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Each year, a special atmosphere seems to envelop us. And it cannot be otherwise, because in the space of just a few days we recall and re-live many of the mysteries of our faith. In fact during these days, that which we call to mind is all love. Holy Thursday<\/strong> The priesthood <\/strong>is love; it possesses a ministerial character – which means service \u2013 and is therefore concrete love. The Eucharist<\/strong> is love; here, Jesus gives all of Himself to us. Unity,<\/strong> which Jesus asked of the Father with the priestly prayer, \u201cThat all may be one as you and I are one,\u201d<\/em> is love, an effect of love. Love is the commandment which Jesus kept in his heart through his whole life, only to reveal it the day before his death: \u201cLove one another as I love you. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> We cannot let this day pass without remembering to tell Jesus of our desire to adhere completely to \u201chis\u201d and the \u201cnew\u201d commandment; a commandment which did not remain unexplained, because he added: \u201cNo one has greater love than this, to lay down one\u2019s life for one\u2019s friends.\u201d<\/em> Good Friday<\/strong> It is with his death on the cross on Good Friday that Jesus teaches the most sublime, divine, heroic lesson of what love is. He had given up everything: a life lived beside Mary amidst discomfort and in obedience; three years of preaching in which he revealed the Truth, gave witness to the Father, promised the Holy Spirit, and did all sorts of miracles of love; three hours on the cross from which he pardoned his executioners, opened Paradise to the Good Thief, gave his mother to us and, lastly, his Body and Blood which he had already given to us mystically in the Eucharist. All that remained to him was his divinity. He ceased feeling his union with the Father, which had made him so powerful on earth as the Son of God and so regal on the cross; he had to be disunited, in a way, from the one who, he said, was one with him: \u201cThe Father and I are one.\u201d (Jn 10,30). In him love was annihilated, light was darkened, wisdom was silenced. We were detached from the Father. It was necessary that the Son, in whom we all were present, experience detachment from the Father. He had to experience being abandoned by God, so that we may never be abandoned again. Jesus was able to overcome such an immense trial by re-abandoning himself to the Father: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23, 46). In this way, he recomposed the broken unity between God and humanity and men and women among themselves. He was now manifesting himself to be the remedy to every disunity, the key to unity. Now it is our turn to cooperate with this grace and do our part. Since Jesus assumed all that is negative, behind each suffering, each separation, we can discover Jesus himself, one of the \u201cfaces\u201d of his abandonment. We can embrace him in those sufferings and divisions, say \u201cyes\u201d to him just as he did when he completely accepted the Father\u2019s will. Then he will live in us \u2013 even though we may be in pain \u2013 as the Risen Jesus; the peace we regain will be the proof. Easter of the Resurrection<\/strong> Jesus is faithful to his promise: \u201c… where two or three are gathered together in my name [that is, in my love], there am I in the midst of them.\u201d Yes, where two or more are united in his name, the Risen Jesus is present, and he brings with him the gifts of the Spirit: light, joy, peace, love. This was the awesome experience made with my first companions during the Movement\u2019s beginnings in Trent, during World War II, when we made the commandment, \u201cLove one another as I love you,\u201d our own, and formulated a pact among ourselves: \u201cI am ready to die for you, I for you…\u201d The Risen Jesus is just what the world is waiting for! It is waiting for witnesses who can truly say: we have seen him with the senses of our soul, we have discovered him in the light with which he enlightened us, we have touched him in the peace he gave us, we have heard his voice in the depths of our hearts, we have tasted his unmistakable joy. In this way we can assure everyone that he is the fullness of happiness and we can make the world hope again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Easter 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}