“It is a clash between two different logics, two different glories. The glory of God which passes through the Cross and the glory of man, which looks for worldly success and power,” he said, adding that one logic led to death and nothingness and the other to eternal life.
“Per crucem ad lucem. By means of the cross, he came to the light, he came to glory,” he said.
“You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus told the mother of James and John, as recounted in Matthew’s Gospel. “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.”
“In simplicity, in this short verse, is presented the greatness of God,” Parolin commented.
He said that the problem of war was not just of a political or economic character, but a spiritual one.
“Precisely on this spiritual plane this evening we want to allow ourselves to be changed, and we want to fix in our hearts the words of Jesus, ‘Among you, it shall not be so,’ that we heard pronounced in today’s Gospel.”
He added: “Do not think, dear brothers and sisters, that if we really put into practice these words of Jesus, this example of Jesus, all of the conflicts of the earth, little by little, will disappear.”
“Do not think that if we listen a little to the lesson of Our Lord, they will stop firing their weapons or, indeed, that they will not even be produced or distributed.”
“The peace that Jesus teaches us,” the cardinal said, “is, in fact, made of relationships where instead of enslaving ourselves to fighting each other, we serve and help each other ... we liberate and grow together, so that one exists for the other, one makes the other grow.”
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.