|
|||
NOTES FROM A MEDITATION OF MGR GIUSSANI ON THE
WAY OF THE CROSS
HE ALONE IS Let the Spirit, who made the God made man and made this man capable of dying for us and raised him from the dead with his power, work these marvels in us too, tear away curiosity from our being here, from our going back to the facts, from our imagining what happened without understanding, without ever penetrating, without ever letting ourselves be challenged by the real meaning of the matter. So, let us say this invocation with all our heart: Glory be… STATION
I We are among the killers of Christ like everybody else, but we are this in a totally particular way, as particular as his relationship with us is. Yet this Presence remains inexorable in our life, because our life belongs to Him. The Lord in his mercy chose us, forgave us, embraced us and re-embraced us. He took all our sins on Himself, we are already forgiven. He has to manifest Himself: how? Through my heart that welcomes Him, and acknowledges Him. It is something so simple, but there is nothing more divine, more miraculous in the world, nothing that is more of an anticipation of the ultimate, eternal evidence. STATION
II “You travel with us in the desert”. This word is true. You do not remove the desert which is our life, but in this desert you speak, and this word is bread that satiates us, a rock on which to build. This is the sorrow of Your cross: you have come to travel with us, and we leave You alone. Let our eyes and our heart be moved by the memory of this Your Presence which is a sacrifice, of this Your journeying in the desert. Voluntarily did He embrace the cross. Who made this will of sacrifice habitual among us?
This is the crime: man that fails himself. Sin. What a commanding aspect does this word, sin, take on then. And we understand this word from its origin, from its root which is the forgetfulness of You, Father. To entrust ourselves to Him means to follow Him, to accept His Law. It may look like sacrifice, but it is for joy. This way, where sacrifice is the condition to grow to maturity and to greatness, is convenient to us. Our awareness will become deeper, the Comforter will be given us. Salvation is a gift, it is not a search of ours, a striving of ours – and it has a name: Christ. STATION
IV The first meaning of the look the Mother has for her Son is identification. Who could have believed that the Creator, so that we might live a relationship with all things, should lose them to have them back! His Mother believed this at once. Our Lady, make us part of the awareness with which you looked at Your Son, dying lonely, lonely, on His cross. You used to look at Him walking with men for whom he came to die, lonely. STATION
V There is a fact that stands out like a mountain, a fact that comes before, and your way must pass there. None of us can tear away this fact from the fabric of existence: you are called. God chose us, we are God’s own property, our life belongs to Him. STATION VI Sacrifice has no beauty or attractiveness. Sacrifice is Christ who suffers and dies. He is the meaning of our lives, therefore he must have an influence on the present. What is not loved in the present is not loved, and what is not affirmed in the present is not affirmed. “Your name was born of that which you stared at” (John Paul II). The law of existence is love, for love is to affirm something other by our action. Our all life is function of something greater, it is function of God. Our life is function of You, O Christ. “I seek your face”. “I seek your face”, this is the essence of time. “I seek your face”, this is the essence of man’s heart. “I seek your face”, this is the nature of reason. STATION VII If we pay attention to our days, to every occasion of sacrifice which, imposed by our vocation, we accept to make, we shall really perceive ourselves as redeemers, re-builders of destroyed cities, redeemers along with Christ. Then our action opens wide: with the presence of Christ, with the heart of Christ, our personal life breaks through the horizons and opens up to infinity, and infinity which, like sunlight, penetrates deep into the smallest and darkest corners, making everything new. We must collaborate to that for which Christ died. “Vocation” means to be particularly called to this, to making it inevitable for us this participation in that action by which Christ died to redeem, to save man. We shall no longer be able to walk in the street and look at the others’ faces without feeling a pining, a longing desire to save them. It is within this pining desire that we save ourselves. STATION VIII We cannot look at Christ without the awareness of being sinners. That we are sinners is not a judgement unless it emerges as we look at the face of Him whom we have saddened. Our days on the contrary are dominated by distraction: thus our heart remains dry, and we are full of pretension in what we do. STATION IX It has pleased the Lord to prostrate Him through sufferings. God is positiveness, God is Being: all that does not boil down to this word is not, it is not true, it is not real. All boils down to this word, through sacrifice. In sacrifice all becomes true, including yourself and your very life. STATION X We have to accept denying the immediacy with which things present themselves or urge us, we have to adhere to the mysterious way of God who invites us to follow his word, to follow his revelation, the way in which He himself came to save us, in order to free us. He was nailed to the cross to free us from the fascination of nothingness, the fascination of appearances, of the ephemeral. STATION XI Christ on the cross is sin condemned by the Father. The cross of Christ is the explosion of the awareness of evil. We enter into relationship with Christ through the awareness we have of sin. Here is the endless fall in us taking place: in the absence of the awareness of sin and in the false awareness of sin, because remorse and scepticism are not awareness of sin. One who is aware of his sin is also aware of liberation. STATION XII We may not forget at what price we were saved, every day. Sacrifice is no objection, not even human defeat is objection, but it is the root of Resurrection, it is the opportunity for a true life. The event that re-happens here and now, if it is above all a fact – a fact that cannot be reduced to anything, that cannot be censured, that can no longer be erased – if it is above all a fact, it is a fact for you, that supremely concerns you. It is a fact for you! For you, for me, for me! “For you” is the voice unleashed from the Heart of the Crucified. “For me” is the echo of my sorrow, of my sorrowful conscience. Everything would fall in death without this voice, without this Presence. STATION XIII The whole world judges suffering a penalty; it judges the man reached by suffering, compelled to renunciation, to sacrifice, as struck by God, humiliated: but Mary does not. As it was clear for her heart, crucified with that of Christ, that the punishment that gives us salvation, that exalts life had fallen upon Him and that this is why God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name. Fac ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam (Let my heart be ablaze in loving Christ God, so that I may please Him): here is the great moral law. Here arises the true moral law, which is the origin of ethics: to please Mystery, to please this Man crucified, to please the Mystery of God who was made man and was crucified for me, and was risen so that I might be freed. STATION XIV The threshold of the truth of sacrifice lies in the question: “God, make haste to help me”. The moving of the stone on the tomb of our empty actions begins here. The resurrection begins with this aspect of our infinite powerlessness which is beggary, from this supreme acknowledgement that God alone is powerful, and of supreme gratitude for He, who has initiated our existence, wishes to bring it to fulfilment. There is nothing more expressive than the universal, Catholic, ecumenical communicability of a heart made new by his yes to Christ, by that hope in Him through which each one of us picks up again every day his search, his desire, his entreaty, the sacrifice of his purity. Always living a peace in the continually renewed mortification. Look Almighty God at mankind worn out because of its mortal weakness, and let it pick up life again through the passion of your Only begotten Son, who is God, and lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. |
|||
