messiah will appear. Even today, there are many places of slavery, many 'Egypt' and 'Babylon'. This is what we think of when we sing: "Restore, Lord, our lot like the streams in the Negheb", asking for the grace to collaborate with all our strength in the work of liberation inaugurated by the Messiah, in order to hasten the day when the whole of humanity can sing: "Great things the Lord has done for us".

*Second Reading from the Letter of St Paul the Apostle to the Philippians (3:8-14)

 St Paul uses the image of running, and we know how important the goal and the desire to reach it is for every person. Here the Apostle speaks of himself: "I know only this: forgetting what lies behind me and reaching out to what lies ahead, I run towards the goal, to the prize that God calls us to receive up there in Christ Jesus. To run towards this same goal and obtain the promised prize, one must turn one's back on many things, as St Paul did when he felt conquered by Christ. The Greek verb he uses (katalambano) means to grasp, to seize, to take by force, and expresses the way in which he was completely transformed from a persecutor of Christians into an apostle of the gospel (Acts.9) when Christ literally took possession of him on the road to Damascus. St Paul presents his Christian faith as a natural continuation of his Jewish faith because Christ fully realises the expectations of the Old Testament by ensuring its continuity with the New Testament. Here, however, he insists on the newness that Jesus Christ brings: 'I consider everything to be a loss because of the sublimity of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. The knowledge of Christ brings radical newness because one truly becomes a 'new creature', as he writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, which we read last Sunday (2 Cor 5:17-21). Now he says it in another way: "For him I have given up all these things and consider them rubbish in order to gain Christ and be found in him". In other words: what previously appeared important in my eyes, that is, an advantage and a privilege, I now reject altogether. The advantages of which he speaks were the pride of belonging to the people of Israel, the faith and unshakeable hope of that people, the assiduous and scrupulous practice of all the commandments that he calls obedience to the law of Moses. But now Jesus Christ has taken all the space in his life and he possesses the greatest good, the only true wealth in the world, the true treasure of human existence: to know Christ. Knowing in biblical language does not mean intellectual knowledge but living in intimacy with someone, loving him and sharing his life. Paul insists on this bond with Christ because in the community of Philippi some Christians of Jewish origin wanted to impose circumcision on all Christians before baptism and this created great division as we read in the second reading of the second Sunday of Lent. This issue was resolved by the Apostles at the First Council in Jerusalem by affirming that in the New Covenant, the Law of Moses has been superseded and baptism in the name of Jesus makes us children of God so circumcision is no longer indispensable to be part of the people of the New Covenant. Paul also speaks here of "communion" with Christ's sufferings, of being conformed to his death in the hope of attaining the resurrection from the dead, grafted into him in order to follow his same path: "communion with his sufferings, making me conform to his death". 

Note: St Paul invites us to live like Christ and to accept all the risks of proclaiming the Gospel, but can we say, like him, that the only good for us is the knowledge of Christ and everything else is but rubbish? The word rubbish that is used here translates the Greek word skubala, which has a very strong meaning that can be translated in several ways: as waste, refuse, dry excrement and filth, rotten and spoiled food residue. In short, a total rejection of everything, when one knows Christ and is possessed by him.

*From the Gospel according to John (8:1-11)

We are already in the context of the Passion and the first line mentions the Mount of Olives. Since the evangelists only mention it in the last days of Jesus' public life and the Pharisees want to set a trap for him here, this makes it clear that it has now been decided to try and condemn him. That is why every detail of this text must be carefully examined because it is not a simple episode in Jesus' life, but the very heart of his mission.  At the beginning Jesus is seated as a teacher: "all the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them". However, the question of the scribes and Pharisees immediately puts him in the position of judge and Jesus is the only seated person. This detail helps us to understand that the theme of judgement, in St John, is central: the episode of the adulterous woman implements what he writes at the beginning of his gospel: "God sent the Son into the world, not to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). We are faced with a mock trial because the issue is clear: the adulterous woman was caught in the act and there are witnesses; the Law of Moses condemns adultery as one of the commandments given by God on Sinai (Thou shalt not commit adultery, Ex 20:14; Deut 5:18); Leviticus prescribes the death penalty: "If anyone commits adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death" (Lev 20:10). The scribes and Pharisees, who question Jesus, are as always very attached to the Law of Moses, but they forget to add that the Law provides for the condemnation of both offenders, the man and the adulterous woman. The fact that despite knowing this, no one remembers it, shows that the real issue is not the observance of the Law, but something else, and the text says it clearly: "They said this to test him and to have reason to accuse him". It is therefore a trap-question and what do they want to accuse Jesus of? Jesus cannot approve of the stoning because it would contradict the whole preaching on mercy; if, however, he publicly defends the woman, he can be accused of inciting the people to disobey the Law. In John's Gospel (chapter 5), we have already seen him tell the healed paralytic to take his bed, an act forbidden on the Sabbath. They failed to condemn him that day, but this time the disobedience would be public. After all, despite the apparent respect with which they call him 'Master', Jesus is in as much danger as the adulterous woman: both risk death. Jesus does not immediately respond: "He stooped down and began to write with his finger on the ground". With his silence, a constructive silence, he invites each one to reflect without humiliating anyone, and he, the incarnation of mercy, does not put the scribes and Pharisees or the adulterous woman in difficulty: he wants each one to take a step forward by trying to reveal to the Pharisees and scribes the true face of the God of mercy. When he responds, he does so almost by posing a question: 'Let him who is without sin among you cast the stone at her first'. At this point they all leave, "one by one, beginning with the elders". Nothing surprising: the elders appear to be the ones most ready to listen to the call to mercy. Who knows how many times they have experienced God's mercy on them... How many times they have read, sung, meditated on the verse: "God of tenderness and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in love" (Ex 34:6). How many times have they recited Psalm 50(51): "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your mercy, in your great goodness blot out my sin". Now they can understand that their lack of mercy is a fault, a lack of faithfulness to the God of the Covenant. Jesus' statement may have led them to this reflection: 'Let him who is without sin among you cast the stone first'. Being the first to throw the stone was an expression known to all in the context of the fight against idolatry. The Law did not say that it had to be the witness of adultery who threw the first stone; but it did say so expressly for the case of idolatry (Deut 13:9-10; Deut 17:7). Thus Jesus' reply can be interpreted as: "This woman is guilty of adultery, in the literal sense of the word, it is true; but are you not committing an even more serious adultery, an unfaithfulness to the God of the Covenant? The prophets often speak of idolatry in terms of adultery.  In the end, only Jesus and the woman remain: it is the face-to-face, as St Augustine says, between misery and mercy. For her, the Word once again fulfils his mission, speaking the word of reconciliation. Isaiah, speaking of the servant of God, had announced it: 'He will not break a cracked reed, he will not quench a smouldering wick...' (Is 42:3). But this is not goodism because Jesus clearly tells the woman to sin no more, sin remains condemned, but only forgiveness can enable the sinner to be reborn to hope.

Note: What does Jesus write on the ground? The evangelist does not specify, and this has given rise to various interpretations: Some Church Fathers, such as St Augustine, speculate that Jesus was writing down the hidden sins of those who accused the woman. This is why, one by one, they go away; It refers to the Mosaic Law: according to a rabbinic interpretation, it could refer to Jeremiah 17:13: "Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the Lord, the source of living water." If so, Jesus would be indicating that the accusers themselves are guilty of unfaithfulness to God. It could be a symbolic act of detachment; writing in the dust could symbolise that the accusations against the woman are ephemeral, destined to fade away; it could indicate a call to patience and reflection; finally, it could be a way of not responding immediately, prompting the accusers to reflect on their hypocrisy.

Jesus' gesture invites us to shift our attention not to the guilt of others, but to our own conscience. No one can condemn another without first examining himself. This episode teaches us that God's mercy exceeds human condemnation, and that forgiveness is always possible when there is a heart willing to change. 

The first reading and this Sunday's Gospel have the same message: forget the past, don't get attached to it... nothing, not even memories, should stop you from moving on. In the first reading, Isaiah speaks to the people in exile... in the Gospel, Jesus speaks to a woman caught in the act of adultery: apparently, two very different cases, but the message is the same: turn your gaze firmly towards the future, no longer think about the past.

+Giovanni D'Ercole