At the Good Friday service for the celebration of the Lord’s Passion in the presence of Pope Francis, the Preacher of the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, denounced the indifference of the institutions.
“The true martyrs of Christ don’t die with their fists closed but with hands joined together in prayer. The slaughter of Christians is taking place before the indifference of the world institutions.” Two minutes of prostration in absolute silence on the floor before the altar. It was with this ritualistic gesture that Pope Francis marked the start of the liturgical celebrattion of the Good Friday service for the celebration of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican. The Gospel reading was followed by a homily on “perfect martyrs” by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher of the Papal Household.
Christians, Fr. Cantalamessa stressed, “certainly aren’t the only victims of the homicidal violence being witnessed in the world, but one cannot ignore the fact that in many countries they are the chosen and most frequent victims.” “Then yesterday came the news of the 147 Christians who became victims of the jihadist rage of Somali extremists at a university campus in Kenya. Whoever has the fate of their won religion at heart cannot remain indifferent to what is happening,” he added.
After all, “Jesus said to his disciples one day, ‘The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God’. Perhaps never before have these words found such precise fulfillment as they do today.” “A third-century bishop, Dionysius of Alexandria, has left us a testimony of an Easter celebrated by Christians during the fierce persecutions by the Roman emperor Decius: First we were set on and surrounded by persecutors and murderers, yet we were the only ones to keep festival even then. Every spot where we were attacked became for us a place for celebrations whether field, desert, ship, inn, or prison. The most brilliant festival of all was kept by the fulfilled martyrs, who were feasted in heaven. This is the way Easter will be for many Christians this year, 2015 after Christ,” Fr. Cantalamessa noted.
“The disturbing indifference of world institutions and public opinion in the face of all this killing of Christians” must therefore be “denounced”, “recalling what such indifference has sometimes brought about in the past.” Otherwise, “all of us and all our institutions in the West risk being Pilates who wash our hands.” “True martyrs for Christ do not die with clenched fists but with their hands joined in prayer.” “We have had many recent examples of this. Christ is the one who gave the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded in Libya by ISIS this past February 22 the strength to die whispering the name of Jesus.”
Fr. Cantalamessa urged: “Let us not think about social evils collectively: hunger, poverty, injustice, the exploitation of the weak. These evils are spoken about often (even if it is never enough), but there is the risk that they become abstractions—categories rather than persons. Let us think instead of the suffering of individuals, people with names and specific identities; of the tortures that are decided upon in cold blood and voluntarily inflicted at this very moment by human beings on other human beings, even on babies.” “To forgive with his same greatness of soul does not entail just a negative attitude through which one renounces wishing evil on those who do evil; it has to be transformed instead into a positive will to do good to them, even if it is only by means of a prayer to God on their behalf,” the Preacher of the Papal Household added.
Today, “the problem of violence disturbs us, shocks us, and it has invented new and horrendous forms of cruelty and barbarism today. We Christians are horrified at the idea that people can kill in God’s name.” “God’s true intention is expressed by the commandment ‘You shall not kill’.” “Although violence will still continue to exist, it will no longer—not even remotely—be able to link itself to God and cloak itself in his authority.” “Jesus overcame violence not by opposing it with a greater violence but by enduring it and exposing all its injustice and futility. He inaugurated a new kind of victory that St. Augustine summed up in three words: Victor quia victima: Victor because victim.” So we must offer “forgiveness” even to our “most relentless enemies”.
