.- As
Christians prepare to celebrate the Easter Triduum, which begins
tomorrow evening, with the Holy Thursday service, Pope Benedict
dedicated his weekly audience to this most holy of liturgical
celebrations.
The Holy Father
began by telling the 40,000 pilgrims who had gathered in St. Peter’s
Square to hear him, that "Through the sacred rites we relive the
passion, death and resurrection of our Lord, reawakening the desire to
follow Jesus more closely."
He explained the
meaning behind Holy Thursday, saying that the day “commemorates
Christ's total giving of Himself to humanity in the sacrament of the
Eucharist. Through the washing of feet, it also recalls in a dramatic
way the new commandment to love one another. The day concludes with
Eucharistic adoration in memory of Our Lord's agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane.”
"On Good
Friday,” he went on, “we listen to the account of the Passion and
contemplate Christ on the Cross. This is love in its most radical form:
God gives His very self, in order to raise us up and save us.”
Benedict then
called Holy Saturday the day in which “the Church is spiritually united
with Mary, praying by the tomb of the Son of God who lies at rest after
completing His work of redemption.”
“Then, at the
solemn Easter Vigil,” he said, “the joyful Gloria and Easter Alleluia
rise forth from the hearts of the whole Christian community, because
Christ is risen and has defeated death!"
The Pope challenged the gathered pilgrims to prepare for Easter through the Sacrament of Confession.
"We know we are
sinners," he said, "but we trust in divine mercy. Let us be reconciled
with Christ in order to enjoy more intensely the joy He communicates to
us with His resurrection.”
The Holy Father
said that Christ’s forgiveness, “which is given to us in the Sacrament
of Penance, is the source of interior and exterior peace and makes us
apostles of peace in a world still marked, alas, by divisions and
suffering, and by the drama of injustice, hatred, violence and the
incapacity to achieve reconciliation and begin again in sincere
forgiveness."
Concluding his
weekly catecheses Pope Benedict stressed that the celebration of the
death and resurrection of Christ "gives us the certainty that evil does
not have the last word; supported by this certain knowledge we can
commit ourselves with greater courage and enthusiasm to creating a
fairer world."
