From the Holy Gospel according to the Apostle and Evangelist Saint Mark (Mk 8:34-9:1)
At that time, summoning the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them:
«If someone wants to come after me, deny himself, take his cross and follow me. Because who wants to save his own life, will lose it, but who will lose his own life because of me and the Gospel, will save it.
Indeed, what advantage is there that a man gains the whole world and loses his life? What could a man give for his life?
Who will be ashamed of me and of my words before this adulterous and sinful generation, also the Son of man will be ashamed of him, when he will come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels».
He told them: «Truly I say to you: there are some present here who will not die before they have seen the coming of the kingdom of God in his power».
Reflection
Beloved brothers in Christ, peace and blessing!
On this third Sunday of Lent, Mother Church invites us to lift our gaze to the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ and, at the same time, through His Divine Love for us to adore the new tree of Life: what for many was simply an instrument of death.
In fact, the Apostle says:
"Brothers, while the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, instead we proclaim Christ crucified: scandal for the Jews and foolishness for the pagans; but for those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is power of God and wisdom of God.
In fact, what is foolishness of God is wiser than men, and what is weakness of God is stronger than men". (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).
In this regard, in the Gospel passage that we have heard, Jesus leaves us a new commandment: "Who come after me, deny himself, take up his cross and follow me".
The Lord, having summoned the crowd, once again calls us to follow him. But to do so we must deny what we are, embrace the cross and walk behind him.
Denying what we are is nothing more than detaching from self-love. From that self-love that leads to selfishness, to narcissism, and in many cases, to forgetting our neighbor. In fact, Jesus says: "What advantage is there for a man to gain the whole world and lose his life? What could a man give in exchange for his life?".
Dear brothers, only by carrying on our shoulders the weight of the cross and following in the footsteps of the Lord can we rediscover Life. True life.
The theme of detachment from superfluous things is also one of the main characteristics of the liturgical season we are living.
Lent, therefore, urges us to concentrate so that our conversion is not only effective but also effective, both for ourselves and for those around us.
During this journey of forty days, we should never lose the Compass, the Faith, and continue, despite all the various difficulties that we will encounter, to go to the North, the Lord Jesus Christ.
My dear brothers, during the darkest moments of your life, when you believe that all the lights around you have been extinguished forever, strive with all your strength to embrace your cross and adore that of Our Lord.
Life, we know very well, is not at all simple. It is not all joy and happiness, otherwise it would not be so. Stop and look at the Lord: how many times along the road to Calvary did he fall crushed under the weight of the cross? Although He suffered, He did not stay on the ground. His love for us gave Him the drive, the grit and the strength to get up and continue the journey.
In the same way we must also do that, like Him, we carry the cross and follow Him. Despite all the falls that we will make along the way, we do not waste time staying on the ground, but rather, we appeal to his infinite goodness to get up and continue. We must never give up and throw in the towel!
Dear brothers and sisters, in recent days I have had to accompany my mother to Foggia to assist her dying brother Antonio, who has been in agony for a week due to cancer.
Seeing him in agony, in the bed of his room, I thought of all the sufferings that he lived and that he was living, and I prayed that the Lord would relieve all his sufferings by giving him the eternal sleep and that he would welcome his soul in the glory of the heavenly Jerusalem in the midst of the community of Saints by not fulfilling the mine, but His will.
Many Christians, when they live at a time like this, when they know that they will soon be able to lose a loved one forever, or when they are not prepared for this, have the strange habit of pointing the accusing finger at the Lord by saying, "He did not have to. He should not have taken him away from me!". And locked in their pain, they unjustly say: "If he really had loved him, he could have saved him".
But the truth is that the ways of the Lord are not ours. His way of working is not the same as ours.
Many times, when we live in a time of mourning, we forget that we are Christians! And if we are Christians, we know perfectly well that the word death does not mean end.
If we truly profess ourselves to be Christians, then we know that Death has been defeated forever and that we are no longer under its rule through the saving passion of Our Lord. For this reason, today we celebrate the exaltation of His Cross. Therefore, we must not be afraid to separate ourselves from the people we love, because the Lord is not only Truth and Way, but He is also Life. Life, which meditates on the Cross, gives us all the Resurrection.
In fact, Saint Athanasius, in his "Treatise on the Incarnation of the Word", states:
"In the past, before the divine coming of the Saviour, the saints were also afraid of death, and all mourned the dying as if they were destined to corruption. But after the Saviour raised his own body, death no longer frightens, all those who believe in Christ do not fear it and prefer to die than to deny their faith. They know that, dying, they do not perish, but they live, and that the resurrection will make them immortal".
Saint John Chrysostom, in this regard, through his Homily 1 (PG. 49, 399-401) teaches us:
"Thanks to the cross we are no longer in solitude, because we have found the bridegroom; we are no longer afraid of the wolf, because we now have the good shepherd. He himself tells us: I am the good shepherd (Jn. 10:11). Thanks to the cross we are no longer afraid of the iniquity of the mighty, for we sit beside the king.
That is why we celebrate the memory of the cross. Saint Paul also invites us to be joyful because of it: We celebrate this feast not with the old leaven... but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:8). And, explaining his reason, he continues: Christ, in fact, our Passover, was sacrificed for us (1 Cor 5:7). Do you understand why Paul exhorts us to celebrate the cross? Because Christ was sacrificed on it. Where there is sacrifice, there is remission of sins, reconciliation with the Lord, celebration and joy. Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Immolated, but where? On a scaffold raised from the ground. The altar of this sacrifice is new, because the sacrifice itself is new and extraordinary. Only one is a victim and a priest: a victim according to the flesh, a priest according to the spirit."
My beloved brothers in Christ, this Sunday, in Italy, is Father’s Day. I invite you to pray, during these weeks that separate us from the Great Holy Week, Saint Joseph, chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so that he may guide you to make a good discernment, grant you, when you fall, the gift of patience and strength to be able to rise again and continue to follow the Lord Jesus Christ always carrying your cross on your shoulders without ever losing, even for a single moment, the joy that flows from your faith in Him.
May the Blessed Virgin fill you with her motherly love so that, abandoned in His total goodness, you may be able to fulfill His will here on earth.
God bless you all!
Archdeacon Michele Alberto Del Duca.
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