“I way everything in Christ Crucified” (Ma. Antonia París, Aut. n.6)

In today’s world, even in confinement and pandemic, we hear many cries of Christs who are still crucified, desperate people. Overburdened families who feel the weight of their pains and afflictions and seem to be abandoned even by God Himself – and yet He presents Himself as Father and Saviour!

We human beings are divided into several groups: the afflicted, the poor of the earth, the despised, the abandoned and excluded, on the one hand; the oppressors and overbearers, who in their selfishness and desire for power and possessions, belittle and oppress; another group is made up of those who apparently lead a “normal life”, enclosed in their comforts and enjoying their well-being. And, by God’s grace, there is the group of those who seek to be the ears of the God of Life among the people, to hear the anguished cry of those who suffer most.

Looking at this reality from Christ Crucified, on Good Friday, should lead us to take up again the challenge presented by Jesus, the Son of God, to those who follow him, if we consider ourselves among them: we must have one ear on the people and the other on God.

In the people, to listen to them in their cries and to bring them to God as his children with whom we make his Kingdom come and in God, to receive his Word full of tenderness, perfect love and mercy… and from there to carry out our evangelising mission of “announcing the Gospel to every creature”.  We have the obligation to make our suffering and despised people feel that, with our cooperation but above all with the grace of God, the fullness of that divine love that embraces them and embraces us all awaits them… Then His Word, echoes of that of Christ on the Cross, will not be one of despair or conformism, but of hidden trust in the God of life as Jesus knew how to do on the Cross, when he let out from the depths of his being these words “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”. (Mt 27,46)

It is time to help each other, knowing that everything we do to each other we do to Jesus Christ himself, who said: “ whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for me”… (Matthew 25,40). Only those who listen to and are in solidarity with the cry of Jesus in others are able to be and to make a risen humanity.