THAN ONE WEEK
There is still called "Semana Santa", but it has disappeared almost completely the climate as "special" these days that was felt among us with the elimination of cinemas and shows, holding processions and religious programming on radio and TV Today there are many who take advantage of these dates to move away from home and enjoy a short break in a quiet corner. Somehow, Holy Week is to be for many such "spring break" to allow further work until the summer break. This new social climate
vacation and rest does not have to prevent believers a worthy celebration of the central mysteries of his faith. The important thing is to learn to live Holy Week responsibly combining intelligent that much needed break with the celebration of the liturgy alive. Here are some suggestions.
The first is scheduled so that we can take part in celebrations for each day. It is not difficult approach a church environment, to inform us of the times, to stop our trip in the right place. It is always a rewarding experience to share their faith with people of other nations.
will participate in celebrations simple, but shot through with deep popular piety and liturgy live kept in a monastery. The important thing is our personal involvement. Hence the convenience of being on time for the celebration, have an appropriate place in the temple, listen carefully to the Word of God within, to live the liturgical gestures, singing with the heart.
Maybe we can also find a place for silence, prayer and meeting God. We help you rest more harmonious and complete. The possibilities are endless: silent prayer before the tabernacle on the evening of Thursday, relaxed reading of the Passion of the Lord in a sheltered home, grateful eyes to the crucifix, the concert sacred or religious music that lifts our hearts to God. Holy Week has always culminate in the celebration of Easter on Saturday night. It is a shame to see that many Christians who celebrate the days before the Lord's death, unaware of the celebration of his resurrection, the most important and central to all Christian worship.
rediscover its deep content can be for many a rejuvenating experience.
The paschal candle lit in the middle of the night, the solemn invitation to experience the joy of Easter, the joyous proclamation of the resurrection of Christ, the joyful singing of the Alleluia, the thankful celebration of the Eucharist, are the best invitation to resurrect a new life.
you download NO CROSS
As the Gospel account, which passed before the crucified Jesus mocked him, laughing at his suffering, he made two suggestions sarcastic: If you are the Son of God " save yourself "and" get down from the cross. " That is exactly our reaction to suffering: to save ourselves, just thinking of our welfare and therefore avoid the cross, spend our lives avoiding anything that can make us suffer. Is God like that? Anyone who thinks only of himself and his happiness?
Jesus did not respond to the challenge of making fun of him. Do not pronounce a word. Is not the time to explain. His answer is silence. A silence that is respect for those who despise him, understanding of blindness and, above all, compassion and love.
Jesus only breaks his silence to address God with a piercing cry: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Not prompted to save the lowering of the cross. Just do not be hidden, or leave him at the moment of death and extreme suffering. And God, the Father remains silent.
Just listening to the end that silence of God, we discover something of its mystery. God is a mighty and triumphant, peaceful and happy, oblivious to human suffering, but a silent God, helpless and humiliated, suffering with us the pain, darkness and even death.
Therefore, in contemplating the crucified, our reaction is to ridicule or contempt, but confident and grateful prayer:
"Do not you get off the cross. Do not leave us alone in our grief.
What a God we serve did not know our cross? Who could understand us? "Who do
might expect tortured many secret prisons?
Where could put their hope so humiliated and abused women without defense? Why
grab him chronically ill and dying?
who could offer comfort to victims of many wars, terrorism, hunger and misery?
No. No you get off the cross because if you do not feel "crucified" with us, we will be more "lost."
SCANDAL AND MADNESS
Early Christians knew. His faith in a crucified God could only be regarded as a scandal and folly. Who had thought of saying something so absurd and horrific of God? Any religion ever has dared to confess something similar. Certainly, the first thing we all discovered in the crucified at Golgotha, unjustly tortured to death by the religious authorities and political power, is the destructive force of evil, cruelty, hatred and fanaticism of the lie. But that's precisely at that innocent victim, the followers of Jesus we see God identified with the victims of all time. Stripped of all power
dominator of all aesthetic beauty, of all successful political and religious aura all, God reveals himself in the purest and unfathomable mystery, as love and only love. Does not exist and God is never a cold, listless and indifferent. Only a God who suffers with us, our sufferings suffer and die our death.
The Crucified God is not a God powerful controller, which is subject to their sons and daughters are always looking for glory and honor. God is a humble, patient, respectful to the end of human freedom, but we abuse time and time again of his love. Prefer to be a victim of things rather than executioner.
The Crucified God is not God's righteous, resentful and vengeful that is still troubling la conciencia de no pocos creyentes. Desde la cruz, Dios no responde al mal con el mal. "En Cristo está Dios, no tomando en cuenta las transgresiones de los hombres, sino reconciliando al mundo consigo" (2 Corintios 5,19). Mientras nosotros hablamos de méritos, culpas o derechos adquiridos, Dios nos está acogiendo a todos con su amor insondable y su perdón.
Este Dios crucificado se revela hoy en todas las víctimas inocentes. Está en la cruz del Calvario y está en todas las cruces donde sufren y mueren los más inocentes: los niños hambrientos y las mujeres maltratadas, los torturados por los verdugos del poder, los explotados por nuestro bienestar, los olvidados por nuestra religión.
Los cristianos still celebrating the crucified God, never to forget the "mad love" of God to mankind and to keep alive the memory of all crucified. It is a scandal and folly. However, for those who follow Jesus and believe in the redemptive mystery that lies in his death, is the force that sustains our hope and our struggle for a more humane world. ENDS
LENT AND HOLY WEEK BEGINS.
End of Lent and Holy Week begins this Sunday, both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, as a hinge. The branches that put us in more or less triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We party. But seamless Mass readings bring us the story of the Passion of Jesus. And they do not end up in the resurrection but in the burial of Jesus beaten and abandoned by all but two women, Mary Magdalene and the "other Mary" and a group of soldiers to the chief priests and the Pharisees were responsible for putting there to make sure no one will steal the corpse. And then silence. Nothing more. But in the middle we have the detailed account of the last hours of Jesus. Discuss in its entirety and with all the details would take us too. The invitation is to read it personally, to make such a prayerful reading in a moment of silence to allow the heart to sprout feelings accompany Jesus in this painful way that takes him from the last supper until his death on the cross.
But perhaps there should highlight just a few points to emphasize them in our prayers:
• The institution of the Eucharist is done in the context of Jesus' farewell. Jesus and the disciples ate together many times. But it has a special meaning. Check the delivery of the life of Jesus for us. The bread and wine are food for our journey as Jesus himself becomes food for us.
• The disciples did not have very clear when they are living. In the Garden of Olives shall sleep no problem. They do not realize that the spirit and decided to but the flesh is weak. Meanwhile Jesus really lives his passion, experience the abandonment of their own and loneliness. The betrayal of Judas will only confirm that abandonment. Before him only the cup offered by the Father. In the end, it reaffirms its commitment: "Thy will."
• At trial before the Jewish authorities to the bottom experiencing what may be the injustice of men who act based only on their interests. Jesus is already doomed. Only try to find excuses and reasons justifying the decision previously taken. Pilate's what needs no comment. Like many leaders, guided by opinion polls rather than the pursuit of justice.
• We have already alluded to abandonment. At the time of arrest all the disciples, they had been sleeping peacefully, they fled and left him. Peter is barely able to keep a distance. But when facing the last servant of the palace, shamelessly denies belonging to the group of Jesus. He knows nothing, knows nothing. He just happened to be walking by. Three times denied knowing Jesus. Her tears of repentance, when he hears singing rooster do not cover the facts: a coward and traitor. Not much better than Judas, of course. And then there was the first pope, according to tradition.
• The soldiers had a great time with Jesus. The sport of taking advantage of the weak, laugh at them, is widespread. At all levels of society. Sure we have all participated in it sometime. It is worse that the soldiers did. They were bored and put them to Jesus to have fun with it. • On the cross the abandoned remains. People who sees it will ridicule him. Even the robbers who were crucified with him reviled him. But Jesus remains faithful to the end. Feel the pain of abandonment, but still refers to his Father in his words.
• The time of death needs no comment. Just a quiet time. And look, if we dare, facing the cross. And feel the pain of Jesus and the pain of the world, the accumulated pain of many innocent people and so many injustices. And hold unswervingly to the hope in him. Like Jesus.
It only remains open our hearts to the experiences of Holy Week that begins today. Taking the pain of the world in all its forms and knowing we committed to God until the end of the Kingdom, for reconciliation, for life, for justice. Leaving us in this life. Like Jesus. In the hope that the God of Life not disappoint us.
Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem:
When he came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, Jesus asked his disciples to bring a donkey and rode him. Before he entered Jerusalem, people spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from trees carpeting the step as used to greet the king. those who went before and after Jesus cried out:
"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest!"
entered the city of Jerusalem, which was the largest city and capital of their nation, and many people, children and adults, accompanied him and received him like a king with palms and shouting "Hosanna" which means "Viva." The townspeople wondered who is this? and answered them: "It is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee." This was his entrance.
The crowd that followed him was composed of men, women and children, each with your name, occupation, its good and bad, and with the same interest to follow Jesus. Some of these people had been present in the miracles of Jesus and had heard his parables. This led them to praise Him with palm branches in hands when he entered Jerusalem.
were many who followed Christ in this moment of triumph, but few who accompanied him in his passion and death.
"Meanwhile, the Jewish priests seeking pretexts to put him in jail because they were afraid to see how people loved him more and as they had hailed the entry into Jerusalem. COMMENT
This year everything is certainly marked by the World Youth Day in Madrid in August, in a special way, even our Easter. Let me explain why I see it.
Benedict XVI's Message for this day: "Rooted and built up in Christ. Strong in faith," says he comes to confirm our faith with the idea that Europe recover its Christian roots, amid circumstances of relativism and secularism. Ie where there are no principles valid for all and where many people think that life can arise apart from God, as if a "eclipse" to cover God or, even, sometimes, an explicit rejection.
to stand firm in faith, it follows from its Post and its statements that it is essential that young people, that any Christian, has experience of God is Christ.
It turns out that in organizing these Days outstanding is an act which is a Via Crucis. If sometimes our guilds are complaining that not enough value their way of living the faith, when we try to make a correction, now the pope is going to put the best "showcase" of the season.
To express the belief that the peoples of Spain and if we can spread our popular religiosity, valid for encouraging the encounter with Christ in the World Youth Day, August 19 at 19:30 pm Via Crucis will be one of the following steps of Holy Week English:
1 .- Last Supper. Murcia. Francisco Salzillo.
2 .- Judas Kiss. Malaga. Antonio Castillo Lastrucci.
3 .- Denials of Peter. Orihuela (Alicante) Federico Collaut-Valera. 4 .-
sentenced Jesus to death. Madrid. Anonymous.
5 .- Jesus carrying the cross. Madrid. Joseph R. Fernandez-Andes.
6 .- Jesus falls under the weight of the Cross. Úbeda (Jaén). Mariano Benlliure.
7 .- Simon of Cyrene helps carry the cross. Lion. Anonymous.
8 .- Veronica wipes Jesus' face. Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz). Francisco Pinto.
9 .- Jesus stripped of his garments. Granada. Manuel Ramos Corona.
10 .- Jesus on the Cross. Zamora. Ramon Alvarez.
11 .- Jesus dies on the Cruz. Malaga. Francisco Palma Burgos.
12 .- The Descent. Cuenca. Luis Marco Perez.
13 .- Jesus in the arms of his mother. Valladolid. Gregorio Fernández.
14 .- Jesus is buried. Segovia. Gregorio Fernández.
15 .- La Dolorosa. Sevilla. Luisa Roldán
Knowing the status of de-Christianization of Europe, and how religious analysts point out that in Spain the rate of the faith has not fallen as much as in neighboring countries, due, perhaps, in popular religion: Devotion to the Virgin, processions of Holy Week ... this option for making a Via Crucis at the meeting Youth with the Pope is like to be proud of our traditions, ecclesially lived, and a call to the responsibility to live these expressions of faith.
is also true that, so that that encounter with Christ, this popular religiosity ecclesially be lived with a sense of belonging to the Church, Christian formation, with charity to the needy, with the celebration of the sacraments. At street level, we see as the initial spark that religion usually goes quickly because it lacks those elements which, moreover, are being supplemented by folk looking to shine and tourism.
He described the Pope, in his message the day, what should be our personal experience of faith:
"We firmly believe that Jesus Christ gave on the Cross to offer her love his passion, borne our griefs, carried our sins, we got the pardon and reconciled us with God the Father, opening the way to eternal life. Thus, we have been freed from what most gripped our lives: the slavery of sin, and we love everyone, even our enemies, and share this love with poor brothers and difficulty.
Dear friends, the cross often frightens us, because it seems to be the negation of life. It is actually otherwise. Is "yes" from God to man, the ultimate expression of love and the source of the wellspring of eternal life. In fact, open heart of Jesus on the cross has broken the divine life, always available for those who agree to look at the Crucified. So, I invite you to embrace the cross of Jesus, a sign of God's love as a source of new life. Without Christ, death and resurrection, no salvation. He alone can free the world from evil and grow the Kingdom of justice, peace and love, to which all aspire. "
and these days I hope all you're going to live help us in this encounter with Christ should transform our lives and configured more with him
Sources: Lighting
Dvina
José A. Pagola
cmf Fernando Torres Peres Pedro Crespo
Angel Arias
Corbalán
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