Veronica Solis My devotion to Our Lady has grown by accompanying her in the procession".

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Veronica SolisMy devotion to Our Lady has grown by accompanying her in the procession".

Verónica Solís is one of the thousands of women who, during these days of Holy Week, accompany the procession of the image of María Santísima de la Soledad from the Temple of the School of Christ in the city of Antigua, Guatemala.

Maria José Atienza-April 7, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

Veronica Solis has grown in her love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, largely through the strength of popular piety translated into her membership of the Hermandad del Señor Sepultado y María Santísima de la Soledad del templo de la Escuela de Cristo (Brotherhood of the Buried Lord and Mary Most Holy of Solitude of the Temple of the School of Christ). of the city of Antigua, Guatemala.

Although he currently lives in the United States, his Marian devotion brings him back to Antigua every year to live these days of Passion together with his family of the Brotherhood of the Virgin Mary. School of Christ.

As a woman and a member of the Sisterhood, what does membership in the Sisterhood add to your faith and social life?

-Belonging to the Sisterhood has been an undeserved privilege for me, as I am part of a group of women of all ages and from all walks of life, whom I admire for their faith and devotion.

Many of them have more than 50 years of accompanying and carrying our Blessed Mother through the streets of Antigua Guatemala. They are women, mothers, wives, daughters, housewives, professionals, workers who, in those days before Good Friday and Saturday of Glory, have made countless efforts to contribute their time, their money and their fatigue to accompany Mary in the hardest moments of her life.

In my case, my fraternity with the other sisters is reduced to offering prayers for them and trying to live together during the days of Holy Week, since I do not live in Guatemala.

My personal contribution is very small compared to what they do during this time and all year round, since I live in the United States with my husband, Roberto and my daughter, Maria Ximena (both doctors).

My husband is celebrating 50 years of participating in this beautiful tradition this Holy Week and it is thanks to him that my daughter and I began our participation.

My faith life has had a constant growth thanks to the devotion to Mary, instilled by my grandmother and my mother since I was a child. I have been able to deepen much more by accompanying our Sorrowful Mother every Holy Week and seeing how She, suffering as the Mother of Jesus during His Passion and Death, endured all that pain for you and me... She had us in mind! She knew that seeing her Son suffer, meant our salvation She loved us from that moment on!

How does this example of Our Blessed Mother translate into your life?

-The most impressive example of Mary Most Holy to me is when She was "standing" by the cross... Yes, standing! She never drew attention to herself with dramatic expressions or cries of despair.

Silently she bore her pain and felt the sword piercing her heart, but always at her son's side with total abandonment to the Father's will.

This makes me put into perspective the difficult moments in my life and realize that they cannot compare to what she went through. It comforts me to know that, just as she stood by the Cross, she is with me, interceding for me before Him.

school of christ soledad — Procession of María Santísima de la Soledad de la Escuela de Cristo ©M. Rodríguez

Her example of fortitude (one of the gifts of her husband, the Holy Spirit) is what helps me, every day, to move forward and improve in my abandonment to His Most Holy Will.

I still have a long way to go, but I know that she accompanies me and I try to thank her daily during Holy Mass and the Holy Rosary.

The procession of María Santísima de la Soledad from the Escuela de Cristo church is one of the most beloved and well-known in Guatemala. How do you prepare and experience this procession?

-The preparations begin many months before. The designs of the processional platform are chosen, the ornaments are outlined, the dresses that Our Mother will wear during the two days; the people who will be in charge of organizing the shifts of approximately 4,000 women are chosen, organizing them by height.

In addition, the flowers are prepared, the Rosary is prayed, the vigil is held on Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday and the musicians are organized, the people who will lead the others in each block where there is a change of shift.

The sisters who maintain order in the rows on the sides of the procession must also be established.

I think it would be an understatement to list the different activities involved in the organization of this beautiful tradition.

Women, as mothers, wives and the center of family life, are a privileged way of transmitting the faith. What are the challenges for women involved in a Sisterhood such as yours in today's world?

-By belonging to any association within the Church, one as a member commits oneself to be a person of integrity. It is about living by example in every circumstance and aspect of life.

Living as a child of God is not easy, since many have forgotten about Him or have left Him for an hour on Sunday (hopefully), or have met "other gods".

Many times within our own families we encounter adversities, but I believe that, if we keep "standing" by the Cross with Mary, we will find the way to move forward, since we can count on her intercession.

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"The cross is Christ's, outside of ideologies."

Passion and death of Jesus

Jesus suffered the most atrocious death, the one reserved for slaves, murderers, thieves and those who were not Roman citizens: crucifixion.

Gerardo Ferrara-April 7, 2023-Reading time: 6 minutes

The wood of the Cross Related News

The vast majority of historians no longer have any doubt in affirming that Jesus of Nazareth really existed.

Not only that: more and more historical and archaeological evidence is accumulating that confirms numerous details of his life, death and resurrection. We will try to briefly analyze some of them.

When

Jesus' public life lasted approximately three years-there are three Passovers mentioned by the evangelist. John in the account of Jesus' life, which is the most accurate in that it supplements the approximations of the other three evangelists and points out details overlooked by them, also from the chronological point of view). Then the Nazarene went up for the last time to Jerusalem, where Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees and Herodians conspired to put him to death, arrested him, handed him over to the Romans and, staging a trial (which was more like a farce) with the procurator, or praefectus Pontius Pilate, they had him crucified.

In spite of the discordance between the Synoptics and John in placing the death of Jesus on the 14th or 15th of the Hebrew calendar of Nisan, all the evangelists coincide in placing it on a Friday within the Paschal festivities.

Giuseppe Ricciotti, great historian and biographer of Christ, enumerating a series of possibilities all analyzed by scholars, concludes that the exact date of this event is the 14th of Nisan (Friday, April 7) of the year 30 A.D., Jesus having been born two years before the death of Herod, being about thirty years old at the beginning of his public life and counting 34 or 35 years at his death.

Some personalities and institutions

Several of the following characters and institutions involved in the trial and condemnation to death of Jesus, apart from the Sanhedrin, were mentioned almost exclusively in the Gospels and in a few contemporary documents. However, archaeology has provided us with important details about them.

-Nicodemo (Naqdimon Ben Gurion) and Joseph of Arimathea (Ramataim). Both were notables of Jerusalem. They are mentioned in both Jewish writings and the Gospels. It is known that their descendants were slaughtered during the sack and capture of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

-CaiphasHe was high priest and head of the Sanhedrin from 18 to 36 AD. He was the son-in-law of Annas (high priest from 6 to 15 A.D.). From the list of the high priests of Israel and from Flavius Josephus we know that up to six high priests after Annas were his sons. They all belonged to the Sadducean stream. In 1990, the tomb of Yosef Bar Qajfa (Caiaphas was the nickname) and his family was found.

-Barabas and the thieves. All are called, in the Greek of the Gospels, lestés, They were, in fact, troublemakers (we read that Barabbas was a murderer and a violent man who had participated in a riot), most probably fanatics. It is paradoxical that the name of Barabbas, as recorded even in the oldest codices of the Gospels, was Jesus, named Bar-Abba (such as Joseph called Caiaphas, Simon called Peter, etc.). There is thus an ironic, or tragic, juxtaposition between the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of the Father, and a temporary messianic troublemaker.

-Pontius Pilate. In the Greek of the Gospels, it is called heghémonin Latin praefectus. In fact, he was prefect of Judea for about a decade under Tiberius. In 1961, Italian archaeologists, led by Antonio Frova, discovered at Caesarea Maritima a limestone tombstone with an inscription referring to Pontius Pilate as Praefectus Judaeae. Apparently, the stone block, known since then as the "Pilate Inscription," was originally located on the exterior of a building that Pontius Pilate had constructed for the emperor Tiberius. Until the date of its discovery, although both Josephus Flavius and Philo of Alexandria had referred to Pontius Pilate, his very existence, or at least his actual office in Judea, whether prefect or procurator, was doubtful.

-Simon the Cyrenian. He is the one who is forced to carry the cross of Jesus during the ascent to Calvary. In 1941, in the Kidron Valley, in Jerusalem, an ossuary was found with the name of Alexander, son of Simon, as it is written in the Gospels.

-The Sanhedrin (Hebrew: סַנְהֶדְרִין, sanhedrîn, i.e., "assembly" or "council," the Great Assembly) of Jerusalem. It was the legislative and judicial body during the Hasmonean-Roman phase of the Second Temple period. Opinions were debated before voting and the expression of the majority became a binding judgment. It traditionally consisted of 71 members.

The process of Christ

The trial of Jesus took place in accordance with a procedure called cognitio extra ordinem, introduced by Augustus in the Roman provinces, which allowed the competent authority to initiate a trial without a jury, preside over it and pass sentence independently.

There were rules: the accusation had to be supported by whistleblowers, and then the accused was further interrogated, often tortured to admit guilt.

The accusation, in the case of Jesus, was of "lèse majesté", because he had proclaimed himself to be the son of God, a blasphemous expression for the Jews and illegitimate for the Romans (for the Romans "son of God" was a title reserved for the emperor).

The threat that the Jews addressed to Pilate, when they saw him hesitate to condemn Jesus to death, was that of not being "Caesar's friend". And it was an effective threat, considering that a previous praefectus, Gaius Valerius, had been dismissed shortly before for not being "Caesar's friend". Pilate himself was removed a few years later.

The hearing was held at the lithostroptusa paved courtyard with a raised seating area, gabbathàin which the governor, or praefectussat down to pass sentence.

Recent archaeological discoveries have brought to light, in the vicinity of the Temple esplanade, exactly where the Gospel of John indicates and perfectly corresponding to its description, a portico of about 2,500 square meters, paved according to Roman usage (lithostrotonin fact). Given its location right next to the Antonia Fortress, at the northwest end of the Temple esplanade, and the type of remains brought to light, it could be the site of Jesus' trial.

Condemnation and flagellation

Jesus suffered the most atrocious death, the one reserved for slaves, murderers, thieves and those who were not Roman citizens: crucifixion.

In an attempt to get him to admit his guilt or to punish him by not crucifying him, he was previously inflicted with an equally terrible torture: scourging with the terrible instrument called flagrumThe whip, a whip fitted with metal balls and bony instruments that lacerate the skin and tear off chunks of flesh. Horace called this practice "horribile flagellum".

Normally, in Jewish circles, it did not exceed 39 strokes. On the man in the shroud, however, at least 372 lacerating scourging wounds (excluding the white parts of the sheet) were found, probably inflicted by two torturers.

According to documents of Latin authors, the scourge left the bones exposed because it tore off whole strips of flesh. ("I can count all my bones")). We have a faithful reconstruction of this in the film The Passion by Mel Gibson.

Crucifixion

Crucifixion is a technique of torture and condemnation to death that originated in the East (perhaps in India or Persia), but also spread to Israel and the Mediterranean through the Phoenicians. The Romans, who had not invented it, were nevertheless its greatest users, perfecting the technique in an extremely cruel way to humiliate and make the condemned (who did not necessarily have to be Roman citizens, but slaves or inhabitants of the provinces) suffer as much as possible.

Also in Israel they were hung or nailed to trees, but with the arrival of the Romans a real cross was used, which could be of two types: crux commissaT-shaped, or crux immissa, in the form of a dagger. The latter is the one we know today, which is probably due to the fact that we know from the Gospel of Matthew that narrates the existence of the tituluma title with the motif of the condemnation that was placed over Jesus' head.

Once condemned, Jesus was forced to bear the cross beam of the crux immissa (the patibulumHe was then stripped of his clothes and carried by a man who weighed between 50 and 80 kilos) for a few hundred meters up a hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem (Golgotha, where the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher stands today). There, according to Roman procedure, he was stripped naked.

Other details of the punishment are known from the Roman custom of crucifying those condemned to death: they were tied or nailed with their arms stretched out to the patibulum and raised on the vertical post already fixed, to which the feet were tied or nailed.

Most of the weight of the body was supported by a kind of support (seat) that protruded from the vertical pole and on which the victim was placed astride: this is not mentioned in the Gospels, but many ancient Roman authors mention it.

The foot support (suppedaneum), often represented in Christian art, is, however, unknown in Antiquity.

Death was usually slow, very slow, accompanied by atrocious suffering: the victim, lifted from the ground no more than half a meter, was completely naked and could remain hanging for hours, if not days, shaken by tetanic cramps, terrible shocks with excruciating pain (due to injury or laceration of nerves, such as the radial nerve at the wrist: the nail, between 12 and 18 centimeters long, was forced through the carpal tunnel), wheezing and inability to breathe properly, as blood could not flow to the limbs stretched to exhaustion, nor to the heart, and the lungs could not open.

Hence hypovolemic shock (blood loss, mechanical asphyxia, dehydration and malnutrition) accompanied by hemopericardium (blood accumulated in the pericardium and the transparent and clearer part, the serum, separated from the globular part: a phenomenon commonly observed in persons subjected to torture) and "rupture of the cardiac muscle", i.e. myocardial infarction.

The rupture of the heart seems to be the cause of the "high-pitched scream" emitted by the dying Jesus. On the other hand, the outflow of blood and water through the orifice caused by the spear corresponds exactly to the hemopericardium.

In the Gospels we read that, unlike others condemned to crucifixion (who could be hung for days), the agony of Jesus did not last more than a few hours, from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, which is consistent with the massive loss of blood due to the flagellation.

The authorGerardo Ferrara

Writer, historian and expert on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture.

The wood of the Cross Related News

"The cross is Christ's, outside of ideologies."

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Holy Thursday: Pope washes feet of 12 young prisoners in Rome

Ten years after visiting the Casal del Marmo Penal Institute for Minors in Rome in 2013, Pope Francis has once again washed the feet of twelve young inmates at the same center on Holy Thursday, and presided over the celebration of the Mass 'In Coena Domini' in the chapel. "Help each other, help each other. Jesus has washed my feet, he has saved me. He never abandons us," the Pope said in his homily.

Francisco Otamendi-April 6, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

With undoubted signs of affection, washing the feet of each young person, drying and kissing them, shaking hands with them and conversing with some of them, the Holy Father Francis proceeded this Holy Thursday to wash the feet of twelve inmates of different nationalities from the Casal del Marco Penal Institute for Minors, located on the outskirts of Rome. In the morning he had celebrated the Holy Chrism MassIn his speech, he stated, among other things, that "a divided presbyterate does not work", referring to the priests.

This is the same Penitentiary Center He visited a few days after his election as Pope in 2013, to which he has now returned, visualizing in this way the commandment of love that the Church celebrates since the Last Supper with Jesus, who washed the feet of the disciples. There are about 50 young people at the center, and some of them were able to converse for a moment with the Pontiff, in the context of an almost family-like celebration.

The chaplain of the center, Father Nicolò Ceccolini, told the official Vatican news agency that it was "a long-awaited visit, also for the Muslims who are celebrating Ramadan these days. Waiting for the Pontiff is a "motley community" of boys and girls of different ages and ethnicities, interned in the center for various offenses: "For us they are all equal, they should be looked at not only for what they have done but with a deep look".

Last year, the Holy Father went to the New Prison Complex in Civitavecchia, where he spent about three hours greeting the authorities, embracing the inmates who greeted him with choirs and shouts, celebrated Mass in the chapel and washed the feet of the inmates, of different ages and nationalities, all of whom were moved with emotion.

On this occasion, the Holy Mass of the Lord's Supper lasted barely an hour. Afterwards, the director of the Casal del Marmo center, also moved, told the Holy Father that "he disarms us with his gentleness and brings us back to what is essential. "His smile," said the director, "is a caress that gives us strength and encourages us to always go forward together". Loud applause accompanied the Pope's exit from the chapel, which was also attended by the center's administrative and police personnel. The Holy Father gave them some rosaries and chocolate eggs.

"Jesus is not afraid, he wants to accompany us."

In the brief homily, Pope Francis pointed out that in Jesus' time "it was the slaves who washed the feet. It was slave work. They were astonished, it was hard for them to understand," alluding to St. Peter's behavior. "But he does it to make them understand the message of the next day: that he would die as a slave, to pay the debt of all of us," he explained.

The Pontiff added: "It is so nice to help one another. They are human gestures, universal, helping each other. They are born of a noble heart. And Jesus, with this celebration, wants this, to teach us the nobility of the heart".

"Each one of us can think: if only the Pope knew the things I carry inside me... Jesus knows them, and he loves us as we are. He washes the feet of each one of us, all of us. Jesus is never afraid of our weaknesses. Because He has already paid. He only wants to accompany us. He wants to take us by the hand, so that life is not so hard for us".

"Today I will make the same gesture of washing your feet," Pope Francis continued. "But this is not a folkloric thing. This is a gesture that announces how we have to be with others. In society we see that there are so many people who take advantage of others... How many injustices, how many people without work, or have work but are paid half, poorly paid... Or people who don't have money to buy medicine, how many families who live badly..."

"Jesus never abandons".

"None of us can say: I am not like this. If I am not like this, it is by the grace of God," the Holy Father noted. "Each one of us can slip. And this attitude that each of us can slip is what gives us dignity. Listen to this word: the dignity of being sinners. Jesus wants us this way. And that is why he wanted to wash feet. For I have come to save you, to serve you, Jesus tells us".

"Now I will do the same, remembering what Jesus has taught us," Francis stressed. "Help each other. Help each other. And in this way life is more beautiful, and we can go forward in this way. In the washing of the feet, think that Jesus has washed my feet. Jesus has saved me. I have this problem, but Jesus is at your side. Jesus never abandons, never. Think about this," the Pope concluded.

The new commandment

"At the Last Supper, Jesus gives us four priceless gifts: he gives us the Eucharist, he washes the feet of his disciples, he gives us the priesthood and the new commandment," Joseph Evans recalled in Omnes. "The last gift is the new commandment. At the Last Supper, Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.".

The Holy Father will preside at the Good Friday celebration in St. Peter's Basilica at 5:00 p.m., with Cardinal Mauro Gambetti as celebrant at the altar.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Pope to priests: "A divided presbyterate does not work".

The Holy Father's homily at the Chrism Mass with the clergy of the Diocese of Rome had three key lines based on the Holy Spirit. To the priests, the Pope asked them to take care of the anointing and the relationship with the Holy Spirit, to live a "second call" and to be artisans of unity.

Maria José Atienza-April 6, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

The third person of the Blessed Trinity was the focus of Pope Francis' homily at the Chrism Mass, celebrated in St. Peter's Basilica next to the Vatican Curia and the clergy of the diocese of Rome.

In this Mass, in which the priests renew their priestly promises and the holy oils are blessed, the Pope wished to dwell on the anointing of the priestly priest. Holy Spirit and the figure of the third person of the Trinity.

"Without the Spirit of the Lord there is no Christian life and, without his anointing, there is no holiness" began the Holy Father, who reminded priests that the Holy Spirit is "the origin of our ministry".

In fact, the Pope stressed, "without him, the Church would not be the living Bride of Christ either, but at most a religious organization".

"Anointed by Him, we are called to immerse ourselves in Him.

The primary task of priests, "chosen, anointed by the Lord" is, in the Pope's words, "to take care of the anointing. "The Lord has not only chosen us and called us from here and there, but has poured into us the anointing of his Spirit, the same Spirit that descended on the Apostles," the Pope emphasized.

Looking at these first followers of Christ, the Pontiff underlined the radical change that the second anointing, the second call, brought about: "Jesus chose them and at his call they left their boats, their nets and their homes.

The anointing of the Word changed their lives. With enthusiasm they followed the Master and began to preach" but when the Passion came, their cowardice, their spiritual ignorance, as the Pope has defined: "The 'I do not know that man' that Peter pronounced in the courtyard of the high priest after the Last Supper, is not only an impulsive defense, but a confession of spiritual ignorance".

"For us too there was a first anointing, which began with a call of love that captivated our hearts," the Holy Father continued, "then, according to God's timing, the paschal stage arrives for each of us, which marks the moment of truth.

Not to be "state clergymen".

From this stage of adversity, of crisis, which always comes, as Francis reminded us, "one can emerge badly, slipping into a certain mediocrity, sliding wearily towards a "normality" in which three dangerous temptations are insinuated: that of the "normality", the "normality" in which three dangerous temptations insinuate themselves: that of the commitmentthe one whereby one is satisfied with what one can do; the one of the substitutesThe one by which one tries to "fill oneself" with something different from our anointing; the one of the discouragementThe result is that, dissatisfied, one moves on by sheer inertia.. And here lies the great risk: while appearances remain intact, we withdraw into ourselves and move on unmotivated". The Pope has defined this danger as that of becoming state clergymeninstead of village shepherds.

Reminding priests who are going through moments of crisis, the Pope stressed that the passage to priestly maturity passes through the Holy Spirit: "when He becomes the protagonist of our life, everything changes perspective, even disappointments and bitterness, because it is no longer a matter of getting better by composing something, but of giving ourselves, without reserve. For all these reasons, Francis encouraged priests to "invoke the Spirit not as an occasional practice, but as a daily encouragement. I, anointed by Him, am called to immerse myself in Him".

Do not tarnish the Church with polarizations

The Pope also referred to the Holy Spirit as the generator of "harmony that unites everything". "Think of a presbyterate that is not united, it does not work," the Pope pointed out, "He raises up the diversity of charisms and recomposes it in unity [...] Let us be careful, please, not to sully the anointing of the Spirit and the mantle of Mother Church with disunity, with polarizations, with any lack of charity and communion."

Friendly priests

The Pope ended his homily with a call to "guard harmony, beginning not with others, but with oneself; asking ourselves: do my words, my comments, what I say and write have the stamp of the Spirit or that of the world? I am thinking also of the kindness of the priest: if people find even in us dissatisfied people, discontented bachelors, who criticize and point fingers, where will they discover harmony?"

The rite of the Chrism Mass continued its usual course with two singular moments: the renewal of priestly promises and the blessing of the holy oils.

The next big celebration of these days will be this afternoon with the celebration of Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum.

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Passion, death and burial of Christ (I)

Easter, the celebration of Christ's resurrection, is not only temporally preceded by the passion and death of Jesus, but cannot be understood without this paschal sacrifice in which Christ, the immaculate Lamb, makes the passage from the death of grace to life in God.

Gerardo Ferrara-April 6, 2023-Reading time: 7 minutes

The road to Easter

It is not possible to approach the paschal mystery in an integral way without first knowing the process of the Passion and Death of Christ.

Each step narrated in the Gospels, and confirmed again and again by archaeology and documentary sources of the time, takes on full meaning in the light of faith and history.

Penance and Lent

Catholics began a few days ago the season of LentIt is a time not so much - or not only - of penance but, like Advent for Christmas, of preparation.

At first, in the early Church, Lent was conceived as a time of greater preparation for Easter in which the catechumens who would receive baptism during the Easter Vigil. The practice of fasting was directed above all to them and the fasting itself did not have a penitential purpose, but an ascetic-illuminative one.

Only later, from the third century onwards, the experience of the Lenten season was extended to the whole ecclesial community, especially to penitents (those who had committed serious sins and needed to be reconciled and readmitted into the community, and those who aspired to greater perfection). For this reason, they began to be assigned a special place in the church, close to that of the catechumens, and outside the sanctuary. There they remained dressed in mourning (a practice still in force among the confraternities of penitents), with their skulls shaved and covered with ashes until Holy Thursday. On this day, the penitent was solemnly reconciled by the imposition of hands by the bishop or priest and a prayer imploring God to readmit the sinner to the community from which he had separated.

Moving decisively towards Easter

However, a fundamental characteristic of both ancient and modern Lent is not so much the cultivation of penitential practices such as fasting, but living these practices with reference to Christ.

The forty days of Lent, with the practices observed during them, have the fundamental purpose of commemorating the forty days of Jesus in the desert before the beginning of his public mission, forty days in which Christ fasted and was exposed to temptation.

St. Francis de Sales writes that fasting in itself is not a virtue. Lent itself, therefore, is a mortification. "virtuous" only if it has as its goal the final push towards Easter; as St. Paul would say about the athletes who prepare their body to obtain a corruptible crown, while Christians temper their body and spirit through penance to obtain an incorruptible one.

In the Gospel of Luke (Paul's disciple), we read that, "when the days were completed in which he was to be taken up to heaven, Jesus made the decision to go to Jerusalem." therefore, towards his Passover.

It is interesting to note that the Greek text of Luke uses the expression "ἐστήριξε τὸ πρόσωπον-.stêrizéin ton prosopon".i.e, "harden the face" to head towards Jerusalem, which here has the meaning of taking a firm decision, with an attitude that we could even say, hostile.

If we also take into account the reference to the prophet Isaiah, in which the prophet himself proclaims: "so I hardened my face like flint, knowing that I would not be disappointed."We can go back to the original Hebrew expression which, literally, would be: "I hardened my face like flint.". We know that flint, lapis ignis in Latin, is a particular type of stone used to produce the sparks needed to ignite firearms, but also, in ancient times, simply to light fires. To produce sparks, however, the stone must be struck.

Luke also uses the verb stêrizéin in another passage of his Gospel, when Jesus, addressing Peter, orders him to confirm (stêrizéin) to his brethren once he had repented, and in Acts, when speaking of Paul confirming all the disciples in the faith.

In fact, in imitation of Christ and his disciples, in the period leading up to Easter, Christians and catechumens seem to be called upon to "harden like flint", that is, to move resolutely towards the goal of their journey, which is not only Jerusalem, but eternal life, trusting in God and knowing that they will not be disappointed.

Easter

We know that the culmination of Jesus Christ's mission was his Passover, which would take place on the Jewish festival of that name.

Passover was one of the main celebrations of the Jewish year, in fact, it was the main one. It was part of the so-called "pilgrimage festivities".together with Pentecost (Shavu'òt) and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkôt). On the occasion of these three feasts, every male Israelite who had reached a certain age was obliged to go to the Temple in Jerusalem.

This holiday was, and still is for today's Jews, the commemoration of the passage (passover) of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt to freedom and the Promised Land, a step that was achieved through the sacrifice of the firstborn of the Egyptians and the lambs of the Jews.

In Hebrew, however, passover also means the sacrificial victim, a lamb without blemish that was sacrificed in place of the firstborn of each family. Therefore, the Passover is also the lamb.

The Easter Calendar

Passover (Hebrew, Pesach) is celebrated in the month of Nisan (between mid-March and mid-April), on the afternoon of the 14th, in conjunction with the "Feast of the Unleavened Bread" or unleavened bread, which was celebrated from the 15th to the 21st. These eight days (from the 14th to the 21st) were therefore called both Passover and Unleavened.

At the time of Jesus, the Jewish calendar was quite elastic, an elasticity on which probably depends a discrepancy between the synoptic gospels and that of John.

Indeed, the official Temple calendar was not accepted throughout Palestine and by all Jewish sects.

In addition to this luni-solar calendar there was a different liturgical calendar, corresponding to the ancient priestly calendar of 364 days, later replaced in 167 B.C. by the Babylonian lunar calendar of 350 days.

In addition, there was also a dispute between Pharisees and Sadducees (specifically, the Boethians, i.e., the followers of the family of Simon Boethius, high priest between 25 B.C. and 4 A.D.). The latter used to move certain dates of the calendar by one day according to the year, especially when the Passover fell on Friday or Sunday.

It so happened, for example, that the Sadducees (the class of the "high priests") and the wealthy classes, if the Passover fell on Friday, postponed by one day the sacrifice of the lamb and the Passover supper (which were on the previous day, Thursday), while all the people, who used to take the Pharisees as a reference, followed the Pharisaic calendar, continuing with the sacrifice of the lamb and the Passover supper on Thursday.

In the year in which Jesus died, Passover regularly fell on Friday, although John, perhaps following the ancient priestly calendar, writes that this day was Parasceve. The priests mentioned in his Gospel postponed the Passover meal by one day (that Friday was Parasceve for them). Jesus and the disciples, on the other hand, seem to have followed the Pharisaic calendar.

The Jewish celebration

As of 10 or 11 a.m. on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, every small piece of leavened bread (jametz) was to disappear from all Jewish homes. From that moment on and during the following seven days, it was obligatory to consume only unleavened bread. Also on the 14th, in the afternoon, the immolation of the lambs took place in the inner court of the Temple. The head of the family was in charge of taking the victim to be sacrificed to the Temple, and then brought it back home skinned and stripped of some internal parts.

The blood, on the other hand, was given to the priests, who sprinkled it on the altar of burnt offerings.

It is almost impossible to imagine the stench and the tumult that was created on those occasions. There were tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, in fact, of Jews from both Palestine and the Diaspora who flocked to Jerusalem for the feast; so many, in fact, that shifts had to be established so that all could perform the sacrifice of the lamb.

The historian Flavius Josephus made a calculation on behalf of the Roman authorities in the time of Nero (in the year 65 approximately), showing that only on the evening of the 14th of Nisan of that year no less than 255,600 lambs were sacrificed.

The slaughtered lambs were roasted that evening for the Passover feast, which began after sunset and lasted at least until midnight. At each banquet there were no less than ten people and no more than twenty, all reclining on low couches concentric to the table.

At least four ritual cups of wine circulated, in addition to other non-ritual cups that could pass before the third ritual, but not between the third and the fourth. All the participants in the banquet had to drink from the same cup (kiddush ritual), a large cup.

The dinner began with the pouring of the first cup and the recitation of a prayer to bless the banquet and the wine.

This was followed by unleavened bread, bitter herbs and a special fruit and nut sauce (haroset) in which the herbs were dipped. After this, the roast lamb was served and then it was the turn of the second cup. The head of the family would then make a short speech explaining the meaning of the feast, usually in response to a question from a son. For example, the son might ask: "Why is tonight different from the others?" o "Why is it that every other night we go to sleep after dinner and tonight we stay up?". And so, the head of the family, in accordance with what is an imperative duty of the Jewish people, memory (zikkaron), reminded the family of the benefits God had bestowed on Israel by delivering them from Egypt.

Then the roasted lamb, together with the bitter herbs dipped in the sauce, was eaten in haste, while the second cup was circulated. This was followed by the recitation of the first part of the Hallel (hence the term alleluia), a hymn composed of Psalms 113 to 118 (which, in the Catholic Church, are also sung during the Liturgy of the Hours on Sundays) and a blessing was recited with which the banquet proper began, preceded by the washing of hands.

After pouring the third ritual cup, a prayer of thanksgiving and the second part of the hymn are recited. Hallel. Finally, the fourth ritual cup was poured.

It is interesting to conclude with the aforementioned identification, at Easter, between the "step" from slavery to freedom and the sacrificial victim, a lamb without blemish sacrificed in the place of the firstborn, which, in the Christian vision, coincides with the identification between the "step" from death to life and a new Lamb without blemish, sacrificed in place of sinners.

The authorGerardo Ferrara

Writer, historian and expert on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture.

The road to Easter

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Entering the paschal mystery

Preface in the Eucharistic Prayer: Easter. Meaning (I)

The Preface constitutes the first part of the Eucharistic Prayer. On the occasion of Easter, the author explains in three articles the history and rich meaning of the five Easter prefaces, with an introduction.

Giovanni Zaccaria-April 6, 2023-Reading time: 6 minutes

Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (I) Related News

– Supernatural Institutio generalis Missalis Romani lists eight main elements of the Eucharistic Prayer and emphasizes that the preface has the task of expressing the content of the thanksgiving: "The priest, in the name of all the holy people, glorifies God the Father and thanks him for the whole work of salvation or for some particular aspect of it, according to the diversity of the day, the feast or the Season".

For many centuries, the Eucharistic Prayer was one, what today we call the Roman Canon or Eucharistic Prayer I, and the preface - together with the Communicators and the Hanc igitur The purpose of the Eucharistic Prayer was to adapt the unique Eucharistic Prayer to the particular aspect of the mystery celebrated on a given day.

For this reason, the number of prefaces found in some ancient sources is quite high: this is the case of the Sacramentary of Veronese (6th century), which contains 267; or the Sacramentary of Fulda (10th century), which contains 320.

At the same time, over the centuries, the need was also felt to reduce the number of prefaces, also so that they would have a well-founded theological content and be truly meaningful. In this sense, for example, the Gregorian-Adrian Sacramentary (8th c.) presents only 14 prefaces. Depending on which tendency prevails, we find in the ancient sources a greater or lesser number of prefaces.

To this last trend belongs the Missal The most recent of St. Pius V, which established a number of prefaces of 11. Over the centuries, some additions were also made to this Missal, such as a preface for the Deceased (1919), St. Joseph (1919), Christ the King (1925) and the Sacred Heart (1928). In addition, with the reform of Holy Week, a preface of its own was introduced for the Chrism Mass (1955).

The main reason for the expansion of the corpus of prefaces was a qualitative enrichment of the Eucharistic celebration, paying special attention to the Eucharistic prayer, the true heart of the celebration. To this end, recourse was made to the immense Eucharistic patrimony of the Roman tradition, relying on the numerous ancient sources available at the time.

The structure of the preface, documented

The structure of the preface is stable and well documented. Every preface-and, since the preface is the initial part of the Eucharistic Prayer, every Eucharistic Prayer-opens with a dialogue, which is already attested in very ancient sources, such as the Apostolic Tradition, and which appears in most Western and Eastern liturgies.

Here too, as in the other particularly important moments of the Mass, the minister addresses the people with a greeting that wishes to emphasize that the Lord is present in the priestly people gathered for the celebration (in this case the implied Latin verb would be est: Dominus vobiscum est) and that it is at the same time a prayer that is raised to God to be present in the heart of each one of those present and therefore to act as the Church of Christ (in this case a sit: Dominus vobiscum sit). It is a greeting of origin biblical (Rt 2:4; 2 Chr 15:2; 2 Thess 3:16), already used in the liturgy in the time of St. Augustine.

The people's response Et cum spiritu tuo refers to the gift of the Spirit that the minister has received through the sacrament of Holy Orders and, in a way, reminds the presbyter that what he is about to accomplish goes far beyond his abilities: he can only do it by virtue of the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is why this dialogue is reserved to bishops, priests and deacons.

Elevate the heart to God

Then, the the priest invites the people to raise their hearts to God, and he does so also with the gesture of raising his hands. The biblical root of these expressions is found in Lam 3:41 and Col 3:1. Again, it is an exchange already attested to by St. Augustine, who, in a discourse addressed to the newly baptized, exhorted them that their response should correspond to the true attitude of the heart, since they are responding to divine acts. To raise the heart to God means to recollect oneself so that the interior and exterior attitude is truly attentive and participatory.

The dialogue ends with the invitation Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro and the answer Dignum et iustum est. These expressions have a biblical parallel in Rev 11:17, but also in 1 Thess 1:2 and 2 Thess 1:2. Here the people are invited to join in the Eucharistic prayer pronounced by the minister, that is, to join Christ himself in magnifying the great works of God and offering the sacrifice: the priest is in fact acting in persona Christi and in the name of the Church. The response of the faithful manifests their willingness to effectively unite themselves to the Eucharistic prayer with their faith and devotion and constitutes a kind of bridge to the body of the Preface that immediately follows.

From the point of view of the structure of the preface, we can distinguish three parts: a more or less fixed introduction, a central nucleus called embolism and a conclusion, which, like the introduction, tends to be expressed in recurring phrases; the latter is intended to introduce the Sanctus, the great acclamation that immediately follows the preface.

As for the theological content of the preface, what interests us most is the embolism, which is the variable part of the preface and constitutes a specific look at the celebrated mystery.

Easter prefaces

As for the Easter prefaces, all five are introduced by a formula that is always identical and constitutes a specificity of these Eucharistic texts. In fact, they are all presented in this way:

It is indeed just and necessary,
it is our duty and salvation
to glorify you always, Lord,
but more than ever in this time
in which Christ, our Passover, has been immolated.

The Latin text is, in a way, even more transparent; the expression contained in the last sentence, in fact, clarifies why it is truly good and right to proclaim the glory of God on this day: cum Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus.

It is a causal/temporal expression: when/when Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed. The almost direct quotation comes from 1 Cor 5:7 and immediately opens the understanding of the meaning of the preface, which is also underlined by the title: De mysterio paschali.

The death of Jesus, a true sacrifice

The Pauline expression introduces us to the meaning of what we are celebrating: the death of Jesus on the Cross is not a mere capital execution, but a true sacrifice. In fact, God has "openly made him an instrument of atonement through faith in his blood, as a manifestation of his righteousness for the forgiveness of sins that are past" (Rom 3:25). Here "instrument of atonement" translates the Greek ἱλαστήριον, indicating the golden lid of the ark of the covenant, which, on the day of Yom Kippur, the high priest sprinkled with the blood of the victims, to restore the covenant relationship with God broken by sins (Ex 24:1-8; Lev 16:14-17). "Christ loved us and gave himself for us, offering himself to God as a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling aroma" (Eph 5:2).

This introduces the embolism, the very heart of the preface:

For He is the true Lamb
who took away the sin of the world;
dying he destroyed our death,
and rising from the dead restored life.

The Lamb that took away the sin of the world

It is a text interwoven with Sacred Scripture: we note the reminiscences of Jn 1:29, when the Baptist "seeing Jesus coming toward him, said: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world", as well as 1 Pet 1:19, which defines Christ as "a lamb without blemish and without spot", using an expression proper to sacrificial language (Lv 14:10; 23:28; etc.). Below we can also note the reference to Rev 5:6, which contemplates the Lamb in the midst of the throne, "standing as if slain".

In the context of the old covenant, the lamb was sacrificed in an attempt to obtain divine benevolence in the face of the multitude of sins of the chosen people. However, it was an attempt that never achieved its objective, since that blood was incapable of purifying consciences; a sign of the ineffectiveness of such sacrifices was precisely the fact that they had to be repeated every year.

Now, however, Christ "has conquered death and has made life and incorruption shine forth through the Gospel" (2 Tim 1:10). This is why the Apocalypse contemplates the Lamb slain but at the same time upright: we could say dead and risen.

Thus Cromatius of Aquileia comments on the event celebrated at the Easter Vigil, which is present in every Eucharistic celebration: "Men on earth also celebrate [this vigil] because for the salvation of the human race Christ suffered death in order to conquer death by dying (...) [7] because the Son suffered death according to the will of the Father to give us life by his death".

The authorGiovanni Zaccaria

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome)

Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (I) Related News

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Sunday Readings

It is not here. First Sunday of Easter (A)

Joseph Evans comments on the readings for the First Sunday of Easter and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.

Joseph Evans-April 6, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

“But the angel said to the women: Do not be afraid; for I know you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said’ (Mt 28:5-6). "He is not here": ”: words found also in Mark and Luke. But the angel says a lot with them. That "He is not here." is like an affectionate rebuke. He is taking the women – and with them, us – beyond their narrow, all-too-human vision.

He is not in the tomb. Jesus is not in our tomb-like mentality, our pessimism, which assumes that death always has the last word, that it is greater even than God. How often our vision is so narrow. We talk of tunnel vision: we could also talk of tomb vision.

So often, in practice, we think that God has been defeated, that there is nothing we can do, that death and even the devil have effectively triumphed, and all we can do is to show piety towards the dead, stay faithful to a memory, as we fade and decline with it.

But Christ is not in a tomb-like mentality, that accepts defeat, that resigns itself to decline, a simple veneration of the past incapable of generating dynamic action in the present. Christ is not in sad nostalgia. Tomb vision is almost to lock oneself in the tomb together with the corpse.

"He is not here." He is not in your sentimentalism which, as touching and generous as it might be, is good for nothing. You have come to bury the dead as an act of loving piety, a sentimental final tribute. Christ is not in such sentiment which, as praise-worthy as it is, looks to the past and not to the future, and assumes defeat and not the victory of God.

"He is not here." He is not in your discouragement, your merely human vision which fails to consider the infinite power of God. He is not in your lack of faith. He is not in your all too limited understanding of Scripture and of the prophecies which had clearly announced the Resurrection but you had failed to understand their meaning. Christ is not in our shallow reading of Scripture which sees it only as a book of the past and not the living Word of God today.

Christ is not in your materialism, understood here as giving too much weight to material considerations: “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (Mk 16:3).

When we feel ourselves getting down, exaggerating practical problems, viewing things pessimistically, assuming defeat, then remember those three Latin words: "Non est hic", "He is not here". He is not in those ways of thinking. He is outside. He has burst open the tomb, he has knocked out the guards, he has overcome the scheming of his enemies, he has vanquished human power, he has conquered sin and death. Life has triumphed. Love has triumphed. He is not here. He is the God-man alive and risen!

Homily on the readings of Easter Sunday I (A)

The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA short one-minute reflection for these Sunday readings.

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Pope meets with mothers of fallen Ukrainian and Russian soldiers

Pope Francis has invited to pray, during the General Audience on Wednesday of Holy Week, for "all the victims of war crimes", and especially "for the mothers of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who have fallen in the war". He also greeted the young participants in the international meeting UNIV'23, who repeated 'Long live the Pope!'

Francisco Otamendi-April 5, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

UNIV'23: The search for true happiness, a challenge for young people Related News

Three or four messages of Pope Francis have perhaps prevailed in a special way in the General Audience of this Holy Wednesday of 2023.

One of prayer for "all the victims of war crimes, and "looking at Mary, the Mother, before the Cross", for "the mothers of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who have fallen in the war. They are mothers of dead sons". An invitation that he accompanied, as usual, with the request: "let us not forget to pray for the tormented Ukraine"before praying the Lord's Prayer in Latin and giving the final Blessing.

Another typical of Holy Week, which focused his speech in the Audience. "Jesus crucified is wounded, stripped of everything. Yet, loving and forgiving those who hurt him, he turns evil into good, and pain into love. He transforms his wounds into a source of hope for all," the Holy Father said.

Turning wounds into hope

"In the intense spiritual climate of Holy Week, I invite everyone to contemplate the mystery of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord, to draw from it the strength to translate into life the demands of the Gospel," added the Pope, who also referred to the sadness in so many people on the streets, and the suicide of young people.

"The point is not to be wounded a little or a lot by life, but what to do with these wounds, the small ones, the big ones. I can let them become infected with bitterness and sadness or I can unite them to those of Jesus, so that my wounds may also become luminous". There are "so many young people who seek salvation in suicide, who prefer to go further with drugs, with oblivion, think about them, what is your drug to cover the wounds?

He went on to note: "Our wounds can become sources of hope when, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we wipe away the tears of others; when, instead of holding grudges for what is taken from us, we care for what is lacking in others; when, instead of digging into ourselves, we reach out to those who suffer; when, instead of thirsting for love for ourselves, we satiate those who need us."

Joy of UNIV 2023 youths

The third papal message is twofold. On the one hand, sportsmen and women, who today celebrate the World Day of Sport for Peace and Development, with the wish that "sport may contribute to solidarity and friendship among peoples".

On the other hand, Pope Francis addressed the young participants in the international meeting UNIV 2023. "I cordially greet the many Spanish-speaking pilgrims; in particular, I greet the young people who are taking part in the international meeting UNIV 2023", The young people have responded by waving flags and with shouts of 'Long live the Pope', the same as happened when he mentioned English, Portuguese or German speaking people this morning, for example.

"In these holy days, let us draw close to Jesus crucified," the Pontiff told the young people: "Contemplating him, wounded, stripped of everything, let us recognize our own truth. Let us present to him all that we are, and let us allow him to renew in us the hope of a new life.

"Very many pilgrims from Latin America, from Spain, present at this General Audience with Pope Francis, and it is noticeable by the festive atmosphere in St. Peter's Square, after the Pope's greeting in Spanish," Vatican News noted in the transmission.

The UNIV meetings, which have been held for 55 years with the participation of more than 100,000 university students, combine, in addition to cultural and intellectual formation, attendance at the liturgical ceremonies of Holy Week and audiences with the Holy Father, and a catechetical meeting with the prelate of Opus Dei, Fernando Ocáriz. This year, students from more than a hundred universities around the world are reflecting on 'True Happiness', and will financially support Caritas to support families affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

"The Crucified One, source of hope".

On the eve of the Easter Triduum, the Pope focused his meditation on the theme: "The Crucified One, Source of Hope" (Reading: 1 Pet 2:21-24). The Holy Father noted that in last Sunday's Passion narrative, "which ends with the burial of Jesus, for the disciples, the stone that sealed the tomb signified the end of hope. Today, too, it seems that hope is often buried under the weight of suffering and distrust.

"But even in the darkest moments, when it seems that everything is over, God makes the hope of a new beginning rise in us," the Pope encouraged. "It is always possible to begin. This death and resurrection of hope can be seen in contemplating the Cross. Jesus crucified is wounded, stripped of everything. Yet, loving and forgiving those who hurt him, he turns evil into good, and pain into love. He transforms his wounds into a source of hope for all. We too can transform our wounds by uniting them to those of Jesus, forgetting ourselves, and entrusting our lives into the merciful hands of God the Father".

"To be healed from sadness."

"Deep thoughts and feelings of frustration are also condensed in us: why so much indifference towards God? Why so much evil in the world? Why do inequalities continue to grow and the longed-for peace does not come? And in the hearts of each one of us, how many dashed expectations, how many disappointments! And also, that feeling that times past were better and that, in the world, perhaps also in the Church, things are not going as before... In short, even today hope sometimes seems sealed under the stone of mistrust", added the Roman Pontiff.

However, "today we look to the tree of the cross so that hope may spring up in us: so that we may be healed of the sadness with which we are sick". (...) "Today, when everything is complex and there is a risk of losing the thread, we need simplicity, to rediscover the value of sobriety, of renunciation, of cleansing what contaminates the heart and saddens. (...)".

"In these holy days let us draw near to the Crucified One. Let us place ourselves before Him, stripped naked, to tell the truth about ourselves, removing the superfluous. Let us look at Him wounded, and let us place our wounds in His wounds. Let us allow Jesus to regenerate hope in us", concluded the Holy Father Francis.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Family

Mariolina Ceriotti: Training to be a parent, day after day

Italian child neuropsychiatrist and psychotherapist Mariolina Ceriotti reflects on parenthood in today's world in her new book Parents and children. The paths of parenthood.

Giovanni Tridente-April 5, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

The concreteness of the relationship of love between a parent and a child demands a constant education of the mind and heart. Parenthood is realized day after day through the choices made both in normal situations and in the imperfection of everyday relationships. These are some of the reflections that the Italian child neuropsychiatrist and psychotherapist Mariolina Ceriotti Migliarese has collected in her recent book Parents and children. The paths of parenthood.

Omnes had the opportunity to ask him some questions about these issues, which were also addressed in a public meeting at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

What does it mean to be a parent today?

-First of all, we must start from the premise that being a parent does not coincide with the physical begetting of children; it is an adult position, which is not improvised, but prepared step by step. On the other hand, in the life cycle of each person, different phases succeed one another and intertwine, forming a sort of path, marked by evolutionary stages, each of which has a specific task, which is possible once the previous task has been achieved.

In this sense, are we talking about a sort of generativity?

-Exactly. The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, for example, affirms that adulthood has as its specific evolutionary task precisely the development of the generativity. In this sense, he affirms that "the person who has true adult competence is the one who is able to generate".

This is also linked to concepts such as procreation, productivity and creativity: generating new individuals, new products and new ideas and developing the capacity to generate them again, growing over time.

It is not only about putting new things into the world, but also about being able to take care of them, to shift the center of personal gravity from the exclusive care of oneself to the care (and dedication) of what one has generated.

Do you have to have "competencies" to be generative?

-Certain competencies are certainly needed, which are possible as long as the previous developmental tasks, which begin in childhood and adolescence, are integrated into the personality.

Today, not only does this "task" seem to have become particularly difficult, but the very subject of identity as a positive objective has been called into question. In fact, the question arises as to whether there is really any value in defining oneself in a stable way or whether it is not rather the so-called "fluidity", the non-definition...

On the other hand, the generativity is that adult competence that gives us the possibility and the ability to go beyond the narcissistic (even legitimate) love for oneself, to open the heart, mind and life to what transcends the self, starting with children, but not only.

How is this capability realized in the case of the male?

-This capacity, which is a procreative and creative capacity, is possible in both men and women, who develop it, however, in different ways. We can say that paternal is the masculine form of being generative, that is, capable of taking care of what is generated, according to a specifically masculine modality.

I would add that the generative experience (properly understood) is, as such, an experience of profound well-being, because it is opposed to the experience of "stagnation".

Donald Winnicott, pediatrician and psychoanalyst, affirmed that the way for man to feel happy is through his capacity to develop creativity.

Can you tell us more about the meaning of parenthood?

-Parenthood, as a generative act, implies having the courage to give life to another human being and to assume the responsibility of caring for him or her.

Unlike maternity, the bond with the child is not primarily biological: if the mother is named as such by the child (the mother is a mother from the very moment a child is born in her), the father becomes a father when he accepts to recognize himself as such.

The father always becomes father through the woman, and his relationship with the child is thus born under the sign of triangulation. His position is different, perhaps we can say "freer"; it entails a different relational distance (not under the banner of symbiosis).

This triangulated position from the beginning is the specificity of the father, and entails a different way of establishing the bond. A way that is no less intense, no less important, no less necessary; a way that is complementary to that of the mother.

What, in your opinion, characterizes a "good relationship" between father and son?

-For a believer, it is a matter of understanding how to be a father in the Father's way. If we look at the Gospels, several passages significantly show us the characteristics of a "good" relationship between father and son.

Often there is a "recognition" of the Son (think, for example, of the stories of the Baptism of Jesus); even human paternity always begins with a recognition; it is a choice that requires awareness and responsibility.

Then there is "complacency", which underlines something beautiful and valuable; it is no coincidence that what a son needs in relation to his father is the exchange of esteem (to be esteemed by the one whom we esteem).

There is also the "sending", which is the son's own vocation, who longs for a father who cares about his freedom, who encourages him to understand where his true desire is going. And again, time to spend together, to play, to share activities, to exchange confidences?

ceriotti — Mariolina Ceriotti during her meeting at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross @PUSC

So, what does a son ask of his father?

-He surely asks him to recognize him as a son, to make him feel that his father appreciates his worth. He asks him to teach him the value of things, the way of the good; to support him in the search for his own vocation; to give him confidence and time, even to do things together; to be curious without prejudice about his own progress, and to show him tenderness, certainly in the way of fathers, which is different from that of mothers. Help him not to be afraid of limits, of pain, of death, and to be patient, knowing that if the father is there, the child will never feel alone.

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Omnes Forum: "Marriage in the West, from deconstruction to reconstruction".

This forum, organized together with the School of Canon Law of the University of Navarra, will address the reality of marriage in Western countries where more than half of all marriages end in breakup.

Maria José Atienza-April 4, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

Next Monday, April 17 at 7.30 p.m., we will have an exceptional Omnes Forum on the theme "Marriage in the West, from deconstruction to reconstruction".

The Forum, organized together with the University of Navarra School of Canon Law Carlos Martínez de Aguirre, Professor of Civil Law at the University of Zaragoza, and Álvaro González Alonso, Academic Director of the Master of Continuing Education in Matrimonial Law and Canonical Procedural Law of the University of Navarre

This forum will address the reality of marriage in Western countries where more than half of all marriages end in breakup. A fact that highlights the need for greater pre-marital formation, as well as accompaniment by priests, lawyers and other married couples to carry on family and married life. All this together with a social regeneration that helps to strengthen and improve marriage and family bonds in the future.

The meeting will take place at the headquarters of the University of Navarra in Madrid (C/ Marquesado de Santa Marta, 3. 28022 Madrid) and, at the end, a Spanish wine will be served.

As a follower and reader of Omnes, we invite you to attend. If you would like to attend, please confirm your attendance by sending an email to [email protected].

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Jonathan RoumieI always start by praying to interpret Jesus".

Cinema

The Chosen, a good choice to watch these days

The Chosen, which can now be seen on Movistar Plus and Shazam are Patricio Sánchez Jaúregui's audiovisual recommendations for April.

Patricio Sánchez-Jáuregui-April 4, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

The ChosenIn the skin of the apostles and the holy women Related News

The Chosen: "The Jesus shown in the series connects with the audience because he is so believable!" Related News

This April we bring you new releases, classics, or content you haven't yet seen in theaters or on your favorite platforms.

The Chosen

"The Chosen" has become, in its own right, the best on-screen depiction of the life of Christ. With exceptional writing and character development, it is a work as captivating as "The Passion," but more human.

This film adaptation about the life of Jesus has already been running for 3 seasons and they plan to make it eight. All this having raised money from individuals through crowdfunding. A sum of money that has not stopped growing exponentially since the first episode was released.

This Easter the series arrives to Movistar Plus+, after being the most watched series on acontra+.

But not only that. Globally it has been a hit with audiences and critics (second only to "Breaking Bad" on IMDB) and comes loaded with awards.

The Chosen

DirectorDallas Jenkins

Actors: Jonathan Roumie, Shahar Isaac, Elizabeth Tabish, Paras Patel, Erick Avari, Yasmine Al-Bustami, Noah James, Amber Shana Williams and Vanessa Benavente

Platform: Movistar / acontra+

Shazam!

With its sequel in theaters, it is worth remembering the movie Shazam!, a mix of humor, tenderness and adventure reminiscent of the 90's classics. Its script entertains effortlessly, combining tragedy, comedy and endearing characters.

This is a superhero movie that never forgets the true power of the genre: the forging of a hero with a heart, the joyful fulfillment of desires and a villain to match. A movie for the whole family but with a dark edge reminiscent of the DC comic book adaptations of the 90s. This film combines the unpretentious joys of the comic books of yesteryear with sharp, elaborately simple humor.

Shazam

DirectorDavid F. Sandberg

ActorsZachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer

Platform:: HBO Max / Amazon Video

The authorPatricio Sánchez-Jáuregui

The ChosenIn the skin of the apostles and the holy women Related News

The Chosen: "The Jesus shown in the series connects with the audience because he is so believable!" Related News

Jonathan RoumieI always start by praying to interpret Jesus".

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UNIV'23: The search for true happiness, a challenge for young people

The UNIV, born under the inspiration and impulse of St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, allows participants to experience Holy Week and Easter together with the Pope in the heart of Christianity.

Maria José Atienza-April 3, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

Rome rejuvenates in a special way during the days of Holy Week. Students from more than one hundred universities from all over the world gather in Rome for these days on the occasion of the UNIV 2023.

The UNIV meeting It also combines cultural and intellectual formation with attendance at the liturgical ceremonies of Holy Week, a meeting with the Holy Father and a dialogue with the prelate of Opus Dei, Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz.

The theme proposed for this year by the UNIV organizing committee was "Searching for Happiness". As Robert Marsland, spokesperson for UNIVForum 2023 explains: "In the last half century we have been able to probe the depths of space and sequence the human genome, but we still struggle to answer two simple questions: what is happiness and how can I increase it?" Being happy and knowing how to be happy "is the hidden premise of all advertising and the reason behind every trip to the doctor's office," Marsland points out.

International speakers

UNIV 2023 foresees cultural events in various locations in Rome: conferences, colloquia, exhibitions, round tables with speakers such as Arthur Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and faculty member at Harvard Business School (USA);Yvonne Font, Rheumatologist (Puerto Rico);Francisco Iniesta, Professor at IESE Business School (Spain); Teresa Bosch and Florencia Aguilar, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Austral World Building Lab (Argentina) or Pietro Cum, CEO and General Manager of ELIS (Italy).

This year, the UNIV is holding its academic university meeting on Holy Tuesday at the headquarters of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

The UNIV

In these 55 years, the UNIV meetings have been attended by more than 100,000 university students. Each year the students participate in the audience with the Pope.

On this occasion, the audience on April 5 will be particularly significant, considering Pope Francis' pressing call for peace, and the dramatic situation of so many of his contemporaries in Ukraine and in several areas destroyed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

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How St. Peter's Basilica and St. Peter's Square look during Holy Week

Every year, the Holy Week and Easter celebrations at the Vatican involve a huge amount of work for which the 'army' of workers in charge of getting everything ready is dedicated for weeks.

Hernan Sergio Mora-April 3, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

The preparation work is enormous. There are the "sanpietrini", workers, craftsmen and artisans belonging to the so-called "Fabbrica di San Pietro". They take care of the maintenance and decoration of the most important basilica in Christianity. One who was assembling a dais said: "We are the only ones who put our hands in here". The floral arrangements on the occasion of Easter are very careful.

The spaces for the internal sacristy in St. Peter's Basilica have been divided and the platforms are being erected where, thanks to the television cameras, hundreds of countries will be able to follow the ceremonies live.

In addition, the workers of Infrastructures and Services of the Governorate of the Vatican City State are organizing everything that needs to be prepared outside the basilica and inside the Bernini Colonnade, which will 'embrace' the 50 thousand faithful who will be there.

The "phoenix palms", famous for the celebration of Palm Sunday, remain in charge of the Office for Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, as well as the "palmureli", another type of palms that arrive from the city of Sanremo, as well as the olive trees that are placed near the huge images of St. Peter and St. Paul at the foot of the staircase.

The gardeners will be in the front row, especially with the thousands of tulips and flowers that Holland has been sending every year since 1985. This work becomes very intense because they start on Good Friday and must finish the decoration of the square and steps before Easter Sunday.

The building services help the gardeners with their cranes and equipment to place the palms on the façade of the basilica designed in 1607 by the architect Carlos Maderno, which, although at first glance it may not seem so, has a height equivalent to that of a 15-story building and a width greater than the length of a soccer field.

The Vatican Television Center is installing the cameras and all the necessary infrastructure in the various locations, including the 'pens' and cameras with the 3D system.

In 2020 and 2021 all ceremonies felt the drama of the pandemic, few people were allowed to participate and only last year was normality returned, albeit already with the pain of the war triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Holy Week begins with the Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square; on Holy Thursday, the Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica; on Good Friday, the liturgy of the Passion and Death of the Lord; always on Friday, the Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum. On Saturday, shortly before midnight, the Easter Vigil and the so-called Midnight Mass take place. The week concludes with Mass at 10:00 a.m. in St. Peter's Square and the Urbi et Orbi blessing to be given by Pope Francis.

Flowers to San Pedro

To celebrate Easter and express the joy of Christ's resurrection, St. Peter's Square will be transformed into a flower garden. More than 35,000 flowers and plants from Holland will carpet the parvis of the Vatican Basilica. The floral decorations will be created by the workers of the Garden and Environment Service of Government Infrastructures and Services, with the collaboration of floral designer Daniela Canu.

Dutch florists and floristry teachers from Naklo in Slovenia. Together they will work all day on Good Friday to prepare and finish the decoration the next day. World of Spray Roses - Creative and Innovative Inspiration Sprayroses Inspiration Worldwide Rose Alliance will provide about 720 roses delivered to the Service through Flora Holland, in cooperation with Dr. Charles Lansdorp.

Not only on the occasion of the Solemnity of Easter, but throughout Holy Week, St. Peter's Square will be adorned with roses. This will be done by those of the Governorate of Vatican City State, in collaboration with those who have offered plants and flowers.

In particular, for Palm Sunday, April 2, will be distributed olive branches provided by the National Association of Cities of Oil, the mayors of the Region of the Cities of Umbria Oil, coordinated by Dr. Antonio Balenzano, National Director of the Association.

The supply of "phoenix palms" will be provided by the Office for Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff. Palms from the city of Sanremo will also be present.

The wholesale floriculture company Flora Olanda The large olive trees will be placed near the statues of Saints Peter and Paul, at the foot of the tabernacle and the obelisk.

The authorHernan Sergio Mora

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Sunday Readings

The four gifts of the Last Supper. Holy Thursday (A)

Joseph Evans comments on the readings corresponding to the Eucharistic celebration of Holy Thursday (A)

Joseph Evans-April 3, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

On Holy Thursday we celebrate Christ's great gifts to us, but we also remember the betrayal of Judas and the cowardice of the apostles. On the same night that Christ goes to such extremes of love, human cowardice and betrayal also go to extremes. After Christ had given us - also to Judas - the greatest gift of all, his own body and blood in the form of bread and wine, Judas goes out to betray him at the place where Christ was meeting with his friends and with the greeting of a friend: a kiss. This is the sad story of humanity: the mixture of divine love and human betrayal. But divine love is stubborn; God does not give up, he continues to love us no matter how much we disappoint him.

At the Last Supper, Jesus gives us four priceless gifts: he gives us the Eucharist, washes the feet of his disciples, gives us the priesthood and the new commandment.

To understand the gift of the Eucharist, we must think of the love of mothers for their little children. A mother, after having washed her little son, and seeing him so beautiful, could say to him: "I would eat you." Love seeks union, also bodily. Why do we kiss? Because we seek physical union with that person. Christ loves us so much that he allows us to eat him. Love leads him to enter into us, even corporeally, to achieve a union that goes far beyond the kiss. He wants us to eat him so that we may love him.

Jesus also shows his love by becoming our servant. He, who is God, washes the feet of his disciples, he makes himself our slave. Once again, our mothers can help us better understand this love. While we should never treat our mothers - or anyone else - as slaves, mothers, in fact, freely become our servants. True love leads to radical service.

Jesus shows us his love by giving us priests. When he gave the Eucharist to the apostles, he said to them.: "Do this in memory of me".. He gave them the power to do what he had just done: to transform the bread and wine into his body and blood. He made them priests. Every priest is a sign of God's love, a sign that he wants to continue to nourish his people with himself, so that we may find life in him.

The last gift is the new commandment. At the Last Supper, Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

It is a commandment, but also a gift. By commanding us to love, Jesus gives us the power to love. He does not make us simply passive recipients of his love; we can also be transmitters of it. Through God's mercy, we not only receive love, but we can also give it to others. There is nothing greater than to be loved and to love. These are the gifts we celebrate this evening.

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Overinterpretation and manipulation: the controversy over Cardinal Wojtyła in Poland.

The World

Marches to remember St. John Paul II

On April 2, the 18th anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II, several marches were held in different cities of Poland. The marches were an expression of gratitude for the pontificate and a response to recent attacks by some media on Karol Wojtyla as Metropolitan of Krakow.

Barbara Stefańska-April 2, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

On April 2, 2023, the eighteenth anniversary of Karol Wojtyla's death, several Polish cities will host marches in the following days

The White March in Krakow followed the same route taken in May 1981 in response to the assassination attempt against John Paul II. In Warsaw, on the other hand, despite the cold and rain, several thousand people demonstrated in the center of the capital, carrying images of the Pope, banners and flags.

The organizers have stressed that this National Papal March was a popular, social and apolitical initiative. Similar demonstrations have been held in other large and small cities.

The marches and the large number of participants are linked to the recent media attacks against Cardinal Karol Wojtyla for allegedly covering up sex crimes. A book and a report on the subject, which recently appeared in Poland, made these claims on the basis of "prefabricated" documents of the communist services attacking the Catholic Church. Historians judge these journalistic materials as lacking in historical value and unreliable. No historian could be found who would rate them positively.

"John Paul II does not need to be defended. It is we who need it to arouse and defend in us the conviction that it is worthwhile to be good, that it is worthwhile to defend the truth about man," stressed Archbishop Emeritus Józef Michalik, who presided at the Mass in the Warsaw Cathedral. Citing the teachings of Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Michalik said that Karol Wojtyla had and continues to have ideological adversaries who still criticize his moral doctrine.

In addition to the demonstrations, liturgies and prayer vigils are being held to commemorate the anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II.

The authorBarbara Stefańska

Journalist and secretary of the editorial staff of the weekly "Idziemy"

Overinterpretation and manipulation: the controversy over Cardinal Wojtyła in Poland.

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Pope on Palm Sunday urges care of "abandoned Christs

The Holy Father Francis presided over the celebration of Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord in St. Peter's Square after being discharged from the hospital. Both in his homily at Mass and at the Angelus, he invited the faithful to follow the love of "Jesus abandoned" on the cross, and to care for so many "abandoned Christs," entire peoples, migrants, prisoners, the elderly, unborn children, the sick and the disabled.

Francisco Otamendi-April 2, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

After spending three nights at the Gemelli Polyclinic due to a respiratory infection, and receiving yesterday the medical dischargePope Francis presided this morning over the liturgical celebration of Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord in St. Peter's Square at the beginning of Holy Week with tens of thousands of pilgrims.

Before the beginning of the Holy Mass, the blessing of the olive branches took place at the Obelisk in St. Peter's Square, where the Holy Father went in the Popemobile and where the Cardinals were waiting for him. The procession then took place to the Basilica for the open-air Holy Mass, presided over by the Pope and concelebrated by Cardinals Leonardo Sandri, Giovanni Battista Re and Francis Arinze, and the other cardinals.

In his homily, the Pope began by recalling the words of Jesus: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Mt 27:46). This is the invocation that the Liturgy has us repeat today in the Responsorial Psalm (cf. Ps 22:2) and it is the only one pronounced by Jesus on the Cross in the Gospel that we have heard. They are, then, the words that take us to the heart of Christ's passion, to the climax of the sufferings he endured to save us," the Pope said.

"So that we may have hope."

The Holy Father asked himself: "Why did it come to this point? The answer is only one: because of us. For me, for me, for me," he repeated on several occasions. "He became in solidarity with us to the extreme, to be with us to the last consequences. So that none of us could consider ourselves alone and insurmountable. He experienced abandonment so as not to leave us hostages of desolation and to be by our side forever."

"He did it for you, for me," the Pope insisted again, "so that when you, me, or anyone else finds themselves between a rock and a hard place, lost in a dead end, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, absorbed by the whirlwind of 'why,' they can have hope. It is not the end, because Jesus has been there and is now with you. So that each one of us can say: in my falls, in my desolation, when I feel betrayed, discarded and abandoned, when I can no longer go on, He is with me. You are there, Jesus. In my failures, You are with me. When I feel misguided and lost, when I can't anymore, You are there, You are with me. In my unanswered 'why's, You are with me. He is with me. This is how the Lord saves us, from within our 'why'. From there he unfolds hope.

"Eyes and heart for the abandoned."

The Roman Pontiff then referred to the Lord's love for each one, and to "Jesus forsaken," who "asks us to have eyes and a heart for the forsaken." "Behold who God is and how much he loves us, how much he loves us, how much we have cost him!"

"Such a love, all for us, to the extreme, can transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, capable of pity, tenderness and compassion," the Pope added. "Christ forsaken moves us to seek him and love him in the abandoned. For in them there are not only people in need, but there is He, Jesus forsaken, the One who saved us by descending to the depths of our human condition."

Francis then recalled, off-script, "that man of the street who died alone abandoned, between the columns" of St. Peter's. "It is Jesus who needs us," he said.

"That is why he wants us to take care of the brothers and sisters who are most like him, in the extreme moment of pain and loneliness. Today there are so many "abandoned Christs". There are entire peoples exploited and abandoned to their fate; there are poor people who live at the crossroads of our streets, with whom we dare not cross our gaze; migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; rejected prisoners, people labeled as problems".

"But there are also so many invisible, hidden, abandoned Christs who are discarded with a white glove," the Holy Father continued: "unborn children, elderly people who have been left alone, who can be your mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, unvisited sick people, ignored disabled people, young people who feel a great inner emptiness without anyone really listening to their cry of pain."

"Jesus forsaken asks us to have eyes and hearts for the abandoned. For us, disciples of the Forsaken One, no one can be marginalized; no one can be abandoned to his or her fate," he stressed, with words that recall his pressing appeals. "For, let us remember, rejected and excluded people are living icons of Christ. They remind us of the folly of his love, his abandonment that saves us from all loneliness and desolation."

"Let us ask today for the grace to know how to love the abandoned Jesus and to know how to love Jesus in every abandoned person," he concluded. "Let us ask for the grace to know how to see and recognize the Lord who continues to cry out in them. Let us not allow his voice to be lost in the deafening silence of indifference. God has not left us alone; let us care for those who have been left alone."

Thank you for the prayers, and entry into Holy Week.

At the conclusion of Holy Mass, the Pope greeted the faithful in St. Peter's Square, especially those who had come from far away, before praying the Marian prayer of the Angelus. First of all, he thanked everyone for "your prayers, which you have intensified in recent days" of hospital admissionafter the detection of a respiratory infection.

The Pope recalled the peace caravan that has departed these days from Italy to Ukraine, promoted by various associations. Along with basic necessities, they bring the closeness of the Italian people to the "tormented Ukrainian people. And today they offer olive branches, symbol of the Peace of Christ. We join in this gesture with prayer, which will be more intense in the days of Holy Week", he added.

Pope Francis recalled that "with this celebration we have entered Holy Week. I invite you to live it as the tradition of God's holy and faithful people teaches us. That is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love".

"Let us learn from our Mother the Virgin Mary. She followed her Son with her heart. She was one soul with Him, and even without understanding everything, together with Him she gave herself fully to the will of God the Father. May Our Lady help us to remain close to Jesus, present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady lead us by the hand of Jesus present in these people. To all a good journey towards Easter," the Pope concluded.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Pope's teachings

The road to Easter

What is essential in the Christian life? How can we be sure? Pope Francis has pointed out that Lent is a good occasion to "return to what is essential". Something that we can always do, but that in the time close to Easter takes on a more intense meaning.

Ramiro Pellitero-April 2, 2023-Reading time: 8 minutes

The Pope's teachings on the meaning of Lent - the preparation for Lent and the Easter-, starting on Ash Wednesday, have focused on the Angelus of these Sundays. In them he treads in the footsteps of the Gospel passages that the liturgy proposes: the temptations of the Lord, his transfiguration, the encounter with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the man born blind and the resurrection of Lazarus.

Time to "get back to basics".

In his homily on Ash Wednesday, celebrated in the Basilica of Santa Sabina (22-II-2023), the Pope presented Lent - as a brief synthesis of an important dimension of the Christian life - as "the right time to get back to basics"; that is, "to divest ourselves of what weighs us down, to reconcile ourselves with God, to rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit that dwells hidden in the ashes of our fragile humanity. Return to the essential". A time of grace for "to return to the essential, which is the Lord". Thus, the rite of ashes introduces us to this path of return, invites us - Francis emphasized - "... to return to the world...".to return to what we really are y to return to God and to our brothers and sisters".

"God also lives Lent".

He used this phrase to distinguish two steps. Lent, first, as a time of "returning to who we are".. And what are we? We are creatures that come from the earth and need Heaven, but first we will return to dust, and then we will rise again from our ashes. God created us, we are his, we belong to him. And the Pope formulated something quite original: "We are God's creatures, we belong to him.As a tender and merciful Father, He also lives Lent, because He desires us, waits for us, awaits our return, and always encourages us not to despair, even when we fall into the dust of our fragility and our sin".

God "knows full well that we are but dust" (Ps 103:14). And, Peter's successor observes: "We, however, often forget this, thinking that we are self-sufficient, strong, invincible without Him; we use make-up to believe we are better than we are. We are dust".

Hence the need to divest ourselves of "We are not only a result of the desire to put ourselves at the center, to be the first in the class, to think that only with our abilities we can be the protagonists of life and transform the world around us".

In other wordsThis is "'a time of truth' to take off the masks we wear every day pretending to be perfect in the eyes of the world; to fight, as Jesus told us in the Gospel, against falsehood and hypocrisy. Not those of others, but our own; to look them in the face and fight".

Leaving the bastion of self

In returning to the essentials of what we are before God - the Pope continues - Lent appears to us as "a favorable time to rekindle our relationships with God and with others; to open ourselves in silence to prayer and to come out of the bulwark of our closed self; to break the chains of individualism.and from isolation and to rediscover, through meeting and listening, who it is that walks beside us every day, and to relearn to love him or her as a brother or sister.".

How to achieve all this? Lent proposes that we follow three main paths: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. If we humbly place ourselves under the Lord's gaze, we will "almsgiving, prayer and fasting do not remain outward gestures, but express who we truly are: children of God and brothers and sisters among us.".

Therefore, these are "favorable days to remind us that the world does not close in the narrow limits of our personal needs [...], to give God the primacy of our life, [...] to stop the dictatorship of the agendas always full of things to do; of the pretensions of an increasingly superficial and cumbersome ego; and to choose what really matters".

On the road to Easter - proposes the Bishop of Rome- Let us fix our gaze on the Crucified One [...]. And at the end of the journey we will find with greater joy the Lord of life; we will find Him, the only one who will make us rise from the ashes.".

No dialogue with the devil

On the Second Sunday (Angelus, 26-II-2023), Francis contemplated the scene of the Lord's temptations and his battle against the devil (cf. Mt 4:1-11). The devil, a specialist in dividing, tries to separate Jesus from the Father, "to divert it from its mission of unity for us". This unity consists in making us share in the love that unites the divine Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The poisons of division

The Pope interprets the scene: "The evil one then tries to instill in Him [Jesus] three potent 'poisons' in order to paralyze His mission of unity. And these poisons are attachment - attachment to needs such as hunger - distrust - towards His Father - and power - the thirst for power.".

Francis adds that these are also temptations that the devil employs with us, "in order to divide us from the Father and make us no longer feel that we are brothers and sisters to each other; he uses them to drive us to loneliness and despair.".

But Jesus overcomes the devil without dialogue, without negotiating or arguing with him. He confronts him with the Word of God that speaks of freedom from things (cf. Deut. 8:3), of trust (cf. Deut. 6:16) and of service to God (cf. Deut. 6:13).

This is where Francisco takes his cue from to ask us questions and give us advice: "What place does God's Word have in my life? Do I turn to God's Word in my spiritual struggles? If I have a vice or a temptation that keeps recurring, why don't I look up, having them help me, a verse from God's Word that responds to that vice? Then, when the temptation comes, I recite it, I pray it, trusting in the grace of Christ.".

The luminous beauty of Love

The Second Sunday of Lent places us in the transfiguration of the Lord (cf. Mt 17:1-9), which manifests all his beauty as the Son of God. The Pope poses a question that is not at all obvious to us: "Is the transfiguration of our Lord a question that is not obvious to us?what does this beauty consist of?". And he answers that it does not consist in a special effect, but that, since God is Love, it consists in "the splendor of divine Love incarnated in Christ". The disciples already knew the face of Love, but they had not realized its beauty.

To walk, to serve, to love

Now God's beauty is shown to them in this way: as a foretaste of paradise, which prepares them to know how to recognize that same beauty".when he ascends to the cross and his face is disfigured.". Peter would have wanted to stop time, but Jesus does not want to take his disciples away from the reality of life, which includes the way to follow him to the cross. "The beauty of Christ -Francis seems to reply to certain thinkers of modernity such as Marx and Nietzsche. it is not alienating, it takes you always ahead, it does not make you hide: go ahead!".

This is a teaching for us. Being with Jesus is like "we learn to recognize in his face the luminous beauty of self-giving love, even when it bears the marks of the cross.".

And not only that, but we can also learn to discover the light of God's love in others: "We can also learn to discover the light of God's love in others.It is at their school that we learn to capture the same beauty in the faces of the people who walk beside us every day: family members, friends, colleagues, those who in various ways take care of us.. How many luminous faces, how many smiles, how many wrinkles, how many tears and scars speak of love around us! Let us learn to recognize them and to fill our hearts with them.".

The consequence has to be to get moving, "to bring also to others the light we have received, with the concrete works of love (cf. 1 Jn 3:18), immersing ourselves with more generosity in our daily tasks, loving, serving and forgiving with more enthusiasm and availability".

God's thirst and our thirst

The Gospel of the Third Sunday of Lent presents Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:5-42): "one of the most beautiful and fascinating encounters". of the Lord (cfr. Angelus, 12-III-2023).

He asks her: "give me to drink".. It is, the Pope explains, a ".image of God's humiliation". Jesus wanted to bind himself to our poverty, to our littleness, because he thirsted and thirsts for each one of us.

With an Augustinian-style argument, Francis explains: "Jesus' thirst, in fact, is not only physical, it expresses the deepest thirst of our life: it is above all thirst for our love. He is more than a beggar, he thirsts for our love. And it will emerge at the culminating moment of the passion, on the cross; there, before dying, Jesus will say: 'I thirst' (Jn 19:28). That thirst for love that led him to descend, to humble himself, to become one of us".

But it is the Lord who gives the Samaritan woman to drink. And he speaks to her of the living water of the Holy Spirit, which from the cross he pours out, together with his blood, from his open side (cf. Jn 19:34).

That is also what it does with us: "Jesus, thirsting for love, quenches our thirst with love. And he does with us as he did with the Samaritan woman: he goes out to meet us in our daily lives, he shares our thirst, he promises us the living water that makes eternal life spring up in us (cf. Jn 4:14)".

Everyone is (we are) thirsty

Jesus not only asks for a drink but, as he does with the Samaritan woman,"asks us to care for the thirst of others."We hear it from so many - in the family, at work, in the other places we frequent - who thirst for closeness, attention, listening; we hear it from those who thirst for the Word of God and need to find in the Church an oasis where they can drink water. We are told this by our society, where haste, haste to consume and above all indifference dominate, this culture of indifference generates aridity and inner emptiness. "And let's not forget it, says Franciscogive me a drink" is the cry of so many brothers and sisters who lack water.to live, while we continue to pollute and disfigure our common home, which also, exhausted and thirsty, is thirsty".

Like the Samaritan woman," Francis proposes, "we too must stop thinking about quenching our thirst (material, intellectual or cultural), "but with the joy of having met the Lord we will be able to satisfy others: to give meaning to the lives of others, not as owners, but as servants of this Word of God that has satiated us, that continually quenches us; we will be able to understand their thirst and share the love that He gave us."

And the Pope invites us to ask ourselves: "Do I thirst for God, do I realize that I need his love like water to live? And then, I who am thirsty, am I concerned about the thirst of others, the spiritual thirst, the material thirst?"

Attitudes of the human heart before Jesus

On the fourth Sunday, the Gospel shows Jesus restoring sight to a man blind from birth (cf. Jn 9:1-41). "But this prodigy," Francis observes, "is poorly received by various individuals and groups." (cfr. Angelus19-III-2023). In his attitudes we see the fundamental attitudes of the human heart before Jesus: "the good human heart, the lukewarm human heart, the fearful human heart, the courageous human heart."

On one side are the disciples, who, faced with the blind man's problem, want to look for a culprit, instead of asking themselves what they should do.

Then there are the neighbors, who are skeptical: they don't believe that the one who now sees is the same blind man as before. And his parents don't want any trouble either, especially with the religious authorities.

All of them claim to be "closed hearts before the sign of Jesus, for different reasons: because they are looking for a culprit, because they do not know how to be surprised, because they do not want to change, because they are blocked by fear.".

It also happens to us today, says Francisco: "Faced with something that is really a message of testimony from a person, a message from Jesus, we fall into that: we look for another explanation, we don't want to change, we look for a more elegant way out than accepting the truth."

Let yourself be cured in order to see

And so we come to the point that the only one who reacts well is the blind. "He is happy to see, he testifies to what has happened to him in the simplest way: 'I was blind and now I see'. He tells the truth". He does not want to invent or hide anything, he is not afraid of what people will say, because Jesus has given him his full dignity, without even asking him to thank him, and has made him be reborn.

"And this is clear." -Francisco points out-It always happens: when Jesus heals us, he gives us back our dignity, the full dignity of the healing of Jesus, a dignity that comes from the depths of our heart, that takes hold of our whole life.".

As he often does, Francis questions us about the same scene: "What position did we take, what would we have said then? [...] Do we allow ourselves to be imprisoned by the fear of what people will think? [How do we welcome people who have so many limitations in life, be they physical, like this blind man; be they social, like the beggars we meet on the street? Do we welcome this as a curse or as an opportunity to approach them with love?"

And Peter's successor advises us to ask for "the grace to be amazed every day by God's gifts and to see the various circumstances of life, even the most difficult to accept, as opportunities to do good, as Jesus did with the blind man".

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Vocations

Identity and role of the priest in the Church

Interview with Monsignor Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira, Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy, on the identity and role of the priest in the Church.

Antonino Piccione-April 2, 2023-Reading time: 8 minutes

Monsignor Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira is Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy. Born in Santiago de Chile on June 10, 1969, he was ordained to the priesthood on June 10, 1969. the priest of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of the city on July 3, 1999. He received his doctorate in Biblical Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 2006. He has held various pastoral positions in the diocese, including Director of Studies and Prefect of Theology at the Pontifical Major Seminary of the Holy Guardian Angels. On October 1, 2021, he was appointed Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy (of which he had been an Officer since 2018), with the assignment of the titular Archiepiscopal See of Tiburnia.

In this interview with Omnes, the secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy speaks about the identity and role of the priest, the essential features of priestly life and the essence of the priesthood which, similar to that of the Church, being "a mystery of God, is deeply rooted in reality."

Monsignor Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira, the Catholic Church has a rich theological and practical tradition on the life and ministry of priests, a tradition that was synthesized and revised during the Second Vatican Council, what are the essential elements?

-I consider that one of the central points about the priesthood is expressed in the Dogmatic Constitution. Lumen Gentium when it says "In order to feed the People of God and to increase it always, Christ the Lord instituted in his Church various ministries ordered to the good of the whole Body. For the ministers who possess the sacred power are at the service of their brethren, so that all who belong to the People of God and therefore enjoy true Christian dignity, freely and orderly tending to the same end, may attain salvation." (LG, 18).

In this sense, we can say that both the Vatican Council IIthe post-conciliar pontifical magisterium, as well as the relatively recent Ratio fundamentalis istitutionis sacerdotalis (2016) highlight that the presbyteral ministry is interpreted, both in its specific nature and in its biblical and theological foundations, as a service to the glory of God and to the brothers who are to be accompanied and guided in their baptismal priesthood.

The expression "in service" cannot be overemphasized. Indeed, the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood of the faithful and is completed with it in the harmony of a single priestly people. Therefore, the Catholic priest is first of all not a leader or an authority, but a brother among brothers in the common priesthood, called, like all the baptized faithful, to give his life as a spiritual offering pleasing to the Father.

Regarding the process of configuration with Christ, Head, Shepherd, Servant and Spouse of the Church, how does it take place?

-This mystical process is a gift of God that has its roots in the first call within the Christian community and requires a serious initial formation in the seminary in order to reach its fullness in priestly ordination. This process, at the same time, constitutes a path that must remain firm throughout ongoing formation. Every mystical gift requires, in fact, the counterpart of ascetical practice, which is the human effort to welcome and indulge the gifts of Grace.

This vital and permanent process of being configured to Christ himself, Shepherd, Head, Servant and Spouse of the Church is the specific service that the priest offers to his brothers in the faith, this is the essential contribution that the priest offers to the rest of the People of God, so that together as disciples of Christ, they can persevere in prayer and praise God (cfr. Ac 2, 42-47), to offer themselves as living, holy and pleasing victims (cfr. Rm 12:1), to bear witness to Christ everywhere and, to those who ask them, to give an account of the hope that is in them of eternal life (cf. 1 Pe 3, 15).

What is the relevance of the fact that the priest always remains also a believer, a brother among brothers and sisters in faith, who is called with them, albeit in a specific way, to realize the common vocation to holiness and to share in the common mission of salvation?

-In this regard, Pope Francis stressed at the symposium "For a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood" that: The life of a priest is above all the history of the salvation of a baptized person. Sometimes we forget Baptism, and the priest becomes a function: functionalism, and this is dangerous. We must never forget that every specific vocation, including that of Orders, is a realization of Baptism. It is always a great temptation to live a priesthood without Baptism - and there are priests "without Baptism" - that is, without remembering that our first call is to holiness. To be saints means to conform ourselves to Jesus and to let our life pulsate with his same sentiments (cf. Flp 2, 15). Only when we try to love as Jesus loved, we also make God visible and thus fulfill our vocation to holiness. (February 17, 2022).

St. Augustine expresses it with unsurpassable words when referring to the ministry of the bishop, who has the fullness of the priestly order: If it terrifies me to be for you, it comforts me to be with you. Because I am a bishop for you, I am a Christian with you. That is the name of the office, this grace; that is the name of the danger, this of salvation.

Can we go deeper into some essential features of priestly life for a correct interpretation of the role of the priest in the Church? His nature as a disciple-missionary; his status in the world; the threefold ministry, etc.

-First, as has already been said, every priest belongs to the people of God and has received the priestly ministry in order to be a 'servant' of the flock: this concept is not affirmed in a negative sense, but in a positive one, since it entails 'the spiritual taste of being a people', as Pope Francis emphasizes in the homonymous paragraph of the Apostolic Exhortation. Evangelii Gaudium (2013), since it is a value valid for all the faithful and disciples who proclaim the Gospel, and especially for priests: To be evangelizers of soul it is also necessary to develop a spiritual taste for being close to the life of the people, to the point of discovering that this is the source of a higher joy. Mission is a passion for Jesus, but, at the same time, a passion for his people (n. 268).

Indeed, in order to be an authentic servant - a minister - sacramentally configured to Christ the Good Shepherd, the priest must feel part of the people to whom he intends to give his life, experience the joy of walking with them, love each member of the flock that the Lord Jesus has entrusted to him and use all the means necessary to respond to his vocation.

Secondly, that of the priest is also a communitarian ministry: in the title of the conciliar decree on the ministry and life of priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis -the order of presbyters-, the word Presbyterorum is in the plural, signifying a mystery marked by collegiality, that is, by a mission entrusted to a stable community, in which relationships are fraternal and always inspired by Trinitarian communion.

In fact, "The word Order, in Roman antiquity, designated constituted groups in a civil sense, especially with reference to those who govern. "Ordinatio" -ordering- indicates the incorporation into a "ordo"-order-" (CEC, 1537). The exhortation Pastores dabo vobis He particularly deepened this point, affirming the radically communitarian form of the ordained ministry: The ordained ministry, by virtue of its very nature, can only be realized to the extent that the presbyter is united to Christ by sacramental incorporation into the presbyteral order, and therefore to the extent that he is in hierarchical communion with his bishop.

Third, Presbyterorum Ordinis stresses the sacramental character of the priestly ministry, but it is interesting that he interprets this objective fact as a path of configuration to Christ the priest. Configuration is understood ontologically but also spiritually, in a sacramental but also human sense, deeply personal but destined for the good of the people of God, conferred through the sacrament of Holy Orders but in continuous development towards priestly holiness. This explains why priestly formation contains a continuous dynamism, that of the disciple called to be a shepherd (cf. RFIS, 80).

The fourth essential aspect is the status of the priest in the world. In this regard, the decree Presbyterorum Ordinis reaches its climax when he speaks of the spiritual life of the priest, which in my opinion can be summed up in the words: "Anointed by the Holy Spirit for the world and not outside the world". The essence of the priest is like that of the Church, which, although it is a mystery of God, is deeply rooted in reality. In reference to priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis states: They could not be ministers of Christ if they were not witnesses and dispensers of a life different from the earthly one; but, on the other hand, neither could they serve men if they were far removed from their life and environment. (n. 3).

The idea of being anointed for the world and not outside the world demands from the priest certain fundamental attitudes that favor dialogue with reality through a language that ensures the effectiveness of the proclamation. Therefore, he cannot avoid facing the challenge, for example, of making accessible to people the philosophical and theological concepts acquired during his formation; or of using social networks for evangelization. Is this the case?

-Ongoing formation, not only theoretical, but also practical and pedagogical, is indispensable. Another important challenge is for priests to live their being in the world with serenity, in simplicity, evangelical poverty and chastity consistent with the gift of celibacy that they have received from the Lord, fleeing from a comfortable, consumerist and hedonistic lifestyle such as the one that dominates the world today. In this sense, their life should be their main language and means of communication to transmit Christ.

As is well known, the conciliar decree Presbyterorum Ordinis uses the tripartite scheme of the priestly ministry to explain the evangelical mission of the priest: minister of the Word (OP, 4), minister of the Sacraments - the summit of which is the Eucharist (OP, 5) - and minister of the People of God (OP, 6). This structure clearly illustrates the breadth of priestly ministry. The priest is not merely a dispenser of worship, but also has the pastoral responsibility of guiding the community entrusted to his care. The priest is responsible for leading his flock to green and safe pastures. He must lead them to what is good, true and just, all signs of the Kingdom of God, even to those sheep who are not of his fold. He must not forget that human promotion and Christian culture are an integral part of evangelization.

Pope Francis indicates the four proximities that every priest must live and cultivate in order to grow ever more mature in his priestly life and ministry: closeness to God, to his own bishop, to his brother priests and to God's holy people. Can you help us better understand the importance of each of these relationships that help define the priestly paradigm?

-Regarding the first closeness, its necessity for every Christian and particularly for the vocation of a priest is evident, the Lord expressed it forcefully through the image of the vine and the branch. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (Jn 15:5). I think that we all have the experience of knowing a priest who, through his expressions, his determination, his witness of prayer, his tenderness, his apostolic zeal and so many other gestures, manages to reflect that he has God, or better, that he allows himself to be had by God. Priests in this way are witnesses to the joy of the Gospel.

In relation to the other three proximities, I think that the explanation of the terminology can help us to have a better understanding. Hierarchical communion demands that we show respect and obedience - which is not servile submission - to the Ordinary and his successors, as promised on the day of ordination. Obedience is not a disciplinary attribute, but the strongest characteristic of the bonds that unite us in communion. Obedience, in this case to the bishop, means learning to listen and remembering that no one can claim to be the possessor of God's will, and that this can only be understood through discernment.

Moreover, the relationship between priests, especially between members of the same presbyterate, is called to be fraternal. The reason for this fraternal relationship is based on their common ordination and common mission, for which, united and under the guidance of their bishop, all are co-responsible. This fraternal relationship constitutes the fundamental condition for the ongoing formation of priests in the four dimensions of formation (cf. RFIS, 87-88). Appreciation of the priestly gift is manifested in two ways: on the one hand, by cultivating the human, spiritual, pastoral and intellectual dimension of one's vocation; on the other hand, by caring for the good of one's brother priests with a sense of co-responsibility. Co-responsibility in the mission entrusted to the priest also takes the form of mutual support and docility in receiving and offering fraternal correction.

As for the fourth closeness, as we have already mentioned repeatedly, by virtue of his apostolic mission, the priest is also called to establish a fraternal relationship with the lay faithful. He must embrace the community to which he is sent and collaborate with it: participating and sharing the mission with deacons and instituted lay ministers (acolytes, lectors, catechists, etc.), as well as with consecrated persons and lay people who, by virtue of their charisms, make valuable contributions to the building up of the ecclesial community, to human promotion and to Christian culture. Moreover, apostolic fraternity has two aspects: on the one hand, the shepherd cares for his flock and, on the other, the flock cares for its shepherd.

The authorAntonino Piccione

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"God works through non-programmable events, 'that' by chance this happened to me," says Pope Francis.

Pope Francis receives medical discharge

On Saturday morning, April 1, Pope Francis was discharged from hospital after spending three nights in the Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital in Rome.

Paloma López Campos-April 1, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

Pope Francis visits children in hospital (CNS/Holy See Press Office)

Pope Francis returns to the Vatican. After spending three nights entered at the Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital, Francis was discharged from the hospital on Saturday morning, April 1. Before returning to Santa Marta, the Pope spent some time answering questions from journalists and took the opportunity to thank the prayers for his health.

The Holy Father's brief stay at the hospital did not stop the pace of his schedule. Taking advantage of his stay at the clinic, Francis visited the children in the pediatric oncology unit and other patients who were admitted. He also baptized a child, read and received the Eucharist. Press releases in recent days stated that he was still working from his room.

The big question now is related to the events of Holy Week. Although the Holy See has not confirmed anything, it is most likely that Pope Francis will preside over the Mass of the Palm Sunday tomorrow in St. Peter's Square.

Pope Francis

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Books

"El Cantar de Liébana", the world of the Blessed

This is the recommended reading of the fifth novel by José María Pérez González, known as Peridis. His new title is called "El cantar de Liébana".

Yolanda Cagigas-April 1, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

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José María Pérez González, better known as Peridisis an architect, cartoonist, disseminator of cultural heritage and writer. In addition to the vignettes he publishes in "El País" Since the foundation of this newspaper, he has collaborated in the program "Aquí la Tierra" on TVE and in "A vivir que son dos días" on Cadena Ser. Also on TVE he directed and presented the documentary "Las claves del románico".

"Song of Liébana" is his fifth novel. "In 2014 he won the Alfonso X el Sabio Historical Novel Prize with "Esperando al rey". In 2016 he published "The curse of Queen Leonor." and in 2018 he completed his "Trilogy of the Reconquest"." with "La reina sin reino". In 2020 she received the Primavera Novel Prize for "El corazón con que vivo"..

The germ of this new novel was the proclamation of the opening ceremony of the lebaniego holy year of 2017 that Peridis pronounced. He was invited to do so, not only because of his knowledge of the Middle Ages, but also because of his origin in Liébana. The author was born in Cabezón de Liébana, where he lived his first three years and many of his summers, vacations "that ended on September 14, the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On that day they would go up to Santo Toribio on pilgrimage to adore the lignum cruciskissing on their knees the largest fragment of the cross of Christ".

Peridis intends to "make true the maxim of teaching by delighting", and what he wants to show us is the world of the blessed. For Humberto Eco, "the blessed are the most prodigious iconographic creations in the history of Western art". A sign of their importance is that, in April 2016, the "Beato de Valcavado" was selected as one of the fifteen most important artistic works in Spain by the Europeana project.

A plot in Spain

In the 8th century, Elipando, archbishop of Toledo, then under the rule of the Emirate of Cordoba, defended and propagated the heresy of adoptionism, which denied the divine nature of Jesus Christ.

Beato was a wise priest who, fleeing from Elipando, took refuge in the Picos de Europa in the ancient monastery of San Marín de Turieno (today Santo Toribio de Liébana), where he undertook the struggle against the heresy of the Archbishop of Toledo and his followers. To do so, he dedicated himself to writing an illustrated work with commentaries on the Fathers of the Church, called "Commentaries on the Apocalypse".

This work acquired fame already during Beato's lifetime, so copies of the "Commentaries" began to be made, first in the scriptorium In fact, "after the Bible, Beatus is the most copied book in the whole of the Middle Ages". All these copies are called beatus and thirty-one are preserved throughout the world.

At one point, the characters in this novel by Peridis visit the Historical Library of the University of Valladolid in the Santa Cruz Palace, where the "Beato de Valcavado" is kept, one of the richest and most complete copies of the beatos. It is a Mozarabic style codex, made on parchment, with 87 miniatures of very intense colorations.

Present and past

In the novel, the author intertwines the history and vicissitudes of Beato in his time, with the life -in our days- of Eulalia, a sexagenarian, a recent widow who enjoys a good position, who to fill the emptiness of her days signs up for a seminar on the Blessed at the University of Valladolid. There she will meet the nice Tiqui, a young alternative and the eccentric Don Crisógono, the professor who transmits his wisdom with passion and challenges his students to visit Cantabria and discover some blessed.

With a very careful writing and nice illustrations, Peridis achieves his desires: "to make true the maxim of teaching by delighting". Convinced that "fiction, when approached from documents and facts to places, is the genre that best allows us to get closer to the characters and their circumstances, makes us feel identified with them and live their lives as if it were our own".

The author pays homage to Beato, to the era and to the Cantabrian landscapes, a few months before the 74th Jubilee Year of Lebania begins on April 16, 2023.

The authorYolanda Cagigas

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Guest writersAntonio Moreno

The best plan for Easter

Enjoying Holy Week together with the Christian community is that secret place that the tourist guides don't tell you about, that hidden place that doesn't appear in the accounts of the instagramers most famous.

April 1, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

"Wielki post", the great fast: Lent and Easter in Poland

Easter is coming and, in spite of the financial crisis, inflation and international tension, the hotel sector is rubbing its hands together in anticipation of the expected full house that is predicted. There are many millions who live Easter with passion, and many others who live "from" Easter. Easter. These days in which Christians celebrate the central mysteries of our faith are used by such an important sector as the hotel industry to make money and revitalize the battered economy.

Hotels, transportation, restaurants, terraces and bars are adjusting their offerings to the high demand by offering a wide selection of services for what is expected to be the most expensive Easter Week in history. Hopefully this will also translate into more jobs and better conditions for employees and suppliers.

There are many recommendations these days published in the press and shared by influencers: dream places, incredible offers, spectacular bargains... I also have my own recommendation for this Easter: it is the most welcoming destination, with the best atmosphere, the best food and the cheapest price that can be found in the market. And, most importantly: every year I leave more satisfied and with a greater sense of rest, joy and happiness. It is, of course, the Church.

While most people enjoy the days of rest, the gastronomy, the sun, the beaches or the cultural offerings that are also our public manifestations of faith, we Christians celebrate and invite everyone to celebrate with us, some transcendental events that, well lived, can change our lives. Beginning with Palm Sunday when, after a joyful manifestation with the cry of "Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord", we solemnly proclaim the passion and death of the Lord. On this day we make present our contradictions: we say we love God, but at the moment of truth, we are not interested in his proposal.

The Easter Triduum

It will still be time to Lent (since this does not end until Holy Thursday), a time of penance that serves precisely for that, to realize our weakness, our lack of faith, our need to be redeemed in order to long for the salvation that will become effective in the great days. As the aperitif on that sunny terrace prepares us for the best lunch, Palm Sunday puts the Easter Triduum within reach.

On Holy Thursday, the first day of the Triduum, comes the best of the tasting menus. No Michelin star, no matter how healthy its menu is, offers a food that gives eternal life. And on this day it is prepared for us live, in front of our eyes during the Mass "in coena domini".

Bread and wine from heaven that lead us to love and serve. Few towns or tourist spots can boast of being as welcoming as the Christian community. On this Day of Fraternal Love we remember the millions of people the Church helps: immigrants, people at risk of exclusion, the elderly, single women, children... And we feel especially united to our brothers and sisters in the parish community, in the movement, in the brotherhood or sisterhood, because if there is a town where visitors can feel at home, it is the Holy People of God.

On the other hand, no spa or deck chair on the beach can give us the rest that Good Friday offers us. We carry many burdens in our lives, many crosses: illnesses, family problems, loss of loved ones, economic uncertainties... In the Good Friday offices we leave our heavy backpack at the foot of Calvary. To know that we are accompanied in our suffering by God himself and by his mother, the Virgin, is an incomparable consolation.

And after the hopeful parenthesis of Holy Saturday, the great Easter Vigil, the night that gives meaning to our life. The great end of the feast where we celebrate that God is faithful to his promises and frees us from the slavery of Pharaoh, from the death that stalks us. Is there any greater joy? And best of all: absolutely free of charge! God asks nothing in return, He does not need our effort, nor our good works. He gives himself out of pure love for each one of us. There is no better end to a dream week: to feel loved to the depths of your being, to the darkest of your weakness.

In the house of God

During this holy week, God invites us once again to enjoy in his house all his gifts: the best aperitif, the best meal, the best company, the best rest and the best festivities, all without paying. It is the "simpa" of which he already spoke to us about Isaiah when he sang:

"Hear ye, all ye that thirst, come ye for water; come ye also that have no money: buy wheat and eat; come ye and buy, without money and for nought, wine and milk: why spend money for that which does not feed, and wages for that which does not give plenty?"

Happy Easter.

The authorAntonio Moreno

Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.

Easter

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Pope Francis admitted to Gemelli hospital for "respiratory difficulties".

Pope to be at St. Peter's on Palm Sunday

Pope Francis will leave Gemelli hospital in the next few hours, where he has been for two nights due to a respiratory infection, and will celebrate Palm Sunday at St. Peter's.

Maria José Atienza-March 31, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

The Holy See has confirmed that the Pontiff, who will leave Gemelli University Hospital tomorrow, will attend the Palm Sunday celebration in St. Peter's Square.

The Holy Father's admission, which took place Wednesday afternoon after suffering various respiratory difficulties, appears to be shorter than expected.

The report given on Friday morning, March 31, by the director of the Sala Stampa, Mateo Bruni, highlighted the gradual improvement of the Holy Father who had returned to work while still hospitalized.

The Pope's good response to the antibiotic treatment he was given to treat his infectious-based bronchitis has been key to his short hospital stay. The Pope is scheduled to return to Santa Marta in the next few hours after the final check-ups.

It is also foreseeable that, in the following hours, the Holy See will notify the Holy Father's activities in the coming days. His agenda, after his admission, had been cleared until the evolution of his health condition was known.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis admitted to Gemelli hospital for "respiratory difficulties".

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Alder, Nicaraguan seminarian: "The Pope asked us to be courageous".

Latin America

Week of life in the Diocese of Leon, Nicaragua

From March 18 to 25, the Week of Life 2023 took place in Nicaragua. This initiative was born with the purpose of encouraging the promotion of the defense of life, from conception to natural death.

Néstor Esaú Velásquez-March 31, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

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From March 18 to 25, the Diocese of Leon, Nicaragua, held the Week of Life of the year 2023. This initiative was born several years ago, in order to encourage the promotion of the defense of life, from conception to natural death. It is animated by the family ministry of the diocese of Leon and its ministry in defense of life.

During the week different initiatives were developed, from the training of teachers of the subject of education in the faith with the educational pastoral, the presentation of catechesis for children, youth, parents and teachers; the presentation of audiovisual material Provida, school visits, talks, radio and television programs, prayer of the Holy Rosary....

Diocese of León

In a special way, in the diocese of Leon, on Thursday, March 23, a Holy Hour for Life was offered in the parishes, praying to the God of Life to accompany the efforts to defend human life. Likewise, on Friday, March 24, the pious exercise of the Stations of the Cross was offered in the parishes of the diocese.

In the diocese of Leon, since 2009, there has been a ministry in defense of life that works in favor of life, especially accompanying mothers who feel pressured or intend to have an abortion. To date they have been able to save more than 400 children from abortion.

Monsignor Sócrates René Sándigo Jirón, Bishop of the Diocese of León, Nicaragua, in a message to the family ministry of the diocese said: "One of our missions as a church is to promote that life for which our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life. He said: 'I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance'. He wanted to leave heaven, become incarnate, die to overcome death so that we may have life... We Christians, Catholics, good families who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ cannot lower our guard, we must continue working to say YES TO LIFE, not only from a conceptual point of view, but existentially, to create a culture that allows us to respect life more and more, from conception to natural death".

The week of life for the year 2023 concluded on March 25 in the Cathedral of Leon, with the Holy Eucharist presided by Father Marcos Francisco Diaz Prado, diocesan animator of family ministry.

The authorNéstor Esaú Velásquez

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The Martyrdom of St. Andrew by Peter Paul Rubens

An artistic approach to the painting of the Flemish painter Pedro Pablo Rubens "The Martyrdom of St. Andrew" currently kept at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation in Madrid.

Andrés Iráizoz-March 31, 2023-Reading time: 7 minutes

The martyrdom of St. Andrewof Peter Paul Rubens was commissioned to the painter by Jan van Vucht, a Fleming who lived in Madrid and upon his death in 1639 bequeathed the painting to the Hospital de San Andrés de los Flamencos, now the Charles of Antwerp Foundation, founded in 1594 by Charles of Antwerp.

Charles of Antwerp who donated his goods to build a hospital to serve as lodging for the poor and pilgrims coming from the Netherlands. In 1617 the hospital and church were founded under the patronage of St. Andrew, patron saint of Burgundy and that had the royal protection since the seventeenth century.

When the hospital was suppressed in 1844, the canvas was deposited in the Monastery of El Escorial and also in the Royal Tapestry Factory, and in 1891, after the renovation of the hospital, it was again placed in the new chapel. Prado Museum and since 1989 it has been housed at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation.

The first time it was in a museum in Spanish America was in 2019, at the Museo Nacional del Barroco de Puebla de Zaragoza (Mexico).

It was exhibited at the National Museum of Art in Mexico in order to show the influence of Rubens on artists of New Spain such as José Juárez and Cristóbal de Villalpando.

The Martyrdom of St. Andrew. Peter Paul Rubens

Artistic background: Van Veen and Rubens

We include here the contribution of Inmaculada Rodríguez Moya in the volume Otto van Veen: Inventor and painter, between erudition and devotion: "At the end of 1594, Van Veen was commissioned to execute a new altarpiece at St. Andrew's in Antwerp with the theme of the saint's martyrdom.

At that time, after the reestablishment of Catholicism by Alexander Farnese, there was a predominant taste for the representation of martyrdom in Antwerp. Images of martyrs already existed, but from that time on they multiplied with a declamatory and monumental tone and emphasized expressions of instruments of torture and compositions full of figures and activity, of which Van Veen's altarpiece is an example. This was intended to provide models of imitation of the fortitude and courage that true Christians had to demonstrate in times of persecution.

The altarpiece represented the crucifixion of the saint in a main panel without wings and in the predella, scenes of the vocation of the apostles and Christ with the orb.

The artist has placed in the foreground a series of characters: weeping women and children, the Roman governor on horseback and the soldiers crucifying the saint. In the middle ground, but in the upper part of the canvas, that is, already in the celestial Glory, the cross is placed with the saint, whose body coincides completely with the position of the wood, facing the viewer. The saint is surrounded by angels, with the palm, the olive branch and the martyr's crown. In the background we see a circular templete and a door, serving the grisaille to place the lights of the scene.

In 1596 Van Veen executed the model on canvas following the composition of the sketch, complicating the composition by incorporating more characters and greater variegation. He modifies the lights, leaving the soldiers holding the cross in semi-darkness, to highlight the figures of the women, and the governor in the foreground. He further illuminates the background by backlighting these figures in the middle ground, creating a greater effect of depth.

In the last stage, in the panel, Van Veen's mastery in the treatment of chiaroscuro and color, and the predominant classicism of the work, is evident. The large panel emphasizes the isolation of St. Andrew with respect to the middle, symbolizing his ascension to Glory by his superior situation, by the golden light that emerges behind him, by his stoic serenity and that of the angels with crowns and the palm, and one of them helping the soldier to thrust the lance into the saint. Light and color with features and gestures of the weeping women and the indifferent soldiers, allow to create the desired devotional effect. The architecture of the background -circular temple and triumphal door- is further emphasized, creating a phantasmagoric effect and contributing to underline the extraordinary nature of the scene. The panel is intended to show us the heroic glorification of the martyr with the clear purpose of awakening the militant faith of the devotees.

Van Veen intended to highlight the crucifixion as a scene that would make an impression and overwhelm the viewer because of its size.

Rubens had a similar intention in the Martyrdom of St. Andrew (1639), a work of his final stage in which he was inspired by the composition of his master. Rubens creates an effect even more shocking than Van Veen, accentuating the diagonals of the composition, structured on the cross itself, which occupies the entire pictorial space and placing a few characters in the foreground (the governor on horseback and the weeping women on the same side as on the panel), the angels with the symbols of their glory and the muscular soldiers holding the cross), leaving the crowd in a much lower background line, although the effect of spiritual superiority of the saint and the effect of light and shadow sought by Rubens is very similar and even more spectacular than that of his master".

Mission and death of St. Andrew

St. Andrew, the second of the apostles, bears a Greek name which, according to Benedict XVI, is a sign of a certain cultural openness of his family.

Fruit of his first apostolic zeal, was his proselytizing conquest of Simon Peter. He interceded for the pagans before their time came, by interpreting, to a small group of Greeks, the prophecy about the extension of the Gospel to them.

"And in one of the lessons he applies to Andrew the words of the Letter to the Romans: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they - Jews and pagans - call on Him in whom they do not believe? And how will they believe in Him of whom they have heard nothing? And how will they hear without someone preaching to them? And I ask: Have they still heard nothing? But his voice has gone out into all the earth, and his words have reached to the ends of the earth," proclaims the breviary on its feast day.

The barbarians in their lands were recipients of his evangelical message, probably with Peter himself. Eusebius, father of the Church, places him apostolically in the wild Scythia, south of present-day Russia or in its border regions such as Bithynia, Pontus and, above all, Synope, south and west of the Black Sea.

Other sources indicate as the land of his mission Lydia, Kurdistan and Armenia, and in a second stage he could go down from Bithynia to Thrace, Macedonia and Greece up to Achaia, in the present Peloponnese.

There in Greece, in Patras, he found the end of his apostolic work. According to an "Encyclical of the priests and deacons of Achaia on the martyrdom of St. Andrew", after having preached the Gospel as bishop of Patras, in Achaia, he was condemned to die on the cross by the prefect Aegeas, whose wife was converted by the saint along with a large part of the population.

The event was as follows: Aegeas discovered the conversion and, furious, wanted to force the Christians to offer sacrifices to idols. St. Andrew tried to make him desist in his endeavor, but the proconsul ordered him to be imprisoned. He was not nailed, but after his scourging he was tied to the cross, so that he would take longer to die and thus prolong his suffering.

The people begged for the prisoner's pardon. Thousands of people asked to be freed from torment, even the brother of the prefect joined in the pleas, but all in vain. During the two days of suffering, he did not stop preaching, attracting many people who came to listen to him.

The crowd soon rioted against Egeas who, against such threats, tried to free him. However, St. Andrew said: "Why have you come? {...} I will not come down alive from here; I already see my King waiting for me".

He tried to untie him, but the latter prevented him by praying the prayer that began as follows: "Do not allow, Lord, that they take me down alive from here. It is time for my body to be delivered to the earth". As he said these words, St. Andrew was enveloped by a light from heaven, and immediately the apostle died. A Samaritan woman picked up his body after his death. His relics were taken to Byzantium and his head was transferred to Rome, where the two brothers now rest.

The year of St. Andrew's death is not known, although it is suspected that, at the time of the transit of the Virgin Mary, Andrew had already died.

The aforementioned encyclical of the clergy of Achaia describes the death of the apostle in vivid colors: "When Andrew arrived at the place of martyrdom he exclaimed at the sight of the cross: O holy cross, which was adorned with the limbs of the Lord! Cross long desired, deeply loved, constantly sought and at last prepared for my soul! Take me from among men and lead me to my Master! Through you receive me who through you redeemed me!".

The Baptist exclaimed at the Jordan before his disciple Andrew: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" And the Lord, days before his death, answered Andrew's question with the sentence: "The grain of wheat must die to produce fruit". The sacrifice of the Lord was more in Andrew's soul than all the other apostles, even more than his own brother Simon, who could not suppress his protest at the prediction of the cross. Andrew greeted the cross with a jubilant: "Hail, Crux!". That yes to the cross, so sweet and energetic, is the highest deed. He who greets his cross with a "Hail, Crux! He must be "Andrew", that is to say, manly.

The cross on which Andrew died was in the form of a cross, the so-called St. Andrew's cross, in the shape of an X. The capital "X" is also the Greek initial of the name of Christ; whoever lives united to the X - to the cross - will live united to Christ and vice versa. The Lord himself warns, "Whoever wants to be my disciple, let him take my cross upon him." This has been chosen to give us the deepest resemblance to Christ and, as St. Andrew beautifully asked, "to lead us to the Master."

The authorAndrés Iráizoz

Architect.

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Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (I)

Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (VI)

This last analysis of the collect prayer for Palm Sunday concludes the series that gives us a glimpse into the richness of the Roman Missal.

Carlos Guillén-March 31, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

With Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion we reach the end of our journey. We are at the portico of Holy Week. The Church commemorates with the Palm Sunday procession the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Paradoxically, he will be acclaimed as King and Messiah only to be condemned to death on the Cross.

As Benedict XVI said in celebrating this day: "In the Palm Sunday procession we join the multitude of the disciples who, with great joy, accompany the Lord in his entry into Jerusalem". "This joy at the beginning is also an expression of our "yes" to Jesus and of our readiness to go with him wherever he leads us." Moreover, "it wants to be an image of something more profound, an image of the fact that, together with Jesus, we begin the pilgrimageby the high road to the living God".

Once the procession with the branches and the solemn entrance into the church has taken place, the Collect opens directly the Eucharistic celebration. This prayer, simple in structure but notoriously long, has remained practically unchanged through the centuries up to the present day. Missal of Paul VI. Its anonymous editor could have been inspired by some texts of St. Augustine where terms such as exemplum, documéntum y humilitas are also related.

Almighty and eternal God, who made our Savior incarnate and endured the Cross so that we might imitate his example of humility, grant us, graciously, to learn the teachings of the Passion and to share in the glorious Resurrection. Omnípotens sempitérne Deus, qui humano géneri, ad imitándum humilitátis exémplum, Salvatórem Nostrum carnem súmere, et crucem subíre fecísti, concéde propítius,ut et patiéntiae ipsíus habére documéntaet resurrectiónis consórtia mereámur.

The Father's almighty love

The invocation Omnípotens sempitérne Deus, as such, is repeated in 14 Sunday collects. But recourse to divine omnipotence will appear several hundred times in the Missal, being one of the most frequently mentioned attributes of God. Although it pertains equally to the three divine Persons, in the Gloriain the Credo and in many prefaces omnipotence usually refers especially to the Father. As the CatechismGod is the Father almighty. His fatherhood and his power are mutually illuminating. He shows, in fact, his paternal omnipotence by the way he cares for our needs; by the filial adoption he gives us; finally, by his infinite mercy, for he shows his power in the highest degree by freely forgiving sins" (n. 270).

The Father forgives our sins by sending us his only begotten Son. The anamnesis reminds us of two high points of our Savior's existence: taking our flesh (carnem súmere) and suffer the Cross (crucem subíre), the Incarnation and the Passion. Two moments closely related to each other and to our salvation. We explicitly affirm in our prayer that Christ accomplishes everything in favor of the human race, and then we will solemnly profess it again in the Credofor us men and for our salvation".

The Son's example of humility

Redemption is objective and universal, but it needs to be embraced by everyone. The way to do this is to imitate Jesus, who freely embraces humiliation to the extreme. Hence the importance of learning the teachings (documenta) of his Passion, as we ask in prayer. As St. Thomas Aquinas said: "The Passion of Christ is enough to serve as a guide and model for our whole life, for anyone who wants to lead a perfect life need do nothing other than despise what Christ despised on the cross and desire what Christ desired. In the cross we find the example of all the virtues". Thus, the sin of pride of the old Adam is healed in the love, obedience, patience and humility of Christ, the new Adam. The Palm Sunday Collect concludes by asking for our participation in the glorious resurrection (con-sors means to suffer the same fate, the same destiny), the high point of the whole liturgical year. It is St. Paul who teaches that through baptism we die with Christ and are buried with him, in order to rise with him to the new life proper to those who have died to sin and now live for God (cf. Rom 6:3-11). And so we end our Lenten journey, ready to participate in the Easter celebration of this new life given to us by Christ, with him and in him.

The authorCarlos Guillén

Priest from Peru. Liturgist.

Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (I)

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Silence the guns! The Pope's latest cry from Iraq

Pope Francis: "Any war always ends in defeat".

While Pope Francis remains hospitalized, his Prayer Network makes public the intention for the month of April: the end of the culture of violence.

Paloma López Campos-March 30, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

"God will call to account those who have not sought peace." Related News

– Supernatural Global Prayer Network Pope Francis has published the video with the intention for this month of April 2023. Francis calls for a culture of non-violence recalling the words that his predecessor St. John XXIII left in writing in "Pacem in Terris", stating that war is madness and that it escapes reason.

The Holy Father says that "to live, speak and act without violence is not to give up, it is not to lose or renounce anything. It is to aspire to everything". He goes on to call for the cultivation of a culture of peace, both in daily life and in the international arena.

Below is the press release written by the World Prayer Network and the full video:

"Let us develop a culture of peace. Culture of peace," Pope Francis strongly urges. This is the call made by The Pope's April Video with the new prayer intention that he entrusts to the entire Catholic Church, through the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network.

April 11 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of the encyclical Pacem in terris written by Pope John XXIII and subtitled "On peace among all peoples, which must be founded on truth, justice, love and freedom". In this month's video, Francis forcefully renews this message, stressing "that war is madness, it is beyond reason".

That phrase from sixty years ago, quoted by Francis in the message accompanying his prayer intention, is more relevant than ever, as are the testimonies left by some of the people who planted seeds of peace in the last century: St. John XXIII, of course, but also Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, St. Teresa of Calcutta. In this month's Pope Video, their black-and-white portraits appear amid the scenes of destruction caused by today's violence: from the war in Ukraine to those in the Middle East, to the clashes and shootings in even the richest countries, such as the United States. Although there has been no shortage of witnesses, in the end, the world has not yet learned the fundamental lesson: that "any war, any armed confrontation, ends up being a defeat for everyone".

Peace is the goal

In an article that Amnesty International published on data and statistics on gun use between 2012 and 2016, it reveals a sample of what results from a culture of violence: for example, more than 500 people die every day from gun violence and an average of 2000 are injured; in addition, 44 % of homicides in the world are committed with firearms. This is directly related to the arms industry: 8 million handguns are produced each year, along with 15 billion rounds of ammunition. And as far as armed conflict is concerned, Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) anticipated that the outlook for 2023 does not appear to be encouraging: new confrontations, in particular the Russian invasion of Ukraine and outbreaks in Asia, added to ongoing conflicts and armed struggles in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, among others.

The only possible way to stop this onslaught is to seek and implement, at the local and international level, ways of real dialogue and to assume "nonviolence" as "a guide for our actions". This message echoes what Pope John XXIII said 60 years ago: "Violence has never done anything but destroy, not edify; inflame passions, not calm them; accumulate hatred and debris, not fraternize the contenders, and has precipitated men and parties to the hard need to rebuild slowly, after painful trials, on the wreckage of discord".

Peace without weapons

At a moment in history marked by the conflict in Ukraine, which has involved a large number of countries in the last year, Francis recalls that, even in cases of self-defense, the ultimate goal must always be peace: even when this peace, as today, seems distant. But "a lasting peace - he adds - can only be a peace without weapons", and for this reason he insists on the theme dear to his heart of disarmament at all levels, including within society: "the culture of non-violence - he concludes in fact, in his prayer intention - passes through an ever decreasing recourse to arms, both on the part of States and citizens".

Fr. Frédéric Fornos S.J., International Director of the Pope's World Network of Prayer, commented: "In the face of the violence of our time, Francis proposes a whole month to pray 'for a greater diffusion of a culture of nonviolence. Peace among peoples begins, in fact, in the most concrete and intimate part of the heart, when I meet the other in the street, his face, his gaze, especially the one who comes from elsewhere, the one who does not speak as I do and does not have the same culture, the one who is strange in his attitudes and is called 'foreigner'. War and conflict begin here and now, in our hearts, every time we allow violence to replace justice and forgiveness. The Gospel shows us that the life of Jesus reveals the true way of peace and invites us to follow him. It is in this spirit that we are called to 'disarm' ourselves, in the sense of 'disarming' our words, our actions, our hatred. Let us pray then, as Francis invites us to do, that 'we may make nonviolence, both in daily life and in international relations, a guide for our actions'".

"God will call to account those who have not sought peace." Related News

Silence the guns! The Pope's latest cry from Iraq

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Suzanne Aho (UN)We must disseminate the Casablanca Declaration".

Spain

García Magán: "Not everything that is technically possible is ethically acceptable".

The secretary of the EEC referred, in response to a question, about surrogacy, which is back in the limelight these days.

Maria José Atienza-March 30, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

The press conference at the end of the Permanent Commission of the Spanish Episcopal Conference The meeting of the bishops had two central topics beyond the actual topics discussed at the meeting: the reopened debate on surrogacy and the updating of data on sexual abuses committed within the Church from 1945 to the present day.

Apart from these issues, Francisco Cesar García Magán wanted to highlight three current issues in the Spanish Church. In the first place, and joining the feelings of a large part of the Church, the secretary of the Spanish bishops wanted to show the closeness of the Spanish Church's prayers to Pope Francis during his recent hospitalization and asked for prayers for his speedy recovery.

He also referred to the exchange of notes between the Spanish Church and the Spanish Government updating the agreement on economic matters between the Holy See and the Spanish Government whereby the Church waiver of one of the tax exemptions that were recognized in the 1979 agreement: exemptions from the Special Contributions and the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works. By this agreement, the Church is placed in a position comparable to that of foundations: without tax privileges or discrimination.

He also spoke about the report "To give light" which the Episcopal Conference, on its own initiative, has delivered to the Spanish Ombudsman and which includes the 706 cases that have been reported to the offices of the Church. A report that shows the commitment to fight against the social scourge of child abuse.

"Being a parent is a gift"

Questioned about the position of the Church with respect to the surrogacyGarcía Magán wanted to emphasize that "above all, motherhood is a gift, not, strictly speaking, a right".

Although the secretary understands "the understandable pain of those women who want to have a family and cannot", it must be taken into account that "pregnant women are not incubators" and he also defended that although today "technically many things can be done, not everything that is possible is ethically feasible".

As he also wanted to emphasize, "it is not a question of denying something to the woman, but in defense of the dignity of the pregnant mother and the child".

New testimonies of abuse

The next big topic of the press conference was the release of the data on cases of sexual abuse that have been submitted to the Ombudsman. In total, the EEC is aware, for the moment, of 706 cases. The Spanish bishops have pointed out that in 2022, 186 new testimonies on cases of abuse committed between 1950 and 2022 have become known.

Of the 186 cases, 70 were reported to diocesan offices and 116 to the offices of religious congregations. The offices have a pastoral dimension of welcoming and accompanying, they do not carry out trials or pass judgments, so the presence in the office of the cases does not determine either innocence or guilt, which is a matter for the civil and/or canonical judicial authorities.

When the case requires it, the Office urges the presentation of the case to the courts or brings it to the attention of the civil or canonical courts.

In relation to the victimizer, there are 74 consecrated clerics, 36 diocesan clerics, 49 consecrated non-clerics and 27 lay people. All the perpetrators are male. Of these, 90 are deceased, 69 are alive and 27 are unaccounted for.

Regarding the victims, 179 were minors at the time of the events and 7 were legally equivalent to minors. Currently, 166 victims are of legal age, 16 are minors and 4 victims are legally equivalent to minors.

An important fact in this regard is that 123 dioceses and congregations already have a protocol for the prevention and treatment of abuse. In addition, codes of ethics and best practices for the care of victims are being developed and are already available in 95 dioceses and congregations.

Spain

Suzanne Aho (UN)We must disseminate the Casablanca Declaration".

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Holy Week begins

The processions return this Holy Week to the streets of cities and towns like this Palm Sunday in Antigua (Guatemala).

Maria José Atienza-March 30, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

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Opus Dei outlines its Extraordinary General Congress on the occasion of "Ad charisma tuendum".

During the sessions, the proposals elaborated from the suggestions received from all over the world will be studied. The final text will be voted on the last day and will have to be approved by the Dicastery of the Clergy.

Maria José Atienza-March 30, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

Easter week, specifically April 12-16, is the date chosen by the Prelature of Opus Dei for the Extraordinary General Congress convened to adapt the Statutes of the Prelature to the motu proprio. Ad charisma tuendum.

The Prelate of Opus Dei, Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz published, on the morning of March 30, a brief message thanking the prayers for the fruits of this Extraordinary General Congress and detailing some aspects of its organization and celebration.

The Prelate notes that the suggestions that have reached Rome, fruit of the request made to the members of the Prelature and related persons when this congress was announced, have been duly studied "with the help of experts, in order to present concrete proposals at the Congress".

Although the petition was focused on the aspects that modify the Motu ProprioIn addition, suggestions and observations of various kinds have been received which, as Ocáriz points out, "will serve to prepare for the next ordinary General Congress in 2025".

The meetings of the congressmen and congresswomen will be held in parallel and both the Prelate and his Vicars will participate in these sessions during which "the proposals elaborated will be studied and the final text will be voted on the last day".

The prelate also wanted to point out that the results of this Congress will not be communicated immediately, since the document resulting from the conclusions of these meetings "must be sent to the Dicastery of the Clergy for the study of the Holy See, which is responsible for approving it.

The prelate concluded his message with a call for unity "among the entire Work, and of the Work with the Holy Father and with the Church as a whole".

The Motu Proprio Ad Charisma Tuendum

Pope Francis published, on July 22, 2022, the Apostolic Letter in the form of a Motu Proprio of Pope Francis Ad charisma tuendum which amended certain articles of the Mexican Apostolic Constitution Ut sitwith which John Paul II erected Opus Dei as a personal Prelature.

Among the changes introduced, the new Motu Proprio established the dependence of the Prelature of Opus Dei from the Dicastery for Bishops to the Dicastery for the Clergy.

Also changed was the frequency with which Opus Dei must present the traditional report on the situation of the Prelature and the development of its apostolic work, which is now annual rather than five-yearly. Another of the modified points was the fact of explicitly stating that the prelate of Opus Dei will not receive the episcopal order.

Convocation of the Extraordinary General Congress

Once the Motu Proprio Ad Charisma tuendum, In October 2022, the Prelate of Opus Dei convoked an Extraordinary General Congress with the "precise and limited purpose" of adapting the Statutes of the Work to the indications of the Motu proprio and, as had been advised by the Holy See, to consider "other possible adjustments to the Statutes, which seem convenient in the light of the Motu proprio.

In the same letter in which he announced the celebration of this Congress, which will begin in the coming weeks, the Prelate asked the members of the Work for "concrete suggestions" aimed at adapting the work and development of the Work to the needs of the Church today.

The General Congresses in Opus Dei

The General Congresses are, together with the Prelate who convokes them and who attends them, the main governing body within the Opus Dei at the central level.

According to point 133 of the current statutes of the Prelature of Opus Dei, "Ordinary General Congresses, convoked by the Prelate, must be held every eight years to express his opinion on the state of the Prelature and to be able to advise on the opportune norms for future governmental action.

Extraordinary general congresses can also be held, such as the one to be held next Easter week, which are convoked "when circumstances, in the judgment of the Prelate, so require".

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"For decades, we Catholics have not prepared for what is coming our way."

Evangelization

Chantal DelsolChristians have the opportunity to be better as a minority".

Chantal Delsol, a French Catholic intellectual of great renown, has recently published a provocative essay: "The End of Christianity". With a critical vision, Delsol explains in this interview some aspects of this crisis, the confrontation with modernity, the ontological rupture and the forecasts of hope for Catholics.

Bernard Larraín-March 30, 2023-Reading time: 7 minutes

"If Catholics take on fads, they become mere 'children of their times'." Related News

It is not rash to say that Christianity is going through a time of crisis, in the truest sense of the word. Christians are living in a period of great change and, in many Western countries, they represent a minority and, in some countries, Christianity is "fighting for survival". Chantal Delsol, a French Catholic intellectual of great renown, has recently published a provocative essay: "The End of Christianity". With a critical vision, Delsol explains in this interview some aspects of this crisis, the confrontation with modernity, the ontological rupture and the forecasts of hope for Catholics.

How does Christianity differ from Christendom?

-Christianity refers to the religion itself, while Christendom is the civilization developed by the religion, just as we speak of Islam (religion) and Islam (civilization). To be in Christendom means to be in a space of civilization in which it is Christianity that inspires and imposes morality and common laws.

Is it possible to speak of Christianity outside Europe, and does it exist on other continents?

Christianity is not, or was not, only European, but Western. It has spread or continues to spread throughout the two Americas, in addition to the European continent. For example, it is still alive, but in the process of destabilization, in some Latin American countries. It is in a situation of struggle for its survival in the United States. Outside these areas, some countries in Africa and Asia are home to many Christians, but also to other religions, and one cannot speak of Christianity.

You speak of a normative reversal (laws on marriage, life, etc.), which makes you note a change of civilization. How to understand, in this context, the new awareness of the condemnation of pedophilia or pornography?

-I insisted on "normative inversion" to show that, contrary to what we hear here and there, the collapse of Christianity does not lead to relativism, but to different norms. The case of pedophilia is very interesting. Until now, it has been tolerated in the Church as everywhere else, because the institution was always defended before the individual.

The new morality defends the individual against the institution, so the Church's new condemnation of pederasty marks its acceptance of a certain individualism. Moreover, it should be noted that the morality applied today, that of "care" if you will, is not only a morality of the individual, but also a morality of the community. It is what has been called humanitarianism, that is, a philanthropy without transcendence, a reworking of Christian morality but without Heaven. To such an extent that we end up joining the Asian morality: the universal compassion of Confucius.

This makes the condemnation of pedophilia more understandable. I would add one thing: since we no longer have a basis for morality, we have consequentialist morality. In other words, what is wrong is only what causes harm. In the case of transgender propaganda in schools or pornography, all these can be condemned if they are proven to cause harm to children.

Catholics have become a minority and their influence is diminishing. What should their attitude and priorities be? Benedict XVI encouraged them to be "creative minorities that change the world".

-Yes, Benedict XVI is right, when a minority is courageous and educated, it can change societies. It seems to me that today Catholics represent that minority in a country like France. The great danger from which these minorities must be protected, and to which they are so easily subjected, is extremism. If, horrified by the new society they see unfolding before their eyes, they take the opposite direction with a language of excess, they will never regain the upper hand. I think that is the most difficult thing: to maintain balance while fighting against extremes.

To what extent are Catholics responsible for the "end of Christianity"?

-It is a difficult question. In general, as I have tried to explain in my book, Catholicism has never admitted what has been called modernity (democracy, liberalism, individualism), at least until the Second Vatican Council, but by then it was too late. The modern claim that has developed more and more strongly over the last two centuries, to reach the present situation, has always been anti-Catholic. It will be said: but why should modernity win over Catholicism?

I believe that in our societies, since the Renaissance, there has been a very strong desire for individual emancipation that was willing to change everything to achieve it. But it must also be said that in our countries, Catholicism, in its legitimate and hegemonic position, has abdicated the humanity it should have shown to compensate for the rigidity of its principles. One example that strikes me: until abortion was legitimized by law, Christians did not create associations to help young pregnant and single women. Before that, in general, we were content to insult them. This obviously did not make people want to defend Catholic principles.

What do you think of the thesis of Rod Dreher's book "The Benedictine Option"?

-Yes, I know Rod Dreher and have talked to him about this. He is much less radical than his book suggests. On the other hand, he is well aware that our situation cannot frankly be compared with that of his hero, Vaclav Benda, who lived in a totalitarian country.

Of course we have to reflect on our new situation, that of a group that is now in a minority, while for almost two thousand years we have been in the majority and hegemonic. But it does not behoove us to shut ourselves up in a fortress. And we should not understand the Benedictine option in this way. What Rod means is that, in order to survive, we should not barricade ourselves in, but settle down next to a well. That said, when it comes to passing on our beliefs to our children, the degree of protection to be offered to children is a very personal matter, linked to individuals and circumstances.

You say that the West has lost the philosophical basis for opposing certain trends (surrogacy, euthanasia) inspired solely by individual will. Are these battles lost in advance? In your opinion, does an initiative such as the Casablanca Declaration for the universal abolition of surrogacy make sense when we see the aggressiveness of the global surrogacy market?

-Of course, these battles are not entirely lost, but if some of these measures are rolled back, it will not be for reasons of principle, but for other reasons. It will no longer be a question, for example, of rolling back the practice of surrogacy in the name of human dignity, but in the name of women's equality. In some cases like this one, Catholics may find agreement with other groups for different reasons. In associations fighting against transgender advertising in schools, there is a very small percentage of Christians (who are against it because they believe in the "human condition"), and a very large percentage of consequentialists (usually psychologists, who are against it because they see the harm it causes in their patients). As far as euthanasia is concerned, I am more pessimistic: I do not see what other than Christian principles, or what threat to consequences, could change the minds of our societies.

Of course the Casablanca Declaration makes sense, as does any initiative with a universal vocation that brings diplomatic influence. We are a minority, yes, but we do not have to let other minorities take us over.

In the UK and northern European countries, authorities are seeing the harm of sex change in minors and are backtracking. Can consequentialist morality offer a bulwark against certain experiments?

-I will only add one detail to what I have said above on this subject. Yes, consequentialist morality offers a substitute. But, in order to face up to the damage caused and take it into account, a minimum of pragmatism is still necessary in the societies concerned. When societies are strongly ideological, as is the case in France, it is the principle that counts and the consequences carry no weight. So transgender associations refuse to look at the harms, and only ideology counts. In Scandinavian countries, whether it is about transsexuals or immigration, they tend to look at the reality and reform accordingly. In France, generally, we are only interested in theory, and reality does not count for much: if it is shameful, we simply look the other way, and the damage accumulates.

If we are living through the end of Christian civilization, what civilization are we heading towards? What will it be replaced by?

-We are currently living at a point of rupture in which many new situations are possible, because very different currents of thought are fighting, crossing and eliminating each other. In addition to a minority remnant of Christians, we will probably have an ecological religion of a pantheistic type with all kinds of more or less extreme currents, a strong Islam, which we do not know if it will be radical or not, a remnant of Marxism represented today by the Woke current, which we do not know if it will become extinct or spread; and another remnant of Marxism that produces a permanent social revolt, seen as a kind of religion (what Martin Gurri calls "the revolt of the public").

What strikes me is how profound the diversity of beliefs is: it affects not only religious bonds, but also ontological beliefs. If I take up Descola's four categories, it is clear that we move from naturalism (between animals and humans, there is a similarity in physicality and a difference in interiority, animals do not have our soul), to something like totemism (similarity of interiorities and physicalities: animals are not essentially different from us).

In other words, we live at a point of rupture in which the primordial ontological choices - concerning the meaning and place of man in nature, the nature of the world and of the gods - are being overturned. This process began a long time ago (since Montaigne?). It is the end of what is called dualism, typically linked to Christianity, and the beginning of a monism. In this way we join the Asian ontological beliefs. But that is another subject.

What place is there for the virtue of hope in this context of the end of Christianity?

-Have we to lament the loss of power in society? Has this hegemonic status made us greater? Has it not made us arrogant, cynical and careless? I believe we have the opportunity to be better as a minority than as a majority, at least temporarily - because our vocation remains mission. Perhaps later we will take on this mission more intelligently and less vainly (I am appalled by the vanity and procrastination of our clergy. For now we can bear this loss of influence with humor, after all, as Roger Scruton said, since the loss of paradise we have had a great experience of loss.

The authorBernard Larraín

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Sunday Readings

The Road to Life. Palm Sunday (A)

Joseph Evans comments on the Palm Sunday readings and Luis Herrera offers a brief video homily.

Joseph Evans-March 30, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

Today's Gospel is so long - the complete account of Our Lord's Passion - that priests do not usually add more than the briefest of homilies to comment on it.

The description of Christ's suffering for us is more than enough to speak for itself. To the procession of the Palm branches at the beginning of Mass is added the account of Christ's entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. And with it we accompany Jesus in some way on his way to the Holy City to suffer and die for us. Numerous saints have encouraged us to meditate on the Passion and to enter into these scenes. "as just another character", said St. Josemaría Escrivá. We too can be among the multitude that spreads its garments before our Lord; we can be one of the children shouting in the Temple: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" (Mt 21:15). We should not limit ourselves to reading the Gospel scenes, but to living them.

But if we truly live them, we will also discover in ourselves the terrifying possibility that our role is not always that of the faithful disciples, the Virgin and St. John and the holy women around the Cross. The role we often play could be that of the apostles fleeing from Christ in the Garden of Olives. Or even that of the scribes and Pharisees indignant at the cries of children: how many times have we been disturbed by expressions of faith that do not conform to our rigid ideas of propriety. Or, most frightening of all, we might find ourselves among the crowds that before Pontius Pilate cried out for the death of Jesus, shouting: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Lk 23:21).

Today we celebrate what seems to be the triumph of Christ. He enters Jerusalem acclaimed by the crowds as Messiah-king, Son of David, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah: "Behold, your king comes, poor and riding on a donkey, on a donkey's colt." As humble as an ass is, in the past it had been an animal of royalty (see 1 Kgs 1:33), so the fact that Jesus used it expressed both his humility and his royalty. In five days' time, that king will be crowned with thorns and nailed to the "throne" of the Cross. But three days later he will rise gloriously to lovingly seek out the very men who had let him down so badly. All these events teach us not only not to attach too much importance to apparent success - the bubble can quickly burst - but also not to attach too much importance to apparent failure. The only definitive triumph is the Resurrection of Christ and Christ is still alive: "He is risen.". We can live this Holy Week well or badly, Lent may have been a disaster, but it is enough to be close to Mary and accept our weakness and our need, and every failure will become a victory. Holy Week teaches us that all failures lead us to the ultimate triumph. Death is the way to life.

The homily on the Palm Sunday readings (A)

The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA short one-minute reflection for these Sunday readings.

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Pope Francis admitted to Gemelli hospital for "respiratory difficulties".

Pope Francis is hospitalized for a respiratory infection and will remain in the hospital for several days.

Maria José Atienza-March 29, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

The Holy See announced on the afternoon of March 29 that Pope Francis has been experiencing "respiratory difficulties in recent days and this afternoon he went to the Gemelli University Hospital to undergo some medical tests.

A few hours earlier, the Sala Stampa itself had reported the Pontiff's admission to the hospital, although at first, they pointed to "scheduled check-ups".

As for the results of the check-ups that have been carried out on the Pope, the Sala Stampa explains that the Pope is suffering from a respiratory infection that will require "several days of appropriate hospital medical treatment" so Pope Francis will continue at the Gemelli for the next few hours (the length of his admission has not been specified) and his schedule has already been cleared. The Vatican has specifically clarified that this respiratory infection is not Covid19.

The Vatican communiqué also expressed the Pope's gratitude for the closeness and prayers shown through the messages of encouragement he has received from various parts of the world.

Pope Francis' health

The last time we saw a long Pope Francis' entry at the Gemelli hospital was in July 2021. At that time he underwent surgery for a "symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon", an operation for which he remained in the hospital for several days.

A year later, rumors returned about the Pope's health due to severe pains in his right kneeThe knee problem, still present, forced him to use, for the first time, a wheelchair, an aid he has been using from time to time since May 2022. It was this knee problem that forced the pope to postpone his trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan of Sur until February of this year.

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Hans Zollner S.I. leaves Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors

The German Jesuit said in a statement that various "structural and practical issues" were the cause of his resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on which he has worked since its creation in 2014.

Maria José Atienza-March 29, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

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During the morning of March 29, 2023, Cardinal Sean O'Malley OFM, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors the resignation of the Jesuit priest was made public Hans Zollner to his duties as a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors "after reflecting on his recent appointment as consultant for the Diocesan Office for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons of the Diocese of Rome and all his other responsibilities".

A resignation that, according to the letter sent by Cardinal O'Malley, the Holy Father "had accepted "with the deepest gratitude for his many years of service".

For his part, in a personal statement, Hans Zollner S.I. has stated that his departure is due to internal issues in the functioning of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Among the reasons that have "prevented him from continuing," Zollner points to issues related to the "areas of responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency" that, in his opinion, have not been properly developed in the Commission. He also refers to issues such as the lack of communication and transparency in some of the Commission's decisions and the lack of clarity between the competencies of the Commission and those of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Hans Zollner was a member, from the very beginning, of this commission created by Pope Francis to deal with and prevent cases of abuse within the Catholic Church. During these years, as the cardinal president of this commission wanted to specify, Zollner "has helped to shape and implement many of the projects and programs that found their origin in the deliberations of the Commission". Most notably, he points to Zollner's participation in the summit on Child Protection promoted by the Vatican in February 2019.

He also highlighted the Jesuit's enormous work in raising awareness through his many trips to train members of the Church around the world in the prevention of child abuse and the creation of safe environments.

Zollner, considered one of the foremost experts in the area of sexual abuse prevention and the protection of minors in the Church.

As pointed out by the Hans ZollnerHe will continue to focus on his role as consultant to the Diocesan Office for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons of the Diocese of Rome, as well as on his task as director of the Institute of Anthropology (IADC). Institute of Anthropology. Interdisciplinary studies on human dignity and care for vulnerable people. (IADC) of the Pontifical Gregorian University of which he is director. Trades through which, according to his letter, he will continue in "the quest to make the world a safer place for children and vulnerable people" through our academic and scientific endeavors."

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"Faith deserves respect and honor: it has changed our lives."

Pope looks to St. Paul, prays for Ciudad Juarez migrants

During this morning's General Audience, Pope Francis encouraged people to "rediscover and joyfully witness to the gift of the Christian faith" and to increase their zeal for the Gospel of Christ", following the example of St. Paul. He also prayed for the migrants who died in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) and their families, and for the "martyred Ukraine".

Francisco Otamendi-March 29, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

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In the ninth session of the cycle of catechesis dedicated to 'the passion for evangelization: the apostolic zeal of the believer', which began on January 11 of this year, the Holy Father Francis reflected today on the theme "Witnesses. St. Paul." (Reading: Gal 1,22-24).

The Pope pointed out first of all that "the example of St. Paul is emblematic of this theme. Looking back over his life, we see that Saul, which was Paul's first name, was always passionate about the law of God and defended it radically. This zeal, this passion that characterized him, did not disappear after his conversion, but continued to be passionate and was transformed by the action of the Holy Spirit. Paul went from wanting to destroy the Church to embracing the cause of the Gospel, proclaiming Christ wherever he went and forming new Christian communities".

"This teaches us," Francis summed up, "that what gives rise to a passion for the Gospel is not a person's personality or studies, which can certainly help, but is defined by an encounter with Christ. As happened to St. Paul, we see that apostolic zeal arises from an experience of the fall and resurrection that leads us to recognize true life."

The messages of the Supreme Pastor of the Catholic Church this morning could be summarized as follows: let us learn from the apostolic zeal of St. Paul: let us pray for the deceased migrants in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico).Mexico), and "let us persevere in prayer and closeness for the martyred Ukraine".

At least 40 migrants died in the "tragic fire" in Ciudad Juarez. The Guatemalan Migration Institute has confirmed that 28 of the deceased were citizens of this country. The rest were from other Central American and even South American countries.

The Pope especially greeted "the bishops and priests who are commemorating their fiftieth anniversary of priestly ordination", "the young people of Teruel", and "as usual", he prayed for the young, the sick, the elderly and the newlyweds".

Where evangelizing zeal is born

At various points during the Audience, addressing the pilgrims of different languages, the Roman Pontiff encouraged them to "ask the Lord to increase in us zeal for the Gospel of Christ during this Lenten journey, which is born of recognizing ourselves as forgiven sinners, and to welcome into our lives the grace of God's love". He also expressed it in this way: "In this time of Lent, I hope that each of you will rediscover and joyfully witness to the gift of the Christian faith".

Referring to the transformation that took place in St. Paul, the Pope said that "Christ turns his zeal from the Law to the Gospel. His impulse first wanted to destroy the Church, but then he built it up.

And he raised, as usual, some questions, and then quoted St. Thomas Aquinas: "What has happened? What has changed in Paul? In what sense has his zeal, his impulse for the glory of God been transformed? St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that passion, from the moral point of view, is neither good nor bad: its virtuous use makes it morally good, sin makes it bad".

The risen Lord transforms him

"In Paul's case, what changed him was not a simple idea or conviction: it was the encounter with the risen Lord that transformed his whole being. Paul's humanity, his passion for God and his glory is not annihilated, but transformed, 'converted' by the Holy Spirit. And so it was for every aspect of his life," the Holy Father continued.

Pope Francis compared this transformation to that which takes place in the Eucharist: "Precisely as it happens in the Eucharist: the bread and wine do not disappear, but become the Body and Blood of Christ. Paul's zeal remains, but it becomes the zeal of Christ. The Lord is served with our humanity, with our prerogatives and our characteristics, but what changes everything is not an idea but authentic life, as Paul himself says: 'He who lives in Christ is a new creature: the old has disappeared, a new being has become present'".

"Fancy Catholic or Holy Catholic?"

"We can make another reflection on the change that takes place in Paul, who from persecutor becomes an apostle of Christ," the Pope said. "There is a moment when Paul says of himself: 'I have been a blasphemer and violent,' then he begins to be truly capable of love. And this is the way. If one of us says: 'Ah thank you Lord, because I am a good person, I do good things, I don't commit great sins....'

"This is not a good way, this is a way of self-sufficiency, it is a way that does not justify you, it makes you an elegant Catholic, but an elegant Catholic is not a holy Catholic, he is elegant. The true Catholic, the true Christian is the one who receives Jesus inside,

that changes the heart. This is the question I ask you all today," the Holy Father noted, "What does Jesus mean to me? Have I let Him into my heart, or do I only hold Him close at hand but do not let Him enter so much within? Have I let myself be changed by Him?"

In the final part, after quoting St. Ignatius of Loyola, Pope Francis referred to the Virgin Mary and St. Paul once again: "As the Virgin Mary, after the Angel's announcement, zealously set out to go and help Elizabeth, so Paul brought to the people that grace of Christ that he had first received on the road to Damascus and that had changed his life. Therefore, the root of the evangelical impulse is the love of God himself, not an individual commitment or a personal characteristic".

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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"Without the Episcopal Conference, the path of the Church in Spain is incomprehensible."

Spain

Church in Spain waives some tax exemptions

On the morning of March 29, the Spanish Episcopal Conference published a press release announcing its renunciation of the exemptions to the Special Contributions and the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works.

Paloma López Campos-March 29, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

The Government of Spain and the Spanish Episcopal Conference signed an agreement, effective as of March 29, 2023, by which the tax regime of the Spanish Church is equated to that of other non-profit entities in the country. Therefore, and with the approval of the Holy See, the Episcopal Conference renounces to the exemptions in the Special Contributions and the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works.

The press release issued by the EEC is as follows:

"As a result of the joint work between the Ministry of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory and the Catholic Church in the area of taxation, the Government of Spain and the Spanish Episcopal Conference, with the support of the Holy SeeIn the same way, they have reached an agreement whereby the waiver of the exemptions, derived from the Agreements, that affect the Special Contributions and the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works (ICIO), will be processed before the Holy See.

To this end, the Government will proceed to repeal the Ministerial Order of June 5, 2001 of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which regulates the inclusion of the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works (ICO) in the Agreement between the Spanish State and the Holy See on Economic Matters.

The agreement is developed in the shared will between the Government of Spain and the Spanish Episcopal Conference to equalize the fiscal regime of the Catholic Church with that of non-profit entities, in accordance with the principle of non-privilege and non-discrimination. Today this agreement becomes effective by means of the corresponding exchange of notes between the Government and the Apostolic Nunciature".

"Without the Episcopal Conference, the path of the Church in Spain is incomprehensible."

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Lent and Holy Week in Ecuador: Processions, Devotion and Traditions

The Arrastre de Caudas, a custom that only survives in Ecuador; the procession of Jesus del Gran Poder and the traditional soup "Fanesca" make the time of Lent and Holy Week a time of special tradition and faith in the Ecuadorian country.

Juan Carlos Vasconez-March 29, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

There are numerous customs that, in Ecuador, accompany the experience of the Lenten season and Holy Week. In them, faith and culture are intertwined, giving rise to traditions of great beauty and symbolism. Among them, we highlight in this article three: the traditional soup "Fanesca", the procession of Jesus del Gran Poder and Arrastre de Caudas.

Fanesca

Fanesca is a traditional food dish that is usually prepared for all of Lent, especially for the Friday days of abstinence, since it does not contain meat. This soup is prepared with dried cod and 12 different grains. It is said that the fish represents Jesus and the 12 grains represent the disciples.

The purest tradition is to eat Fanesca on Holy Thursday. However, it is known that the dish is prepared nationwide and that is why it is available all Holy Week in several restaurants.

It is usually served hot on a plate and it is traditional to decorate it with pieces of cod, either cooked or fried, salt dough in the form of empanadas, threads or balls. Also fried ripe plantain, red chilies, parsley leaves, fresh cheese, a piece of white onion and slices of boiled egg.

Procession of Jesus del Gran Poder

The procession of Jesus of the Great Power is quite old. Every year about 250,000 thousand people take to the streets of downtown Quito, and especially concentrate in the Plaza San Francisco. The procession lasts until three in the afternoon, time of death of the Lord. The descent takes place at six o'clock in the afternoon, when the day ends for the Jewish community.

The Cucuruchos, along with the Veronicas, are traditional characters that accompany Jesus del Gran Poder and the Virgen Dolorosa in this tour that begins and ends in San Francisco and runs through much of the historic center of Quito, the largest colonial center of South America. The whole city and the streets are dyed purple.

The Cucuruchos symbolize the penitents who show their repentance and their will to change and want to vindicate themselves and begin a life free of sins. The Veronicas are the representation of the brave woman who made her way through him, to wipe the sweat and blood from the face of Jesus with a cloth that would have been miraculously engraved on the cloth by the Santa Faz.

The Cauda Dragging

Every Holy Wednesday in the cathedral of Quito the Arrastre de Caudas is performed, also known as the "Paso de la Reseña" is of Roman origin from the sixteenth century, it is done in the Cathedral.

The ceremony takes place inside the cathedral when the Archbishop of Quito, together with his eight canons, performs a procession in which they carry on their backs the caudas, which are heavy black cloaks almost two meters long, symbolizing the sins of the world.

The canons prostrate themselves in front of the main altar for the Archbishop to wave a huge black flag with a red cross above them to symbolically convey the virtues of Jesus Christ. The flag also passes over the heads of many of the attendees. To conclude the liturgical act, the Archbishop hits the flag three times against the ground, symbol of the resurrection of Christ, and then blesses all the faithful with the relic of the Holy Cross.

José Asimbaya, parish priest in charge of the Caudas Cathedral cArrastre, points out that "it is a celebration full of hope, of life. Although the rites that are performed speak of death because of this convulsed world, full of violence, there is hope to live. That is why the flag that is waved is to show that death has been defeated.

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Guest writersCelso Morga

The Church, a hindrance?

Those who judge the Church from the outside, as just another human institution, without faith in Christ, will always consider it as "backward", out of step with the times, in short, a hindrance to the enjoyment of the body and of life.

March 29, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes

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Some of the information that reaches public opinion about the Church conveys a problematic, if not outright negative, view of the Church: abuseThe company's products are in dissonance with the demands of today's society, modern culture, current trends and lifestyles.

From this perspective, the Church and Christianity, in general, appear as a hindrance, an obstacle to "progress". It is normal for Christians to feel this social and cultural environment, which tries to hide, overlap or pass indifferent to the Christian faith.

This should not frighten us, nor should it disturb or impress us, much less should it lead us to hide our faith. With simplicity, without losing our calm, we must live according to what we believe in all the environments in which our life as Christians unfolds. The Lord already warned us that there would be opposition, that the Christian faith would not always be accepted with peace. What cannot happen is that we shrink back, that we fill ourselves with complexes or that we hide our being disciples of Christ.

It attacks, for example, the celibacy or the Christian doctrine on human sexuality or the role of women in the Church, but in the end what is at stake and what is attacked is the Christian faith. Those who judge the Church from the outside, as just another human institution, without faith in Christ, will always consider it to be "backward", out of step with the times, in short, a hindrance to the enjoyment of the body and of life.

We are at the gates of Holy Week and the Church will once again proclaim the Cross of Christ as the source of salvation, happiness and life. This is the paradox of Christianity. Whoever chooses the force of his desire, autonomous and individualistic, as the only way to happiness, will not need God or any redemption, nor any mediation between God and man. But this option, taken to the extreme, leaves man alone, subjected to his desire, which in the end is "his god". For those who make this option, Christ is superfluous, the Church is superfluous and the priesthoodbecause the eternal value of the person is annulled.

The authorCelso Morga

Archbishop emeritus of the Diocese of Mérida Badajoz

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"Sexuality brings into play the most intimate part of our being."

The World

Nordic bishops alert to "a secular discourse on sexuality".

The bishops of the Scandinavian Bishops' Conference, including Cardinal Arborelius of Stockholm, have outlined insights from Christian teaching on sexuality, warning of "the limits of a purely secular discourse," in a recently published pastoral letter.

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The pastoral letter of the eight bishops, entitled "On Human Sexuality," "is intended to indicate a direction to those believers and people of good will who are troubled by an overly worldly view of the human being and his sexuality," states the scandinavian bishops' conferenceand was published on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, as a continuation of its recently concluded Spring Plenary Assembly.

"Our mission and task as bishops is to point out the peacemaking and life-giving way of Christ's commandments, which is narrow at first, but widens as we go along. We would fail you if we offered less. We were not ordained to preach our little notions".

Sign the pastoral letter Bishops Czeslaw Kozon (Copenhagen), current president; Cardinal Anders Arborelius (Stockholm), who presided over the conference from 2005 to 2015; Peter Bürcher, emeritus of Reykjavik; Bernt Eidsvig Can.Reg. (Oslo); Berislav Grgić, Tromsø; P Marco Pasinato, Ap.Adm. (Helsinki); David Tencer OFM Cap. (Reykjavik); and Erik Varden OCSO, Trondheim.

Christian teaching on sexuality

After a review of biblical images, the bishops state that "we need deep roots. Let us try, then, to appropriate the fundamental principles of Christian anthropology, approaching with friendship and respect those who feel alienated from them. We owe it to the Lord, to ourselves and to our world to give an account of what we believe and why we believe it to be true".

"Many are perplexed by traditional Christian teaching on sexuality," they add. "To these we offer friendly advice. First: try to familiarize yourself with the call and promise of Christ, to know him better through the Scriptures and in prayer, through the liturgy and the study of the whole doctrine of the Church, not just fragments taken here and there. Participate in the life of the Church. In this way you will broaden the horizon of the questions from which you started, and also your mind and your heart".

Secondly, the Nordic episcopate advises to "consider the limits of a purely secular discourse on sexuality. It has to enrich it. We need proper terms to talk about these important things. We will have a valuable contribution to make if we recover the sacramental nature of sexuality in God's plan, the beauty of Christian chastity and the joy of friendship, which shows the great liberating intimacy that can also be found in non-sexual relationships."

Complementarity of men and women

In this context, the Scandinavian bishops recall: "The image of God in human nature is manifested in the complementarity of man and woman. Man and woman are created for each other: the commandment to be fruitful depends on this reciprocity, sanctified in the nuptial union".

They then add: "In the WritingThe marriage of man and woman becomes an image of God's communion with humanity, which will be perfect at the marriage of the Lamb at the end of history. This does not mean that such a union, for us, is easy or painless. To some it seems an impossible option. Internally, the integration of masculine and feminine characteristics can be difficult. The Church recognizes this. It wishes to embrace and comfort all those who experience this issue with difficulty."

About the LGBTQ+ movement

The Nordic bishops' pastoral letter speaks explicitly of valuing the LGBTQ+ movement "as it relates to the dignity of all people and their longing to be taken into account," the bishops' conference notes. "The Church explicitly condemns 'any kind of discrimination,' and that includes discrimination based on gender identity or orientation."

However, the bishops oppose a view of human nature "that conveys an image of humanity (...) that dissolves the bodily integrity of the person, as if biological sex were something purely accidental." In particular, they criticize that "such views are imposed on children as if they were not bold hypotheses but proven facts" and "imposed on minors as an oppressive burden of having to determine their own identity without being equipped to do so."

The body, linked to the personality

Further on, they add: "It is curious: our society, so concerned about the body, actually takes it lightly, refusing to see in the body a sign of identity, and consequently assuming that the only individuality is the one produced by subjective self-perception, constructing us in our own image".

"When we profess that God has made us in his image, this does not only refer to the soul. Mysteriously it also refers to the body," the Scandinavian prelates add. "For us Christians, the body is intrinsically linked to the personality. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Of course, 'We will all be transformed.' What our body will be like in eternity is hard to imagine."

The bishops also write: "We believe with biblical authority, based on tradition, that the unity of mind, soul and body will last forever. In eternity we will be recognizable for what we already are, but the conflicting aspects that still impede the harmonious development of our true selves will have been resolved."

Realizing love

Finally, the bishops refer to charity, love and the paschal mysteries. "The Church's teaching does not seek to reduce love, but to realize it." "So that it may be understood that every exercise of perfect Christian virtue can only spring from love, for in love it has its ultimate end. From this love the world was made and our nature took shape. This love was manifested in the exemplarity of Christ, in his teaching, in his saving passion and in his death."

And they conclude: "Love triumphed in his glorious resurrection, which we will celebrate with joy during the fifty days of Easter. May our multifaceted and multicolored Catholic community bear witness to this love in truth".

Cardinal Arborelius, Bishop of Stockholm, pointed out that it was "important to bring the faith of the Church to the people of today" and to do so "especially against the background of the different theories on human sexuality". And Bishop Erik Varden (Trondheim) stressed: "Our faithful ask us what the Church says about gender, and we want to respond constructively.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Spain

Bishop José Rico Pavés: "A living Church is rich in ministries".

On the morning of March 28, the headquarters of the Spanish Episcopal Conference hosted a briefing with the presidents of the Episcopal Commissions for the Liturgy and for Evangelization, Catechesis and Catechumenate, Monsignor José Leonardo Lemos Montanet and Monsignor José Rico Pavés, during which the new document "Guidelines on the institution of the ministries of lector, acolyte and catechist" was discussed.

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On the morning of March 28th, Monsignor José Leonardo Lemos Montanet and Monsignor José Rico Pavés, presidents of the Episcopal Commissions for the Liturgy and for the Evangelization, Catechesis and CatechumenateThe meeting was held with journalists to present a document prepared at the request of the plenary session of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. It is the "Guidelines on the institution of the ministries of lector, acolyte and catechist", which will be tested during the next five years and which highlight the richness of the Church and its members.

These guidelines come in response to two documents published by Pope Francis in 2023, "Spiritus Domini"by which he allowed women to be instituted in ministries, and "Antiquum ministerium"by which he instituted a non-liturgical ministry: that of the catechist. As the bishops state in the document presented, the Pope's novelties "have prompted the Spanish Church to reflect on the praxis of the ministries and, as a result of this reflection, the following are offered Orientations".

Reception, openness and hope

Monsignor José Rico Pavés described the document as a "document of reception, open and hopeful". Of reception, because the main idea is "to welcome in the scope of the dioceses of Spain the latest directives of Pope Francis".

On the other hand, it is open in that the Episcopal Conference is in the "process of accepting recent directives and is proposing guidelines of an experimental nature. And, finally, it is hopeful "because it places us in the broad wake of the acceptance of the guidelines of the Vatican Council II".

Living Church

It is important to delve deeper into the nature and identity of ministries, since "a living Church is a Church rich in ministries," Rico Pavés observed. Such ministries, moreover, are not purely concessions from the clergy to the other members of the People of God, but "have their origin in the Baptism"and thus indicate the richness of all the members of the Church.

José Leonardo Lemos Montanet, when he said that the lector, the acolyte and the catechist "are not substitute ministries, they are not meant to replace priests. They do not substitute, but cooperate with the ordained ministry".

Training and conservation

The tasks of those instituted as ministers, as can be seen, cannot be taken lightly. For this reason, Lemos Montanet emphasized the idea that "those who feel called in the Church to serve in these ministries must be formed in an adequate manner." Hence also the importance of the Orientations presented.

However, when considering these guidelines, the clarification made by Monsignor José Rico Pavés is important: "It is not a matter of inventing new things, but of recovering what has belonged to the Church since ancient times".

Church Ministries

The first part contains an explanation of the constituted lay ministries; the second deals with the competencies, nature and identity of the minister instituted as lector, acolyte or catechist; and finally, the bishops present a formation proposal with elements common to all three ministries and specific to each of them.

As the document states, "the lay ministries (read: lector, acolyte and catechist) are services of collaboration and, in special cases, can also make up for the absence of ordained ministries". They are special calls from God to serve that must be discerned by the Church and, in particular, by the bishops.

The reader

The lector's ministry is a liturgical ministry "at the service of the Word of God". The competencies of the instituted minister include "proclaiming the non-evangelical readings," substituting for the psalmist or deacon for the prayer of the faithful, and preparing other lectors. In addition, he or she may also be in charge of coordinating other ministries, tasks related to ongoing formation, preparing the faithful for the reception of the sacraments, and other activities related to the reading of Sacred Scripture.

The acolyte

The ministry of the acolyte is liturgical and is "at the service of the altar, the presider and the other ministers". The acolyte is also "an extraordinary minister of the Sacred Liturgy". communion The "coordination of the liturgical team, the preparation and rehearsal of the celebrations, coordination of the other extraordinary ministers, etc." may be entrusted to him.

The catechist

It is "the great novelty of these Orientations"The catechist is "not strictly speaking a liturgical ministry". The catechist is "at the service of the ad and the transmission of the faith in all its dimensions. Its competencies are very diverse and "it can be entrusted with tasks of formation, work of first proclamation, catechesis of initiation in the Christian life of children, adolescents or adults, ongoing formation, Christian reinitiation, family ministry...".

An opportunity for pastoral renewal

In summary, and as a conclusion to the "Guidelines on the institution of the ministries of lector, acolyte and catechist", the bishops consider this "a precious opportunity for pastoral renewal, which should not be overlooked, and which will be concretized in each diocese according to concrete needs".

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"We are corporeal beings, and without corporeality there is no family."

Family

G. K. Chesterton: Prophet of the Family

The centenary of G. K. Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism is a propitious occasion to approach this brilliant writer, a polemicist of sharp intelligence and a devastating critic of fatuous cultural fashions from the perspective of Christian realism. He devoted many pages to marriage and the family. He frequently highlighted the glaring contradictions of modernity in the understanding of this vital institution for the person and society.

José Miguel Granados-March 28, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

Juan de Dios LarrúLearning to love means learning to promise". Related News

The 100th anniversary of the conversion to Catholicism of G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a propitious occasion to approach this brilliant writer, a polemicist of sharp intelligence and a devastating critic of fatuous cultural fashions from the perspective of Christian realism. The prolific English journalist and writer was capable of unveiling human paradoxes and perplexities in the light of the mystery of the living God.

He devoted many pages to the marriage and the family. He frequently highlighted the glaring contradictions of modernity in the understanding of this vital institution for the person and society. Moreover, he incisively recalled the perennial values of conjugal anthropology, in conformity with the Creator's plan, accessible to common sense.

The family, theater of the extraordinary

Chesterton denounces the inanity of the desire for meaningless novelties exhibited by the snob of the moment, by underlining the perennial originality and greatness of the family institution, decisive for human life. "The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children." says the English thinker with a touch of humor. The family home is the cradle and school of humanity: a place of welcome and protection, of maturation and socialization; it is in the family where one's own identity and value are recognized, where one learns to live and to love. For, in short: "The family is the theater of spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially things that matter."

The home adventure

The unbridled pursuit of professional success can be a trap - even idolatry - if family values are neglected: "Succeeding at work is not worth it when it means failing at home.". Of course, children can also be the object of disordered love.

"Marriage is an adventure: like going to war." The curiosity of the contemporary tourist, his constant flight to false paradises - often virtual - is vulgar compared to what is really worthwhile: the real adventure consists in staying at home, to respond with courage to the most passionate vocation, and to undertake there the beautiful task of making a home. "When we enter the family, by the act of being born, we enter an incalculable world, a world that has its own strange laws, a world that can exist without us, a world that we did not make. In other words, when we enter the family we enter a fairy tale".

To dedicate one's existence to the enjoyment of unfounded emotions dissolves in an erratic wandering. For the meaning of freedom is commitment: surrendering oneself is to the human being what flying is to the bird. "The love is not blind; that is the last thing it is; love is bondage, and the more bondage the less blind."

The gift of self in favor of others fills life with meaning. The marital and family "we" - born of the conjugal covenant, in conformity with God's plan inscribed in masculinity and femininity, and accessible to formed and mature reason - builds humanity: it is the first challenge we face. "Marriage is a duel to the death that no man of honor should decline."

Divorce superstition

Incompatibility of character is often alleged as a reason for justifying a marital breakdown. Chesterton responds with provocative irony: "I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole purpose of marriage is to struggle and survive from the moment incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible."

Divorce itself qualifies it as superstition, for it is not conceivable to live together without difficulties: "The whole pleasure of marriage consists in the fact that it constitutes a perpetual crisis." he says with unabashed abandon. And yet, living in communion is essential, because loneliness is harmful and sterile. The craftsmanship of family relationships is essential to grow, unfold and give life: we need to help each other, share intimacy, work to make domestic community, overcoming the frictions of the company to get the best out of each other.

Paradox and salvation

In short, only in the presence of the true God - the infinite Being who is in himself interpersonal communion, the source of all family life - can the great contradictions of human life be overcome in the search for the meaning of the mystery that envelops it. For the greatest paradox of human history, and the only one that deciphers its meaning, is the presence of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, the Savior of the world, the Redeemer of mankind and the Bridegroom of the Church. He teaches us that, overcoming human limits to enter into the dimensions of divine life, "To love means to want what is unlovable; to forgive entails forgiving the unforgivable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. To hope means to trust when all seems hopeless".

To learn more

G. K. Chesterton, History of the Family. On the only state that creates and loves its own citizens (edition and introduction by D. Ahlquist). Rialp, Madrid 2023;
Idem, La superstición del divorcio: seguido de divorcio versus democracia. Espuela de Plata, Madrid 2013;
Idem, La mujer y la familia. Styria, Madrid 2006;
Idem, El amor o la fuerza del sino (selection, translation and introduction by Álvaro de Silva). Rialp, Madrid 1993.
J. M. Granados, Transforming love. Marriage and hope in the great stories. Eunsa, Pamplona 2022;
Idem, El evangelio del matrimonio y de la familia. Eunsa, Pamplona 2021.

The authorJosé Miguel Granados

University of San Dámaso

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"The Trinity makes us contemplate the mystery of love from which we come."

Love according to Kierkegaard

In "The Works of Love", Sören Kierkegaard insists on the Christian conception of love as opposed to the pagan one. He affirms that, for Christianity, God is love and without love everything is banal.

Santiago Leyra Curiá-March 28, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

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You have a lot of resources in "The works of love", dated 29-IX-1847, Sören Kierkegaard insists on the Christian conception of love as opposed to the pagan one. He affirms that, for Christianity, God is love and without love everything is banal. God is the source of love in the deepest and unfathomable intimacy of the human person.

Only the one who loves participates in love and drinks from its very source and, thus, "the absolutely Other" becomes close because in every true loving relationship God appears: true love is not a relationship between one person and another, but rather a person-God-person relationship; God is "the Common Denominator".

The book by the famous Danish author is divided into a first part, which deals with the origin of love, and a second part, which deals with the characteristics of love.

It begins with a prayer in which, among other things, it states:

"How could love be rightly spoken of if You were forgotten, O God, from whom all love in heaven and on earth proceeds, You who bargained nothing, but gave all for love... You who revealed what love is!"

In the first part he says that love springs from within man in the same way that a lake is nourished by a hidden spring. This spring is infinite because it is God himself.

Love in the world manifests itself temporarily, but its source is eternal. God is continually sustaining us with his loving action. If this love were to withdraw for a single instant, everything would return to chaos.

In the second part, he deepens the idea that lovingly keeping the memory of the deceased in memory constitutes the act of human love. "more selfless"the freest and most faithful of all.

That is why Kierkegaard advises: "Thus remember the deceased and you will learn to love the living with an unselfish, free and faithful love".

Eternity and freedom

The works of love manifest the eternity of God and are proof of his existence. Out of love, God creates, incarnates himself and manifests himself to mankind.

Our love makes us similar to Him and makes us sharers in His life, for it is "the fountain of water springing up to eternal life".

God has granted us freedom because only a free love is true love. To Him we owe a correspondence of absolute love. There is only one being whom man can love more than himself. This being is none other than God, whom one must love not as oneself, but with all one's heart, with all one's soul and with all one's mind.

As the origin of love is hidden "the secret life of love is known by its fruits", for the works.

We can only speak of true works of love when it is the love of God that moves us to act from the depths of our being. Although good works are not always a reflection of love, love is manifested in good works.

For Kierkegaard we can only be authentic Christians if we become singular persons and are willing to suffer for the truth.

Instead, mediocrity, worldly intelligence, "it is eternally excluded and abhorred in heaven, more than any vice and crime, for in its essence it belongs, more than anything else to this vile world and more than anything else it is estranged from heaven and the eternal!"

There is an enormous distance between Greek eros and the Christian agape that appears with the New Testament.

The first is a love of desire that tends to the possession of the beloved person; in agape, the other is loved as other, the lover rejoices in the existence of the beloved person and wants his or her good.

The person close to whom we love is not an abstract being but a concrete being whom the circumstances of life have placed close to us. We must love him or her as ourselves.

Christian love and pagan love

Love has a double object: the good that is wanted and the subject for whom that good is wanted.

True, Christian love is respectful of the loved one because it wants the good for him/her and has a divine foundation, it never grows old because it is not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, it is not finite but infinite.

To love truly is a duty, that duty makes abnegation the essential form of Christianity; to love is to obey the divine law that commands to love for love of God, not for love of duty, as in Kant.

Pagan love is selfish and possessive, it does not spring from the eternal spring nor is it bound to eternity, it is the child of temporality; it is a rebellious love against Love, it fights against all dependence, it recognizes neither renunciation nor abnegation nor duty. It is an outdated love.

If a person ceases to love, it is a very clear sign that he has never loved. Mediocrity and worldly intelligence are eternally excluded from heaven because they belong essentially to the world that is out of date.

The human person attains his self by self-realizing himself as unique before God. To despair consists in wanting to be what one is not and in not wanting to be what one is.

The aesthetic man is not yet an individual; the ethical man begins to present the characteristics of the singular individual and begins to be in a position to discover the truth.

The first condition of religiosity is to be a singular individual because it is impossible to build or be built up en masse, even more impossible than to be in love en masse. ("My point of view on my activity as a writer", 1848).

If we become unique people, willing to suffer for the truth, we can aspire to be authentic Christians.

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Caritas will help more than 5,000 people to access the labor market

How Caritas Internationalis works

Rome Reports-March 27, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

Caritas Internationalis has implemented a permanent listening process for its employees, complemented by coaching and counseling. They want to put people at the center, and insist that the changes are not due to any sexual or economic scandal and that they have fulfilled all their objectives.

AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.

Caritas

Caritas will help more than 5,000 people to access the labor market

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Integral ecology

Julio BanaclocheWomen are the ones who suffer the most from the social engineering"

"The ideological winds are not favorable to those who defend a Christian - or simply a moral - vision of life." O "the great victims of these reforms are women, who see how all the social and labor gains achieved in recent decades are being diluted". This is the view of Julio Banacloche, Professor of Procedural Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, in an interview with Omnes.

Francisco Otamendi-March 27, 2023-Reading time: 5 minutes

Pope Francis said this month in an interview with the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación that "gender ideology is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations". Some years ago the Pope made a appealHe then reiterated, to deny "the new ideological colonizations that seek to destroy the family".

The reading of the reflection entitled 'Materniphobia: neither mothers, nor fathers, nor children', where it was written that "it is undeniable that, in our society, we find a current that tries to erase any positive sign of motherhood or fatherhood", can adequately introduce this interview.

The immediate antecedent was a conference on "The family in the face of the new laws of social engineering", which are being implemented in various parts of the world, not only in Spain, organized by Jara Siglo XXI.

The speaker was Professor Julio Banacloche PalaoProfessor of Procedural Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, prolific author on legal matters, who talks to Omnes, for example, about the neutrality of the State, or 'counter-education' at home.

Another close antecedent is the document "The faithful God keeps his covenant". (DT 7.9), of the Spanish Episcopal Conferencepresented in January of this year. It is an instrument for pastoral work on the person, family and society, to which the interviewee refers in the conversation.

You began your speech by quoting sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Why Bauman?

-Because Bauma, despite his adherence to Marxism (which is always a theoretical conditioning factor), was a great sociologist who characterized our time very well, defining it as a liquid society, in which the great pillars that gave stability and solidity to life in the Western world (the family, work and the nation) have crumbled, generating a situation of insecurity and uncertainty.

This lack of "solid" references, on the other hand, is what has allowed ideas and constructions about man, the world and life to come to the forefront that are contrary to science and common sense, and inconceivable fifty years ago.

I don't know if among Bauman's ideas, or as your conclusions, you have referred to insecurity and fear of the future.

-These are Bauman's ideas. In his opinion, this loss of security (marriage is no longer forever, employment is not stable, the nation is diluted by global powers) generates an insecurity in the present and an uncertainty for the future that generates fear and incapacitates especially for commitment. The only sure thing is consumption ("every desire for happiness ends up in a store," Bauman said), although this is also ephemeral and generates more frustration (there will always be a better iPhone than the one I just bought).

This makes it very difficult to build a society based on classical values, forged in Christianity (loyalty, commitment, solidarity), because the dominant virtue is flexibility, which Bauman himself defines as the ability to break commitments made without any feeling of guilt or regret ("we must adapt, these are the new times, it's the right thing to do").

You mentioned a document of the Spanish Episcopal Conference. How does free self-determination of will affect us? What do you highlight from this text?

The most interesting thing about this document of January 2023 is that the Spanish bishops detect that we are facing a change of era, where it is not necessary to analyze each legal change resulting from the so-called "social engineering" in isolation, but as a whole. They are precisely trying to "dissolve" what is left of the solid pillars of which Bauman spoke: instead of the idea of community, individualism and solipsism are being imposed, where one only sees oneself, is what one wants to be, and even decides on matters that are imposed on him. As Benedict XVI said, this is the last stage of the creature's rebellion against its Creator.

The principle of free self-determination of the will, which has its roots in Hegel, is projected in that I decide whether or not to allow the life of others (abortion), whether to continue living or to end my life in an "official" way (euthanasia), or whether I am a man or a woman according to how I feel now (trans law).

In these decisions, which the State has to recognize, promote and carry out, others do not matter at all: neither the father (much less the child who is aborted) in the euphemistically called "voluntary interruption of pregnancy" (when nothing is interrupted, but rather it puts an end to it), nor the relatives in euthanasia, nor the rest of the people and groups affected by a change of sex in the trans law.

In addition to abortion and euthanasia, you have also referred to the so-called 'trans law'...

-Yes, it is the penultimate product of the social engineering factory that has managed to gain access to government and parliament. Once again, it is about taking advantage of a reality that deserves a respectful, balanced and adequate treatment to its circumstances (such as that of intersex or transsexual people), to impose a disproportionate, ideologized and contrary to science, logic and the most elementary legal and social security regulation.

No one understands that a person can change sex simply by saying so at the registry window, and from that moment take advantage of the benefits attributed to the new sex.

On the other hand, the great victims of these reforms are women, who see how, through these norms, all the social and labor conquests achieved in the last decades are diluted. But this law is not the last one in this legislative delirium we are living through ("diarrhea", the Secretary of Equality called it, never better said because of the decomposition and lack of consistency implied by the term): the animal welfare law, which grants rights to animals in their condition of "sentient beings", or the draft bill on families, which considers eighteen different realities as such, are other examples.

The question now is why does the state have to proselytize so many things?

-The State must be ideologically neutral, as required by our Constitutional Court. That is what it means to live in a plural and diverse society: that all approaches to moral issues are accepted, as long as they do not exceed the basic rules of coexistence, which are embodied in the constitutional principles and values.

For this reason, the State should not assume or make its own the Christian or Marxist perspective of the world or of man, but neither the gender perspective, which is nothing more than an ideological approach based on the existence of a heteropatriarchy and a secular invisibilization of women, and which promotes a destructive nihilism.

What we are seeing is that the State, through its legislation, becomes an activist of certain ideas and a proscriber of others, excluding not only from the debate but also from legality those who hold contrary views. And implanting a single way of thinking and punishing administratively or criminally anyone who thinks otherwise brings us dangerously close to totalitarianism.

What is 'counter-education' at home?

-It is a call to the responsibility of parents and families, especially Catholic families, but in general to all those who want their children to have moral values. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore, and the ideological winds are not favorable to those who defend a Christian -or simply a moral- vision of life.

For this reason, it is no longer possible to leave formation to the schools, not even to those that have a Catholic ideology or are run - often only nominally - by religious, but, in religious or moral matters, it is necessary to ask at home what has been explained at school, or what has been seen on the networks, and to explain and correct what is not in conformity with the convictions that parents want to transmit to their children.

Along the same lines, how can parents have more influence on education, or on schools?

-The current situation is a great opportunity to assume a greater social commitment in all areas. The fact that these crazy and anti-human laws have managed to be passed is largely due to the "silence of the good guys", to the passivity of normal people who have preferred to do their own thing (which is enough) and not get involved in the political or civil society sphere.

That is why I believe that the time has come for all of us to courageously assume personal and social commitments in the defense of the common good: parents dedicating time and effort to the education of their children (sometimes sacrificing time for leisure or personal fulfillment), teachers dedicating ourselves to our students, and in general all of us forming part of entities and associations that can influence society.

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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ColumnistsIgnacio Valduérteles

Older siblings

These older people, brothers and sisters of our brotherhoods for decades, are the true treasure of the brotherhoods.

March 27, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

When I speak of older brothers I am not referring to the brothers who preside over the governing boards and lead the brotherhood, but to the oldest, the eldest; I like to call them that way, neither third age, nor second youth, nor silver age or any other name that tries to disguise reality. Language does not create realities.

From the tribune of the years the older brothers acquire sufficient perspective to be able to contemplate life, the life of the brotherhood and its life, with special lucidity provided that they meet two conditions: reflective experience and analytical criteria.

I say reflective experience because if you do not reflect on the different circumstances and situations you have experienced, you cannot say that you have experience, you have simply experienced things that have slipped through your fingers like water through a stone. criteria for analysis, a model of values and beliefs in which to fit the events that make up his biography.

This interior pondering of all the events in which they have been protagonists or spectators endows the Elder Brothers with a special serenity and freedom. By recovering or strengthening their principles, they reinforce their identity in a way that no totalitarian or populist gale will be able to annul. In short: are freer. From the serenity of maturity, understand freedom as the ability to love more and to love less. to his own and to his brotherhood. Y more loyalbecause fidelity is the word love in time and has already been proven.

With freedom they reinforce their hope, strength and courage. They have not come this far to long for the past, but to create the future and they apply themselves to it with audacity, without excusing themselves for their age, reinforcing the doctrinal foundations of their brotherhood and daring to innovate, to be disruptive, aware that it is precisely the older ones who, because of their experience, have the greatest capacity for innovation.

They also have other distinguishing features:

Simplify, sThey learn what is fundamental, what must be demanded without giving in, and what is accessory. They discover that what is fundamental are a few things that refer to values, focusing on these, so they and others enjoy themselves and others more.

They know how to pass to a second or third plane, they rejoice with the successes of the younger brothers of the new government boards, without claiming, or even thinking, about the part that corresponds to them in that success.

They naturally carry their "backpack", which life has been filling with disappointments, betrayals and absences. They also carry their mistakes and the harm they may have caused to others. They do not carry it with resignation, but with the joy of those who know they are children of God and trust in Him.

Their dreams no longer have them as protagonists, but those to come.

There is a passage in the Gospel that seems to be dedicated expressly to the older brothers: the episode of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They have lost their illusions. Discouraged, without horizons, they return home. Jesus stands beside them, although they do not recognize him, he speaks to them and makes them recover their hope. Towards the end of the road, He made a gesture to go on. But they forced him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is evening and the day is far spent. (St. Luke, 24).

And he stayed. And their lives were changed, and they returned to Jerusalem with joy, to begin again.

The sun also sets on the lives of older siblings. They have had the opportunity to live the dawn of childhood and youth and have passed the bright hours of noon, of maturity. It is time to return home in peace and quiet, to meet oneself and others, in the depths of affection, of the good done and received, of the serene acceptance of successes and failures.

It is never too late to live the best of life; it is never too late to, like those on the road to Emmaus, say to Jesus and his Mother: stay with us!to become a permanent support for others, knowing how to stand in the background to actively contemplate the sunset of a day that is a joyful eve of those to come and that you will see from another perspective.

It is necessary to approach them and the treasure that they represent in the brotherhood. They really are the authentic elder brothers.

The authorIgnacio Valduérteles

D. in Business Administration. Director of the Instituto de Investigación Aplicada a la Pyme. Eldest Brother (2017-2020) of the Brotherhood of the Soledad de San Lorenzo, in Seville. He has published several books, monographs and articles on brotherhoods.

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Father S.O.S

ChatGPT (from OpenAI)

Artificial intelligence" is becoming more and more developed. This is demonstrated by one of today's most popular tools: ChatGPTa language model developed by OpenAI.

José Luis Pascual-March 27, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

The year of artificial intelligence (AI) was 2022. With almost infinite possibilities and applicable to many human and creative actions or activities, until now it was a technology beyond the reach of most users. But the arrival of the free chat system with artificial intelligence, ChatGPTable to respond to anything you ask, could break that barrier.

Since its launch in November 2022, the tool has been ChatGPT has been compared to Google, as both answer questions. However, they differ in the form: the ChatGPT It does this by creating unpublished texts, which seem to be written by a human, coherent and organic. It is a chat that has been trained so that you can ask it questions and it can explain anything to you. To use it you only need to register. It is able to generate texts, summaries, the code for a web page, a script for a YouTube or TikTok text, and do it with a more informal or serious tone, depending on your orders.

**What is ChatGPT?**

ChatGPT is a large-scale language model developed by OpenAIan artificial intelligence research organization. It is an advanced conversational system that uses a large neural network to produce coherent and meaningful text in response to a question or prompt.

ChatGPT is based on the transformational language model GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which was operated with a large amount of text available on the Internet. This training allows ChatGPT understand context and produce relevant and coherent text in a wide variety of tasks, from generating answers and questions to writing complex texts.

At ChatGPTusers are experimenting with machine learning technology (Machine Learning), without having to code, since the algorithms of the Machine Learning should be able to understand what you are asking it accurately, responding in a coherent manner. But like any artificial intelligence model, it is possible for it to make mistakes, as it is not an exact science.

How to use it?

Having your conversations with this artificial intelligence is very simple. The only thing you have to do is enter the official website of OpenAI (https://chat.openai.com/) and sign up for free.

One of the most popular uses of ChatGPT is like a conversational agent in messaging applications and chatbots. In addition, ChatGPT can be used for natural language processing, machine translation, text classification and named entity identification tasks. It is used in text generation applications, such as news summaries or product descriptions.

Another important use of ChatGPT is its application in artificial intelligence research. Researchers use models such as ChatGPT to better understand how language works and to develop new artificial intelligence systems that are able to better understand and produce good quality text. In addition, ChatGPT is also being used to improve accessibility, as it can be used for written text to speech and vice versa, making it useful for people with visual and hearing disabilities.

This innovative tool can write articles or summaries of a specific number of characters. You can even ask it to write these texts in a certain way, pointing out the specific features you want the result to include. It can also be asked for advice on which add-on to buy or explanations to questions raised.

While its use is not without controversy, especially in academia, it can answer questions quickly and accurately, making it ideal for applications such as technical support and customer service. This model can answer questions quickly and accurately, making it ideal for applications such as technical support and customer service, but it can also open the door for students to use the tool to do work with little effort of their own.

In spite of this, the vast majority of experts favor the use of ChatGPTThis opens the door to endless possibilities and implies a breakthrough never seen before in the field of artificial intelligence.

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Pope at the end of Lent: "Do not give in to pessimism or discouragement".

"At times when life resembles a closed tomb, and all is darkness", with "pain and despair", Jesus tells us that in those moments "we are not alone". And like Lazarus, he urges us: "Go out! Get up, get back on your feet, regain your confidence! Do not give in to the pessimism that depresses, nor to fear or discouragement," Pope Francis encouraged at the Angelus.

Francisco Otamendi-March 26, 2023-Reading time: 3 minutes

"Today, fifth Sunday of Lent, the Gospel presents us with the resurrection of Lazarus (cf. Jn 11:1- 45). It is the last of Jesus' miracles narrated before Easter; we can say, therefore, that we are at the culmination of his 'signs,'" Pope Francis began by saying before praying the Marian prayer of the Angelus from the window of the study of the Vatican Apostolic Palace in St. Peter's Square.

"Lazarus is a dear friend of Jesus, who knows that he is about to die," but when he arrives home, all hope is lost: he has already died and been buried, the Holy Father continued.

However, "his presence kindles a little confidence in the hearts of the sisters, Martha and Mary. "They, in the midst of their pain, cling to this light. Jesus invites them to have faith, and asks them to open the tomb. Then he prays to the Father, and then cries out to Lazarus, 'Come out!' He comes back to life and comes out.

The Pope appreciates a "clear message: Jesus gives life even when it seems that there is no more hope. It sometimes happens that one feels hopeless, or that one meets people who no longer have hope, because of a painful loss, an illness, a cruel disappointment, an injustice or a betrayal suffered, a serious mistake made. Sometimes we hear people say: 'There is nothing more to be done.

"We are not alone in the dark."

These are moments in which "life resembles a closed sepulcher: all is darkness, all around is only pain and despair. But "today Jesus tells us that it is not like that, that in those moments we are not alone, indeed, that it is precisely in those moments that He becomes closer than ever to give us life anew," the Pope said.

"He weeps with us, as he wept for Lazarus". At the same time, however, "Jesus invites us not to stop believing and hoping, not to let ourselves be discouraged by negative feelings. He approaches our tombs and says to us, as he did then: 'Roll away the stone!' Take out all that is inside, place it before me with confidence, without fear, because I am with you, I love you and I want you to live again. And, like Lazarus, repeat to each one of us: 'Come out! Get up, get back on the road, regain your confidence.

Jesus tells us, "I am with you!"

Drawing on the memory of each person's childhood, the Holy Father conveyed the message of Jesus: "I take you by the hand, as when you were a child learning to take your first steps. Remove the bandages that bind you, do not give in to the pessimism that depresses, to the fear that isolates, to the discouragement caused by the memory of bad experiences, to the fear that paralyzes. I want you free and alive, I do not abandon you, I am with you! Do not let yourself be imprisoned by pain, do not let hope die: live again!" he exclaimed.

This passage, found in chapter 11 of John's Gospel, "which does us much good to read, is a hymn to life, and we read it when Easter is near," the Pope reiterated. "Perhaps we too now carry in our hearts some weight or some suffering that seems to crush us. It is time to remove the stone and go out to meet Jesus who is near."

And as usual, the Holy Father raised some questions: "Are we capable of opening our hearts and entrusting our worries to him, of opening the tomb of our problems and looking beyond the threshold, towards his light? And, in our turn, as little mirrors of God's love, do we succeed in illuminating the environments in which we live with words and gestures of life? Do we witness to the hope and joy of Jesus?"

"May Mary, Mother of hope, renew in us the joy of not feeling alone and the call to bring light to the darkness that surrounds us," he concluded, before praying the Angelus.

Ukraine, Mississippi, Turkey and Syria, Peru, Turkey and Syria.

After the recitation of the Marian prayer, Pope Francis revealed that "yesterday, the Solemnity of the Annunciation, we have renewed consecration to the Immaculate Heart of MaryWe are confident that the way to peace will be opened. Let us continue to pray for the suffering Ukrainian people".

The Roman Pontiff also prayed that "we remain close to those who have suffered from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, collaborating with parishes, and also pray for the people of Mississippi devastated by a tornado" in the United States.

The Pope also greeted the Romans and pilgrims from many countries, "especially from Spain, Madrid and Pamplona, and also Mexicans and Peruvians, renewing the prayer for reconciliation in Peru, so that it may have peace".

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Cinema

Antonio CuadriOblate women break people's stereotypes".

Antonio Cuadri is the director of the film "Si todas las puertas se cierran", an exciting film project with a very clear message: the gratuitousness of love.

Paloma López Campos-March 26, 2023-Reading time: 4 minutes

Mother María Antonia. A strong and committed woman Related News

There is a film that "tells the story of three women, apparently separated in time and space, but who end up converging in their process to find themselves. The three will have to listen to an inner call that requires them to face their fears and be the true protagonists of their lives, opening new paths of transformation and liberation". This is how they explain on the web page the plot of "If all doors are closed"the new film by Antonio Cuadri.

Cuadri is a screenwriter and film director. Among his works there are titles such as "La gran vida", "El corazón de la tierra" or "Thomas vive". Now he presents his new project, involved with the Oblate Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer.

The Oblates live in community and dedicate their lives to bringing the Gospel to women in prostitution and/or victims of trafficking. Their founder inspires the message of this film, as Antonio Cuadri explains in this interview with Omnes.

How did you decide to carry out this project?

-This project has its roots nine or ten years ago. My wife is a social educator and an operative and volunteer collaborator with the religious congregation of the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer. I came into contact with the work of these nuns and was very impressed. I witnessed the accompaniment they provided.

They try to socially integrate women in prostitution, especially those who are victims of trafficking. They do a wonderful job, very quietly and silently. They break the stereotype that many people have of nuns indoctrinating misguided girls. It's not like that at all.

The humble and silent attitude, the accompaniment, impressed me a lot. Then we began to see the possibility of doing a volunteer action through a film.

A few years after that first contact, the Oblates were celebrating in Ciempozuelos (Madrid, Spain) the 150th anniversary of the opening of the first shelter they opened, in the 19th century. On this occasion, I wrote a short play, which has been the origin of the script of "Si todas las puertas se cierran" (If all the doors close).

Already at that time it was envisaged that March 2022 to March 2023 would be the year of the bicentenary of the birth of the founder, Antonia María de Oviedo y Shönthal.

The story of the founder is wonderful, like a movie. With a lot of effort and dedication, and with the selfless collaboration of many people, both the technical team and the artists, we have made this film a reality.

What was the most important thing in writing this story?

-There are two Oblate nuns, Marisa Cotolí and Inmaculada Ruiz de Balugera, who have collaborated with Claudio Crespo and myself, who are the scriptwriters.

The most important thing in writing the script was to be faithful to the charism and mission of the Oblates, to their focus. This is the accompaniment and the help.

They did not want to make a film about the history of the foundress, but about the actuality and the survival of Mother Antonia's work and message today.

We wanted to make something very lively. In fact, the script is structured on three levels. On the one hand, there is the story of the founder in the 19th century, which is the period part. And from there we jump to two current stories, all based on real events. There is the story of a Nigerian woman in Spain, a victim of trafficking, and that of a young teacher who helps the daughter of this woman. They come into contact with the Oblates and from there they connect with the foundress.

Why is Mother Antonia's story relevant today? What is the message that Mother Antonia can bring us today, so many years later?

-I believe that, although it is not very fashionable, love, gratuitousness in love in the key of the Christian message, is something eternal. It could be a paradox for many people who perhaps do not know enough about the Church's social action. I think that giving visibility to this message is very interesting.

The story of the film is very delicate. You talk about prostitution, children with childhood depression... Are there special difficulties in bringing such a story to the big screen?

-I think the limit is in good taste. You have to suggest rather than show. We have to do it in a very respectful way, but at the same time, in a very brave way. We are showing a very hard reality, but we are aware that we are showing a story of overcoming. There is a positive message: if all the doors are opened, something opens in the end. It is an encouraging, luminous message.

We are at the antipodes of what could be a morbid treatment. Reality is shown, it is quite evident, but we are guided by elegance, by good taste, and always raising that door of hope.

What are you looking forward to with this project and what do you hope viewers will take home with them?

-It would be nice if viewers could get to know the work of the Oblates. In a world full of so many interests, it is nice to invite the viewers to look at these women who do their work with such great faith and affection.

Secondly, the project is a call to volunteerism. And finally, it would be great if the public could grasp the call to love that is in this story. It is very moving to see how these women, moved by their faith, deeply feel the pain of others. womenThey do not stop there, but act and dedicate their lives to offering other alternatives and social integration.

All this seems to me important enough to invite viewers to see the film. The profits are at the service of the social work of the Oblates. But I want it to be known that going to the cinema to see this film is, in a way, to support the project they have.

This film seeks to move, but not emotion for emotion's sake. It is an emotion shared with empathy and with the wonderful capacity for solidarity that the Oblates have.

Mother María Antonia. A strong and committed woman Related News

Lourdes Perramón: "Something that characterizes us as a Congregation is our permanent dynamism".

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Cinema

To see: "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Ted Lasso".

Two proposals to watch at home this March: "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Ted Lasso".

Patricio Sánchez-Jáuregui-March 26, 2023-Reading time: < 1 minute

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a stylish and settled New York wife, mother and homemaker, dawns one day to the hecatomb of a husband suffering from an aggravated mid-life crisis of infidelity. Midge discovers then, and by accident, her vocation and new life: monologist.

Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this TV series is period comedy-drama, with special emphasis on fabulous aesthetics, well-constructed characters and well-crafted dialogue.

Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), it premiered in 2017 and has been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike leading up to the premiere of what will be its fifth and final season (April 2023).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Creator: Amy Sherman-Palladino

Key playersRachel Brosnahan

PlatformAmazon Prime Video

Ted Lasso

The good-natured series that will fix your psychological problems without the need to change your couch for the therapist's is back. Coffee for everyone and remember that the important thing is to smile, love and be kind. Chronic positivity and a cowboy accent. Those are just a few of the characteristics of this American sports comedy-drama.

Ted Lasso is a college soccer coach hired as a Premier League coach. Rejected outright by the media and fans, his eternal optimism and blind faith in human beings will boost the morale of the team, the city and the journalists.

This acclaimed series has carved a niche for itself in a television grid full of drama and morbidity, a hypersensitive generation and a generalized desire for escape.

Premiering in 2020, we are on the verge of the premiere of its third season.

Ted Lasso

CreatorJason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly

Key playersSudeikis

Platform: Apple TV

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