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    THE ANGEL OF CONSOLATION

    Dear friends of Gethsemane, may the Lord grant you his peace.
    For us Franciscan friars, the beginning of October opens with the solemnity of Saint Francis of Assisi (4 October). We always perceive an invitation to be bearers of peace and joy even in the events full of contradictions that our time brings with it, we have confidence and the great hope that the Lord never abandons us!
    In this month we want to share this painting on canvas made by "L. Morgari (Venice 1853)" which is located in our Sacristy and which depicts Jesus who by the divine will of the Father is consoled by the Angel. This encounter is often not mentioned much for obvious reasons: attention is paid to Jesus' prayer: "Father, if you will, remove this cup from me! However, let not mine be done, but your will. Then an angel from heaven appeared to comfort him" (Lk 22:42-43). Living here, in contact with this Rock, we still perceive a mysterious invitation and we feel the charm and the passage of this Angel. Jesus asks the Father to remove that chalice, it is the chalice of bitterness and, as some mystical sources reveal, it is also the awareness that the sacrifice of his life would have been valid only for a part of humanity… not everyone would have welcomed him! Imagine the excruciating pain that the Lord feels! At the same time, these sources claim that the Angel consoles him by showing him all the names and faces of those who would have been faithful to him and who would have welcomed him, loved him and followed him, and this was like a drug drip infused into his veins to restore their tone and function. Each of us was for him strength, life that returns, light that returns, from here the intuition of the painter: the Angel offers the Lord the chalice with the consolation that attenuated the bitterness of the uselessness of his sacrifice for many: our names! Let us renew this consolation in our prayer, let us remain close to the Angel of consolation and let us say our fidelity to Jesus.
    Let us also become "angels dressed in flesh" beside him, showing him our love in the daily "liturgy of life", so that all of us can be an offering to the living God (Rom 12:1).

    The Lord bless you

    Hora Sancta

    We are the sons of St. Francis, and we are THE custodians, according to the will of God, of one of the places that Jesus loved the most: the garden called GETHSEMANE. This is a unique place in the world. It is the place where the Lord manifested his Yes forever by being ready to enter where nobody else had ever entered, where he plunged into darkness, in the final battle against death, in which humanity has always ended up being a loser.

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