Pope: Via Crucis, shame for our infidelities, hope that in the end good will conquer
Shame "for all the times that we bishops, priests, consecrated men and women have caused scandal and hurt Your Body, the Church, and forgotten our first love, leaving our consecration to rust.” Hope “that your church will try to be the voice that cries in the desert of humanity to prepare the way for your triumphant return, when you will come to judge the living and the dead.”
Rome (AsiaNews) - Pope Francis focused on shame and hope at the end of the Via Crucis.
"O Christ,” he said, “we come back to you again this year with eyes downcast with shame and a heart full of hope; shame for the images of devastation, destruction and shipwreck that have become commonplace; for the innocent blood shed daily by women, children, immigrants and those persecuted for the colour of their skin;” [. . .] “for the times that we too, like Judas and Peter, sold, betrayed and left you alone to die for our sins, cowards running away"; [. . .] for all the times that we bishops, priests, consecrated men and women have caused scandal and hurt Your Body, the Church, and forgotten our first love, leaving our consecration to rust.
“So much shame, Lord, but our heart is also nostalgic for the confident hope that You will not treat us according to our merits, but solely according to the abundance of your mercy; that our betrayals will not affect the immensity of your love, that your heart, maternal and paternal, will not forget us because of the hardness of our entrails”.
“Hope. The sure hope that our names are etched in your heart and that we are placed in the apple of Your eye.
“Hope that your Cross may transform our hardened hearts in hearts of flesh able to dream, forgive and love; [and] transform this dark night of the Cross in the meteoric rise of your Resurrection.
“Hope that your fidelity is not based on ours.
“Hope that the group of men and women faithful to your Cross can and will continue to remain faithful like the yeast that gives flavour and the light that opens up new horizons in the body of our wounded humanity.
“Hope that your Church will try to be the voice that cries in the desert of humanity to prepare the way for your triumphant return, when you will come to judge the living and the dead.
“Hope that good will win in spite of its apparent defeat!
“O Lord Jesus, the Son of God, innocent victim of our redemption, we kneel before your royal banner, before your mystery of death and glory, before your scaffold, ashamed and hopeful, and we ask you to wash us in the bath of blood and water that flowed from your pierced Heart, [and] forgive our sins and our guilt.
“We ask you to remember our brothers and sisters cut down by violence, indifference and war.
“We ask you to break the chains that hold us prisoners in our selfishness, in our voluntary blindness and in the futility of our worldly calculations.
“O Christ, we ask you to teach us to never be ashamed of your Cross, not to exploit it, but to honour and worship it because with it, You showed us the monstrosity of our sins, the greatness of your love, the injustice of our judgments, and the power of your mercy. Amen.”
Francis’ words were greeted by a long applause from tens of thousands of people who came together around the Colosseum, notwithstanding security checks instituted by the Italian authorities.
This Via Crucis did not follow the traditional script of 14 stations. The author of the reflections, French biblical scholar Anne-Marie Pelletier, expanded them by adding, as she told Vatican Radio, "Peter's denial and the scene in which Pilate, consulted by the Jewish authorities, also states that Christ had to be crucified. For me it was very important to remember that, in this situation, Jews and Gentiles were united in complicity in condemning Jesus to death.”
Pelletier tried to explain the extreme of God’s love that dies on the cross to defeat evil and describe the actions of some of the characters who appear in the Passion. The themes addressed echo the voices of Caterina da Siena and Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras and Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The cross was carried by Vicar General Card Agostino Vallini, the members of a Roman family, representatives of Unitalsi as well as religious and people from several countries, including Egypt, Portugal and Colombia, where the pope will make an apostolic visit this year.
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