It is the death on the cross of Jesus who makes us hope. With that last cry that is not “against the Father, but towards the Father”. Pope Leone continues the cycle of catechesis on “Jesus Christ our Hope” and focuses on his meditation on the verse of the Gospel of Marco: “Jesus, giving a strong cry, pushed”.
He thanks those who challenged the rain to be in the square: “A good testimony,” he says. And then explains the cry on the cross of Jesus preceded by “A question, one of the most lacerating who can be pronounced:” My God, my God, why did you abandon me? “”. It is not an impact, but “the first verse of Psalm 22” which “on the lips of Jesus takes on a single weight. The son, who has always lived in intimate communion with his father, now experiences silence, absence, abyss. It is not a crisis of faith, but of the last stage of a love that is done to the end. The cry of Jesus is not despair, but sincerity, truth brought to the limit, trust that resists even when everything is silent». With the cry of Jesus, the veil of the temple tears, the sky obscures itself: «It is as if the created itself participated in that pain, and together it revealed something new: God no longer lives behind a veil, his face is now fully visible in the crucifix. It is there, in that torn man, that the greatest love occurs. It is there that we can recognize a God who does not remain far away, but he all goes through our pain. The centurion, a pagan, understands it. Not because he listened to a speech, but because he saw Jesus die in that way: “This man really was the son of God!”». And this is Leone, this underlines, «The first profession of faith after the death of Jesus. It is the result of a cry that did not miss in the wind, but touched a heart. Sometimes, what we cannot say in words we express it with the voice. When the heart is full, shouts. And this is not always a sign of weakness, it can be a profound act of humanity. We are used to thinking about the cry as something broken, to be repressed. The Gospel gives our cry an immense value, remembering that it can be an invocation, protest, desire, delivery. Indeed, it can be the extreme form of prayer, when there are no more words. In that cry, Jesus put everything he remained: all his love, all his hope ». In the cry of Jesus, Lion says forcefully, “This too is there, in shouting: a hope that does not resign himself. You shout when you believe someone can still listen. We shout not out of desperation, but out of desire. Jesus did not shout against the Father, but towards him. Even in silence, he was convinced that his father was there. And so he showed us that our hope can shout, even when everything seems lost. Shouting then becomes a spiritual gesture. It is not only the first act of our birth – when we come to the world crying -: it is also a way to remain alive “. Because “you shout when you suffer, but even when you love, it’s called, you invoke. To shout it is to say that we are there, that we do not want to go out in silence, that we still have something to offer ». Hold back the cry «can consume us slowly. Jesus teaches us not to be afraid of the cry, as long as he is sincere, humble, oriented towards his father.
A cry is never useless, if it comes from love. And it is never ignored, if it is delivered to God. It is a way not to give in to cynicism, to continue to believe that another world is possible ». And then the pontiff asks to learn from Jesus “the cry of hope when the time of extreme proof comes. Not to hurt, but to rely. Not to scream against someone, but to open the heart. If our cry is true, it can be the threshold of a new light, of a new birth. As with Jesus: when everything seemed finished, salvation was actually about to start. If manifested with the trust and freedom of the children of God, The painful voice of our humanity, combined with the voice of Christ, can become a source of hope for us and for those next to us ».
