A Heart of Flesh

Following the Way of the Cross tonight, Pope Benedict remarked to the crowd:

"Following Jesus on the way of His Passion," the Pope said, "we see not only His passion but that of everyone who suffers in the world. This is the profound intention of the prayers of the Via Crucis - to open our hearts and help us see with the heart."

The Fathers of the Church, said the Pope,"considered that the greatest sin of the pagan world was insensitivty and hardness of heart. That is why they loved the prophet Ezekiel, who said, 'I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.'"

To convert to Christ, he said, meant "to receive a heart of flesh, sensitive to the passion and suffering of others." "

Our God is not a remote God, who is untouchable in His beatitude. He has a heart of flesh, He took on flesh precisely to be able to suffer with us and be with us in our sufferings. He became man to give us a heart of flesh and reawaken in us the love for the suffering and the needy."

Earlier in the day at St. Peter's Basilica the Pope began ths service prostrate:

I could be wrong, but the carpet looks much like the one that Pope John Paul's coffin rested on at his funeral.

He held up the cross for veneration (a very good image with St. Helena in the background):

Then removed his shoes, to venerate the cross:

Good Friday

Divine Mercy Novena Begins Today

St. Faustina recounts that Jesus asked not only for a Feast of Divine Mercy, which the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II declared during his pontificate (and ironically died on two years ago on April 2nd--the Feast is movable, this year will be celebrated on April 15th), but also that Our Lord asked that a novena (nine days of prayer) to be prayed by the faithful starting on Good Friday and ending on the Feast of Divine Mercy (the Second Sunday of Easter).


I explain the history of this novena as well as include the prayers for it in The Church's Most Powerful Novenas. Thankfully, you can now search inside this book to sample not only that novena, but other unique novenas such as Mother Teresa's "express or quick novena"--when you don't have nine days to wait for an answer (like all the novenas in the book the history behind it is also included).


The Divine Mercy Novena is a beautiful way to begin the Easter season by reflecting upon the great love that God has for us, expressed by Jesus on the cross. The prayers dictated to St. Faustina by Jesus--express His love for all of us for whom He died and reminds us that none of us, no matter how far we think we have fallen are outside of the reach of His love, forgiveness--His Mercy.

Way of the Cross Meditations

The full text here, but here is the tenth, Jesus is Nailed to the Cross:

MEDITATION

It was merely a rocky spur, called Golgotha in Aramaic and, in Latin, Calvary, “the Skull”, perhaps because of its physical appearance. On that peak rise three crosses, the crosses of men sentenced to death, two “criminals”, probably anti-Roman revolutionaries, and Jesus. The last hours of Christ’s earthly life begin, hours marked by the rending of his flesh, the dislocation of his bones, progressive asphyxia, interior desolation. These are hours that demonstrate the complete solidarity of the Son of God with human beings who suffer and slowly die.

A poet[33] once said: “The thief on the left and the thief on the right / felt only the nails driven into their hands. / But Christ felt the pain offered for salvation, / his side torn open, his heart run through. / It is his heart that burned. / His heart consumed by love.” Truly, all around that cross there seem to echo the words of Isaiah: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. He makes himself an offering for sin”[34]. The outstretched arms of that mangled body want to draw to themselves the entire horizon, embracing humanity, “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings”[35]. For this was his mission: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself”[36].

* * *

Beneath that dying body files the crowd, anxious to “view” a ghastly spectacle. It is a scene of superficiality, crass curiosity, thrill-seeking. A picture in which we can also see a society like our own, which looks for stimulation and excess as if they were a kind of drug capable of arousing a sluggish soul, an unfeeling heart, a darkened mind.

Beneath that cross there is also cold hard cruelty, that of the leaders and the soldiers who in their ruthlessness are even capable of profaning suffering and death by their mockery: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” They are unaware that their words of sarcasm and the official title above the cross – “This is the King of the Jews” – are full of truth. Certainly, Jesus does not come down from the cross in a sudden dramatic turnabout: he does not desire servile obedience based on miracles, but a faith that is free, a love that is authentic. And yet, in his abject humiliation and in the very powerlessness of his death, he opens the door to glory and life, and reveals himself as the true Lord and King of history and of the world.

New Gator Football Schedule Announced by Foley

PROPOSED FUTURE GATOR FOOTBALL SCHEDULE*

August 30, 2007 Ohio State Away
Sept 6, 2007 Ohio State Home
Sept 13, 2007 Ohio State Away
Sept 20, 2007 Ohio State Away
Sept 27, 2007 Ohio State Home
Oct 1, 2007 Off date
Oct 15, 2007 Ohio State Home
Oct 21, 2007 Ohio State Away
Nov 5, 2007 Ohio State Home
Nov 12, 2007 Ohio State Home
Nov 21, 2007 Ohio State Away
Dec 4, 2007 Ohio State Away
Dec 11, 2007 Ohio State Home

Holy Thursday

From Asia News Italy:

Jesus, probably “celebrated the Passover without the lamb” , in so far as the Last Supper may have taken place before the moment in which , according to Hebrew tradition the lambs were sacrificed, and above all because He himself became the voluntary sacrificial victim, by offering His life as a gift for the salvation of mankind.

These reflections on the how and when the Last Supper took place, coupled with others on the meaning and value of the celebration, featured in the Pope’s celebration of the “In Coena Domini” Mass, which took place this evening in the basilica of St John Lateran, during which Benedict XVI carried out the rite of the washing of the feet.

Benedict XVI’s commemoration of Our Lord’s Last Supper, which opens the Easter Tridium, re-evoked the Jewish tradition of Passover, “a celebration of thanksgiving and at the same time of hope. At the centre of the memorial feast, ordered according to strict liturgical rules, was the lamb as a symbol of liberation from the slavery of Egypt”.

Yet still, “the nation suffered as a small population caught up in the tensions between great powers. Their grateful memorial of God’s intervention on their behalf in the past, transformed itself into a pleading prayer and expression of hope; come and bring to an end what you have begun! Gift us ever lasting freedom. The night before his passion Christ shared this feat of multiple meanings with his disciples. In this context we must understand the new Easter, which he gifted to us in the Blessed Sacrament”.

The theologian Pope then recalled that “In the evangelist’s accounts of this event there seems to be a contradiction between the version as told by John and those of Mathew, Mark and Luke. According to John, Christ died on the cross at the exact moment when in the temples nearby, the lambs were being slaughtered for the Pascal feast. His death coincides with the sacrifice of the lambs. That however means that he died on the eve of Passover and therefore could not personally celebrate the Pascal feast – this at least is what seems to be. According to the other three evangelists Our Lord’s last supper was a traditional Pascal feast into which he inserted the novelty of the gift of His body and blood. Until very recently this contradiction seemed irresolvable. Most of the exegetes were of the opinion that John did not want to give us the exact, historic date of Christ’s death, but had instead chose a symbolic date to highlight the one profound truth: Jesus is the true Lamb of God who shed his blood for us”.

“In the meantime the discovery of the Qumran writings has led us to a possible and convincing solution that, while not accepted by all, possesses a great degree of probability. We are now able to say that John’s account of the passion is historically precise. Christ really did shed his blood on the eve of the Passover at the hour of the slaughter of the lambs. However he celebrated Passover with his disciples according to the Qumran calendar, therefore at least one day earlier – he celebrated it without lamb, as according to the traditions of the Qumran community, which did not recognise Herod’s temple and was waiting for a new temple. Christ therefore celebrated Passover without the lamb: no, - not without the lamb: in place of the lamb he gifted his body and blood. Thus He anticipated the death with his words: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own”. At the very moment He gives his body and blood to the disciples, He really is bringing his words to be. He himself offers His life. Only in this way does the ancient Passover obtain true meaning”.

“Thus –concluded the Pope – at the very heart of Christ’s new Easter is the cross. From the cross comes His gift to us. His body and His blood. In the blessed Eucharist, we celebrate together with the Apostles, down through the centuries, our new Easter. This gift comes from Christ’s cross”.

Excerpt from Pope's New Book on Jesus

From Papa Razi Forum:

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10,25-37)

In the center of the story of the Good Samaritan is man's fundamental question. It was a doctor of the law - a master of exegesis - who asked it of the Lord: "Rabbi, what should I do to gain eternal life?" (10,25).

Luke adds that the doctor asked the question to put Jesus to the test. He himself, as a doctor of the law, knew the answer the Bible gives to that question, but he wanted to see what this prophet, who was not a Biblical scholar, would say about it.

The Lord simply refers him back to the Scripture that his interlocutor knows and lets him answer his own question. The doctor of laws answers by precisely citing Deuteronomy 6,5 and Leviticus 19,18: "Love the Lord God with all your heart, all your spirit, all your strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself" (Lk 10.27).

On this question, Jesus does not teach things differnt from the Torah, whose entire meaning is contained in this double commandment. But now, this learned man, who knew the answer to his own question, had to justify himself further: The word of the Scripture is not in question, he says, but how it should be applied in life raises many questions that are debated in the schools (and even in life itself).

The question is: Who is our 'neighbor'? The usual response, based on Scriptural texts, says 'neighbor' means 'fellow national(tribesman)".

The people make up a fraternal community, in which everyone has a responsibility to the other, in which every individual is supported by the whole, and therefore should consider the other
"as himself" - part of that whole which assigns him a vital space.

Then what about strangers, those who belong to another 'people', aren't they 'our neighbors'? Scriptures exhorted the Jews to love even strangers, reminding them that in Egypt, the people of Israel had lived as foreigners. But where to place limits remained a matter for discussion.

In general, only the foreigner who lived on the land of Israel was considered to belong to the fraternal community. But other concepts of 'neighbor' were also widespread.

A rabbinical declaration taught that one did not have to consider heretics, traitors and apostates as 'neighbors' (Jeremias, p. 170). Moreover, it was taken for granted that the Samaritans, who a few years earlier (6-9 AD) had contaminated Temple Square on Jerusalem by scattering bones during the Paschal season (Jeremias, p 171), were not 'neighbors.'

So, to the question phrased in such a concrete manner, Jesus responded with the parable of the man who was attacked by brigands on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and abandoned by the wayside, stripped of everything and half dead.

It is a very realistic story because on that road, similar attacks occurred regularly. Along the road now came a priest and a Levite - both knowledgeable of the Law, experts on the great question of salvation, the service of which was their profession - and passed him by.

They probably were not necessarily cold-hearted. Maybe they were afraid themselves and were in a hurry to reach the city; maybe they were inexperienced and did not know where to begin to give first aid - especially since, it seemed there wasn't very much one could do to help at this point.

Next came a Samaritan, probably a merchant who had to travel this stretch of road often and evidently knew the owner of the nearest inn. A Samaritan - one who did not belong to the fraternal community of Israel and who was not expected to see his 'neighbor' in the man who had been attacked by brigands.

We must remember that in the preceding chapter, the evangelist had narrated how Jesus, on the way to Jerusalem, had sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village where they wanted to prepare lodgings for Him: "But they did not want to receive Him because he was going to Jerusalem" (9,52f).

Infuriated, the Sons of Thunder, James and John, said to Jesus: "Lord, do you want us to tell them that a fire from heaven will descend to consume them?" The Lord reproved them, and they later found lodging in another village.

And now comes this Samaritan. What would he do? He did not ask himself what were the limits of his obligation of brotherhood, nor what were the merits necessary to gain eternal life. Something else happens. His heart breaks. The Gospel uses a word which in Hebrew means the matrrnal womb and maternal dedication.

To see the victim in that condition hit him 'in the gut', in the depth of his soul. "He felt compassion for the man," is the present-day translation, which weakens the original vividness of the text. Because of the flash of mercy that he feels in his soul, he becomes the 'neighbor', beyond any question or any danger. And so the question has changed: it no longer consists of establishing who among other men is my neighbor and who is not. It now concerns my own self. I become the neighbor, for whom the other is 'as myself.'

If the question had been, "Is the Samaritan my neighbor, too?", then in the given case, the answer would have been a clear No. But Jesus turns the question around: the Samaritan, the foreigner, considers himself the neighbor, and shows me that I myself, in my being, should learn what it means to be a neighbor, and that I already have the answer within me. I should become a person who loves, a person whose heart is open to being moved in the face of another person's need. Then I will find my neighbor; or better still, he will find me.

Helmut Kuhn, in his interpretation of this parable, goes beyond the literal sense of the text but nonetheless correctly defines the radicalness of its message when he writes: "The political love of friends is founded on the equality between partners. Instead, the symbolic parable of the Samaritan underscores a radical imparity: the Samaritan, who does not belong to the people of Israel, finds himself in front of the other, an anonymous individual, (it is) he who will aid this helpless victim of an attack.

"Agape, the parable lets us know, goes beyond any type of political order dominated by the principle of 'do ut des', replacing it, and characterizing itself thereby as something supernatural. In principle, agape does not just go beyond such orders but it overturns them: the first shall be the last (cfr Mt 19,30)(P 88f).

"One thing is evident. (The parable) manifests a new universality based on the fact that I, within myself, am already a brother to all whom I meet and who may need my help."

The actual relevance of the parable is obvious. If we apply it to the dimensions of the globalized society, then we will see how the people of Africa who have been robbed and pillaged concern us intimately. We will see how much they are our neighbors. We will see how our lifestyle, the history in which we are involved, has despoiled them and continues to despoil them. This includes above all how much we have harmed them spiritually.

Instead of giving them God, the God who is near to us in Christ, and gathering from their traditions all that is precious and great and bringing them to fulfillment, we have brought them the cynicism of a world without God, in which only power and profit count. We have destroyed their moral criteria so that corruption and the will to power become obvious ends. And this does not apply to Africa only.

Yes, we should give material aid and we should examine the life we lead. But we always give too little when we only give materially. Don't we see around us the man who is stripped and beaten? The victims of drugs, of human trafficking, of sexual tourism, persons whi have been damaged within, who are empty amid the abundance of material goods.

All this concerns us, and calls on us to have the eyes and the heart of a neighbor, and the courage to love our neighbor. Because, as we said earlier, the priest and the Levite went by perhaps more out of fear than indifference.

Let us learn anew, beginning with our intimate self, the risk of doing good, of which we will be capable only if we ourselves become 'good' inside, if we are 'neighbors', and if we have the ability to identify - within our immediate circle to the widest extension of our life - what type of service is required of us, what we can do, and therefore what responsibility is given to us.

The Fathers of the Church gave the parable a Christological reading. Someone may say: this is an allegory, an interpreetation that goes far from the text. But if we consider that in all the parables, the Lord invites us, always in a different way, to have faith in the kingdom of God, that kingdom which is He Himself, then a Christological interpretation is never completely wrong.

In a certain sense, (the interpretation) corresponds to a potential that is intrinsic in the text, the fruit that develops from its seed. The Fathers saw the parable in the dimension of universal history.

The man who lies by the roadside half dead and stripped - is he not an image of Adam, of man in general, who truly 'has fallen victim to brigands'?

Is it not true that man, this creature who is man, in the course of his whole history, has found himself alienated, tortured and abused? The great mass of humanity has almost always lived under oppression.

On the other hand, are the oppressors the true image of man, or are they not the first deformed ones, a degradation of man?

Karl Marx has described man's 'alienation' in a drastic way: Even if he never touched the true depth of alienation because he was only concerned with the material sphere, he nevertheless provided us an image of man who has fallen victim to brigands.

Medieval theology interpreted the two adjectives in the aprable about the victim as fundamental anthropological statements. Of the victim of an ambush, one says, he was stripped (spoliatus); and that he had been beaten close to death (vulneratus; cfr Lk 10,30).

Scholars refer to this two participles as the double dimension of man's alienation. They say of man that he is 'spoliatus supernaturalibus e vulneratus in naturalibus' - stripped of the splendor of supernatural grace, which had been given to him as a gift, and injured in his nature.

Now, this is an allegory that certainly goes far beyond the sense of the words, but it represents an attempt to identify the double nature of the wound on humanity.

The road between Jericho and Jerusalem thus appears as the image of universal history, and the man who lies half-dead by the roadside is an image of mankind.

The priest and the Levite pass him by - as the story tells us - which means that culture and religion alone do not bring any salvation.

And if the victim of the ambush is the image par excellence of mankind, then the Good Samaritan could only be the image of Jesus Christ.

God himself, who is, for us, the stranger far removed, has come along to take care of His wounded creature. God the remote has become, in Christ, 'our neighbor.' He pours oil and wine on our wounds - a gesture in which one sees an image of the saving gifts of the sacraments - and he brings us to the inn, the Church, where we can be cared for, and He pays for our care in advance.

We can calmly leave aside the single features of the allegory, which are different for each of the Fathers. But the great vision of man who lies alienated and helpless by the roadside of history, and of God himself, who in Jesus Christ, and became his neighbor - that we can safely keep in mind as the profound dimension of the parable which concerns us directly.

The powerful imperative contained in the parable is not thereby weakened, but rather brought to its total grandeur. The great theme of love, which is the true culmination of the text, reaches its greatest breadth.

Now, indeed, we must take note that we are all 'alienated' and needful of redemption. Now we must take note that we all need the gift of God's own redeeming love so that we too can become persons who love. We will always need God to be our neigbor, so that we in turn can be neighbors to our fellowmen.

The two figures that we have discussed concern each one of us: every person is 'alienated', estranged from love (which is the essence of that 'supernatural splendor' of which we have been stripped). Every person must first be healed and provided with that gift.

But then, every person too must become a good Samaritan - we must follow Christ and become like Him. Then we will live rightly. We will love rightly if we become like Him, who loved us first (cfr Jn 4,19).