P.O.B. 186 9100101, Gerusalemme (Israele)

Subscribe to our newsletter

To stay updated

    logo main logo dark logo light

    THE UPPER ROOM AND THE CROSS

    Dear friends of Gethsemane, peace be with you all! 
    This month we want to share part of the homily of His Exc. Mgr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate, on the occasion of the Chrism Mass celebrated here in our Basilique on 18 June 2020 (Chrism Mass is celebrated on Holy Thursday but this year, because of the epidemic, has been postponed). There are profound hints to what the Lord has lived in this garden for all of us. May it be an occasion for prayer and meditation on the Mystery that has been fulfilled HERE and still today, the Lord asks us all to live his Word.
    “(...) Together with Jesus and like Him, among the many confused voices that we have heard in recent days, as Church and as priests, we have the grace and the task of making the Word of God resound first. It is the Word which corrects very short-sighted human views; It expands narrow political and social strategies, it points out to our tired and disoriented communities, the evangelical paths of faith and essentiality, of sobriety and sharing. Only then will we not indulge in cheap generic optimism. On the contrary, we will find in the Word of God the strength and courage to act and speak with hope; a hope founded on the God of the Covenant who - as the prophet Isaiah reminds us - never fails in His promise to rebuild from our rubble (...) we must not invent new places or new roles for the Church and priests in the world, but once again to relocate ourselves to the place where Jesus was, and that place must also be ours: the Upper Room and the Cross. I am not here to make an apology for pain, but to remind us that we can bear pain by transforming it into an offering, which becomes a gift of Self. The place in which we find ourselves now, Gethsemane, reminds us precisely of this gift of Self, of total abandonment to the will of God. We are here today also to take on the commitment to make His will and His life our own. And we would be deluded if we think that this abandonment is something automatic. Jesus himself in Gethsemane experienced a dramatic struggle: the temptation to prefer his own will: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me! But your Will, not mine, be done!” (Mt. 26:39) 
    Here in Gethsemane, Jesus' relationship with the Father is at play. It constitutes the identity of Jesus, who is Son and Son alone. Jesus has always lived a filial relationship of love, obedience, complete trust and reciprocity with the Father. But now Jesus feels that this fidelity to the Father's plan requires him to renounce even his own identity as Son. In fact, it is a question of taking upon humanity’s sin, which is disobedience to the Father. Ironically, to be faithful to the Father, Jesus must lose Him. Losing the Father, living the extreme distance from God with sinful humanity, accepting this total solitude and abandonment, is the only way, at that moment, to remain a son. Ironically, it is the only way to love the Father at that decisive hour. 
    At play here in Gethsemane is also the relationship with one's brothers and sisters; with the humanity that Jesus had assumed and which the disciples represented. At that decisive moment, Jesus must give life to his brothers … but what were they doing? They sleep. They are not with Him and therefore they manifest their extreme human fragility. Another very important relationship is at play: that with the evil one - Satan. He returns here with his power of temptation and hopes to find a weakened Jesus and wants to overcome him by intruding between the Father and Jesus, just as he once intruded between God and Adam, and likewise he tried to do in the desert through the three temptations. Satan wants to separate Jesus from the Father by tempting him to do his own will and not that of the Father. In light of all this, here in this Holy Place and in our own different gethsemanes, all of us, but especially we bishops and priests, must profess and declare our will to unite with Jesus, to identify with Him” (...).
    Let us promptly intercede to the Lord for the many "Gethsemanes" which are in the world, that require God’s help and presence.

    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.

    Select your language
    English Italiano Espanol Francais Portuguese Deutsch Polish