After the celebrations of Yesterday’s Holy Thursdaythe Pope this afternoon at 5pm will preside over the celebration of the Passion of the Lord and tonight at 9pm it will be at Colosseum for the Via Crucis.
“Only the Lord can give us confirmation of how much we are worth. He tells us every day from the cross: he died for us, to show us how precious we are in his eyes. There is no obstacle or failure that can prevent his tender embrace. Friday Holy”. Pope Francis wrote this morning in a post on X, Pontifex account.
This year, for the first time in his pontificateFrancesco, feeling all the drama of the moment, has signed the meditations in his own hand which were announced this morning.
It is possible even today to see Jesus crucified”in the Christs humiliated by arrogance and injustice, from unfair gains made at the expense of others in general indifference”. The Pope says this in the meditations written for this evening. “Now I understand your insistence on identifying with the needy: you have been imprisoned; you stranger, led out of the city to be crucified; you are naked, stripped of your clothes; you, sick and wounded; you, thirsty on the cross and hungry for love. Let me see you in the suffering and see the suffering in you, because you are there, in those who are stripped of dignity”, is the Pope’s prayer.
Also look at women this evening’s Via Crucis at the Colosseum. The women at Calvary “have no voice but they make themselves heard. Help us to recognize the greatness of women, they who at Easter were faithful and close to you, but who are still discarded today, suffering outrage and violence”, underlines the Pontiff in meditations. “Jesus, the women you meet beat their breasts and lament over you. They don’t cry over themselves, but they cry for you, they cry over the evil and sin of the world.”
A prayer for those who are offended on social media will be among the meditations written by the Pope. “Jesus, many follow the barbaric spectacle of your execution and, without knowing you and without knowing the truth, and they place judgments and condemnations, casting infamy and contempt on you. It also happens today, Lord, and not not even a macabre procession is needed: a keyboard is enough to insult and publish sentences”, underlines Pope Francis.
“Jesus, make me recognize and love you in unborn children and abandoned ones”, “in many young people, waiting for someone to listen to their cry of pain”, “in too many discarded elderly people”, “in prisoners and in those it is alone”, “in the most exploited and forgotten peoples”.
It will be a very meditative Via Crucis
“This year will be a very meditative Via Crucis”, explained the Vatican press office, the ceremony which last year had at its center a series of reflections on peace and waron migrations and the human trafficking this year will have as its theme “Praying with Jesus on the Way of the Cross”from which two elements can be deduced: that of prayer to which an entire year was dedicated by the Pontiff, and that of the Cross, of suffering. Even if “in this way of the cross the connections are broader, being a prayer the reference broadens… The prayer does not go by category of people but by the situation”. Certainly the choice is to be linked toYear of Prayer which Pope Francis has chosen to announce as preparation for the Jubilee, an event which, as he has always said, has first and foremost a spiritual character.
The Via Crucis will be broadcast worldwide on Rai1 starting at 9pm.
Christian Good Friday in the traditional procession on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem
The usual rite of the via crucis or the path that according to tradition Jesus took to reach Mount Calvary
