Sermon of Good Friday 2006 in St. Peter’s Basilica By the Papal Household Preacher
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa.
“GOD MANIFESTS HIS LOVE FOR US” 1. Christians,
be serious in taking action!” “The time is sure to come when people will not accept
sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new and they will collect
themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes; and then they
will shut their ears to the truth and will turn to myths” (2 Timothy 4,3-4).
This word of Scripture –and in a special way the reference to the itching
for anything new -is being realized in a new and impressive way in our days. While
we celebrate here the memory of the Passion and Death of the Savior, millions of people
are seduced by the clever rewriting of ancient legends to believe that Jesus of Nazareth
was never crucified. In the United States a best-seller at present is an edition of
The Gospel of Thomas, presented as the Gospel that “spares us the crucifixion,
makes the resurrection unnecessary, and does not present us with a God named Jesus”
[1].
Some years ago, Raymond Brown, the greatest biblical scholar of the Passion,
wrote: “It is an embarrassing insight into human nature that the more fantastic the
scenario, the more sensational is the promotion it receives and the more intense the
faddish interest it attracts. People who would never bother reading a responsible
analysis of the traditions about how Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose
from the dead are fascinated by the report of some ‘new insight’ to the effect he
was not crucified or did not die, especially if the subsequent career involved running
off with Mary Magdalene to India … These theories demonstrate that in relation to
the Passion of Jesus, despite the popular maxim, fiction is stranger than fact – and
often, intentionally or not, more profitable” [2].
No one will succeed
in halting this speculative wave, which instead will flare up with the imminent release
of a certain film, but being concerned for years with the history of Ancient Christianity,
I feel the duty to call attention to a huge misunderstanding which is at the bottom
of all this pseudo-historical literature.
The apocryphal gospels on which
they lean are texts that have always been known, in whole or in part, but with which
not even the most critical and hostile historians of Christianity ever thought, before
today, that history could be made. It would be as if within two centuries an attempt
were made to reconstruct present-day history based on novels written in our age.
The
huge misunderstanding is the fact that they use these writings to make them say exactly
the opposite of what they intended. They are part of the gnostic literature of the
2nd and 3rd centuries. The gnostic vision – a mixture of Platonic
dualism and Eastern doctrines, cloaked in biblical ideas --, holds that the material
world is an illusion, the work of the God of the Old Testament, who is an evil god,
or at least inferior; Christ did not die on the cross, because he never assumed, except
in appearance, a human body, the latter being unworthy of God (Docetism).
If,
according to TheGospel of Judas, of which there has been much talk
in recent days, Jesus himself orders the apostle to betray him, it is because, by
dying, the divine spirit which was in him would finally be able liberate itself from
involvement of the flesh and re-ascend to heaven. Marriage oriented to births is to
be avoided; woman will be saved only if the “feminine principle” (thelus) personified
by her, is transformed into the masculine principle, that is, if she ceases to be
woman [3].
The funny thing is that today there are those who believe they see
in these writings the exaltation of the feminine principle, of sexuality, of the full
and uninhibited enjoyment of this material world, contrary to the official Church
which would always have frustrated all this! The same mistake is noted in regard to
the doctrine of reincarnation. Present in the Eastern religions as a punishment due
to previous faults and as something to which one longs to put an end to (?) with all
one’s might, it is accepted in the West as a wonderful possibility to live and enjoy
this world indefinitely.
These are issues that would not merit being addressed
in this place and on this day, but we cannot allow the silence of believers to be
mistaken for embarrassment and that the good faith (or foolishness?) of millions of
people be crassly manipulated by the media, without raising a cry of protest, not
only in the name of the faith, but also of common sense and healthy reason. It is
the moment, I believe, to hear again the admonishment of Dante Alighieri:
Christians,
be serious in taking action: Do not be like a feather to every wind, Nor think
that every water cleanses you.
You have the New and the Old Testament And
the Shepherd of the Church to guide you; Let this be all you need for your salvation
…
Be men, do not be senseless sheep [4].
2. The Passion Preceded the
Incarnation!
Bet let us leave these fantasies to one side. They have a common
explanation: we are in the age of the media and the media are more interested in
novelty than in truth. Let us concentrate on the mystery that we are celebrating.
The best way to reflect this year on the mystery of Good Friday would be to reread
the entire first part of the Pope’s encyclical “Deus Caritas Est,” Not being
able to do so here, I would like at least to comment on some passages that refer more
directly to the mystery of this day. We read in the encyclical:
“To fix one’s
gaze on the pierced side of Christ, of which John speaks, helps to understand what
has been the point of departure of this encyclical letter: ‘God is love.’ It is there,
on the cross, where this truth can be contemplated. And, beginning from there, we
must now define what love is. And, from that gaze, the Christian finds the orientation
of his living and loving” [5].
Yes, God is love! It has been said that, if
all the Bibles of the world were to be destroyed by some cataclysm or iconoclastic
rage and only one copy remained; and if this copy was also so damaged that only one
page was still whole, and likewise if this page was so wrinkled that only one line
could still be read: if that line was the line of the First Letter of John where it
is written that “God is love!”, the whole Bible would have been saved, because the
whole content is there.
God is love, and the cross of Christ is the supreme
proof, the historical demonstration. There are two ways of manifesting one’s love
towards someone, said Nicholas Cabasilas, an author of the Byzantine East. The first
consists of doing good to the person loved, of giving gifts; the second, much more
demanding, consists of suffering for him. God has loved us in the first way, that
is, with a munificent love, in creation, when he filled us with gifts, within and
outside us; he has loved us with a suffering love in the redemption, when he invented
his own annihilation, suffering for us the most terrible torments, for the purpose
of convincing us of his love [6]. Therefore, it is on the cross that one must now
contemplate the truth that “God is love.”
The word “passion” has two meanings:
it can indicate a vehement love, “passionate,” or a mortal suffering. There is a continuity
between the two things and daily experience shows how easily one passes from one to
the other. It was also like this, and first of all, in God. There is a passion – Origen
wrote – that precedes the incarnation. This is “the passion of love” that God has
always nourished towards the human race and that, in the fullness of time, led him
to come on earth and suffer for us [7].
3. Three Orders of Greatness
The
encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” indicates a new way of engaging in apologetics
of the Christian faith, perhaps the only way possible today and certainly the most
effective. It does not oppose the supernatural values to the natural, divine love
to human love, eros and agape, but shows the original harmony, always
to be rediscovered and re-healed, because of human sin and frailty. “Eros ,
says the pope in his encyclica (nr. 5), tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine,
to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent,
renunciation, purification and healing”. The Gospel is, indeed, in concurrence
with human ideals, but in the literal sense that con-curs to their realization:
it restores, elevates and protects them. It does not exclude eros from life,
but the poison of egoism from eros.
There are three
orders of greatness, Pascal said in a famous pensee [8]. The first is the material
order or of bodies: in it excels one who has many properties, who is gifted with athletic
strength or physical beauty. It is a value that should not be disparaged, but it is
the lowest. Above it is the order of genius and intelligence in which thinkers, inventors,
scientists, artists, and poets are distinguished. This is an order of a different
quality. To be rich or poor, beautiful or ugly does not add or subtract anything from
genius. The physical deformity attributed to their person, does not take anything
away from the beauty of Socrates’ thought or Leopardi’s poetry.
The value of
genius is certainly higher than the preceding, but it is not yet the highest. Above
it is another order of greatness, and it is the order of love, of goodness. (Pascal
calls it the order of holiness and grace). A drop of holiness, Gounod said, is worth
more than an ocean of genius. To be beautiful or ugly, learned or illiterate does
not add or take anything away from a saint. His greatness is of a different order.
Christianity
belongs to this third level. In the novel Quo Vadis, a pagan asks the Apostle
Peter who had just arrived in Rome: “Athens has given us wisdom, Rome power; what
does your religion offer us? And Peter responds: love! Love is the most fragile thing
that exists in the world; it is represented, and it is, as a child. It can be killed
with very little, as we have seen with horror these days, can be done with a child.
But what do power and wisdom become, that is strength and genius, without love and
goodness? They become Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, terrorism and all the rest
that we know well. 4. Forgiving love
“God’s eros for man -- continues
the encyclical -- is at the same time agape. Not only because it is given altogether
freely, without previous merit, but also because it is forgiving love” (edn. 10).
This
quality also shines in the highest degree in the mystery of the cross. “Greater love
has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus said in
the Cenacle (Jn 15,13). One could be tented to exclaim: A love does exist, O Christ,
which is greater than giving one’s life for one’s friends. Yours! You did not give
your life for your friends, but for your enemies! Paul says that “one will hardly
die for the righteous man -- though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”
(Rom 5, 6-8).
However, it does not take long to discover that the contrast
is only apparent. The word “friends” in the active sense indicates those who love
you, but in the passive sense it indicates those who are loved by you. Jesus calls
Judas “friend” (Mt 26,50) not because Judas loved him, but because He loved Judas!
There is no greater love than to give one’s life for enemies, considering them friends:
this is the meaning of Jesus’ phrase. Men can be enemies of God, but God will never
be able to be an enemy of man. It is the terrible advantage of children over fathers
(and mothers).
We must reflect in what way, specifically, the love of Christ
on the cross can help the man of today to find, as the encyclical says, “the orientation
of his living and loving.” It is a love of mercy, that excuses and forgives, which
does not wish to destroy the enemy, but, if anything, enmity (cf. Eph 2, 16). Jeremiah,
the closest among men to the Christ of the Passion, prays to God saying: “let me see
the vengeance upon them” (Jer 11, 20); Jesus dies saying: “Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do” (Lk 23,34).
It is precisely this mercy and capacity
for forgiveness of which we are in need today, so as not to slide ever more into the
abyss of globalized violence. The Apostle wrote to the Colossians: “Put on then, as
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and
patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving
each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Col 3, 12-13).
To have mercy means to be moved to pity (misereor) in the heart
(cordis) in regard to one’s enemy, to understand of what fabric we are all
made and hence to forgive. What might happen if, by a miracle of history, in the Near
East, the two peoples at war for decades, rather than blaming one another were to
begin to think of the suffering of others, to be moved to pity for one another. A
wall of division between them would no longer be necessary. The same thing must be
said of so many other ongoing conflicts in the world, including those between the
different religious confessions and Christian Churches. How much truth there is
in the verse of Pascoli: “Men, peace! In the prostrate earth, too great is the mystery”
[10]. A common fate of death looms over all. Humanity is enveloped in so much darkness
and bowed under so much suffering that we must have some compassion and solidarity
for one another.
5. The duty to love
There is another teaching that
comes to us from the love of God manifested on the cross of Christ. God’s love for
man is faithful and eternal: “I have loved you with an everlasting love,” says God
to man in the prophets (Jer 31, 3); and again, “I will not be false to my faithfulness”
(Psalm 89, 34). God has bound himself to love for ever, he has deprived himself of
the freedom to turn back. This is the profound meaning of the Covenant that in Christ
became “new and eternal.”
In the papal encyclica (nr. 6) we read: “It is part
of love's growth towards higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to
become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity
(this particular person alone) and in the sense of being “for ever.”.
Questioned
ever more frequently in our society is what relationship there might exist between
the love of two young people and the law of marriage; what need love has, which is
impulsive and spontaneous, to be “bound.”. Ever more numerous therefore are those
who refuse the institution of marriage and choose so-called free love or simple, de
facto, living together.
Only if one discovers the profound and vital relationship
that exists between law and love, decision and institution, can one respond correctly
to those questions and give young people a convincing reason to be “bound” to love
for ever and not to be afraid to make love a “duty.”
“Only when the duty
to love exists, -- wrote the philosopher who, after Plato, has written the most beautiful
things about love – only then is love guaranteed for ever against any alteration;
eternally liberated in blessed independence; assured in eternal blessedness against
any desperation” [11]. The meaning of these words is that the person who loves, the
more intensely he loves, the more he perceives with anguish the danger his love runs.
A danger that does not come from others, but from himself. He knows well in fact that
he is inconstant and that tomorrow, alas, he might get tired and no longer love or
change the object of his love. And, now that he is in the light of love, he sees clearly
what an irreparable loss this would entail, so he protects himself by “binding” himself
to love with the bond of duty, thus anchoring in eternity his act of love in time.
Ulysses wanted to return to see his homeland and wife again, but he had to
pass through the place of the Sirens that lured mariners with their singing and lead
them to crash against the rocks. What did he do? He had himself tied to the vessel’s
mast, after having plugged the ears of companions with wax. Arriving at the spot,
charmed, he cried out to be loosed to reach the Sirens, but his companions could not
hear him and so he was able to see his homeland and embrace his wife and son again
[12]. It is a myth, but it helps to understand the reason for “indissoluble” marriage
and, on a different plane, for religious vows.
The duty to love protects love
from “desperation” and renders it “blessed and independent” in the sense that it protects
from the desperation of not being able to love for ever. Show me some one who is really
in love – said the same thinker – and he will tell you if, in love, there is opposition
between pleasure and duty; if the thought of “having” to love for the whole of life
brings fear and anguish to the lover, or, rather, supreme joy and happiness.
Appearing
one day in Holy Week to Blessed Angela of Foligno, Christ said a word to her that
has become famous: “I have not loved you for fun!” [13]. Christ, indeed, has not loved
us for fun. There is a gamesome and playful dimension in love, but it itself is not
a game; it is the most serious thing and most charged with consequences that exists
in the world; human life depends on it. Aeschylus compares love to a lion cub that
is raised at home, “docile and tender at first even more than a child,” with which
one can even play but then growing up, is capable of slaughter and of staining the
house with blood [14].
These considerations are not enough to change the present
culture that exalts the freedom to change and the spontaneity of the moment, the practice
off “use and discard” applied even to love. (Life, unfortunately, will do so when
at the end we find ourselves with ashes in hand and the sadness of not having built
anything lasting with love). But that they at least serve to confirm the goodness
and beauty of the choice of those who have decided to live love between man and woman
according to God’s plan and to attract many young people to make the same choice.
We
end with the prayer that the same philosopher mentioned, great believer enamored of
Christ, places before his work on love: “How could one speak appropriately of love
if you are forgotten, our Savior and Redeemer, who gave yourself to save all? How
could one speak appropriately of love if we forgot you, O Holy Spirit, who keep alive
that sacrifice of love and remind the believer of the obligation to love you and to
love his neighbor as himself?” [15]. How could one speak of love, if we forgot you,
O good Father, who did not spare your own Son, but gave him for us all?
[1]
H. Bloom, in the interpretative essay that accompanies M. Meyer’s edition, The
Gospel of Thomas, Harper, San Francisco, s.d., p. 125. [2] R. Brown, The
Death of the Messiah, II, New York, 1998, pp. 1092-1096 [3] See logion 114
in TheGospel of Thomas, ed, Mayer, p. 63); in the Gospel of the
Egyptians, Jesus says: “I have come to destroy woman’s work” (cf. Clemens of Al.,
Stromata, III, 63). This explains why The Gospel of Thomas became the
gospel of the Manicheans, while it was severely combated by ecclesiastical authors
(for example, by Hippolytus of Rome), who defended the goodness of marriage and of
creation in general. [4] Paradiso, V, 73-80. [5] Benedict XVI, Enc. “Deus
Caritas Est,” 12. [6] Cf. N. Cabasilas, Life in Christ, VI, 2 (PG 150,
645). [7] Cf. Origen, Homelies on Ezekiel, 6,6 (GCS, 1925, p. 384 f). [8]
Cf. B. Pascal, Pensees, 793, ed. Brunschvicg. [9] Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo
Vadis, chapt. 33. [10] Giovanni Pascoli, “I due fanciulli.” [11]
S. Kierkegaard, Acts of Love, I, 2, 40, ed. By C. Fabro, Milan, 1983, p. 177
ff. [12] Cf. Odyssey, XII. [13] The Book of Blessed Angela of Foligno,
Instructio 23 (ed. Quaracchi, Grottaferrata, 1985, p. 612). [14] Aeschylus,
Agamemnon, vv. 717 ff. [15] S. Kierkegaard, op. cit. Initial prayer (ed.
C. Fabro, p. 146).