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April 19, 2025Dear faithful, we commemorate today the passion and death of Jesus Christ on the Cross. We just listened to, with devotion and spiritual participation, the Passion of Our Lord according to John, with many details that have made us re-live the profound scenes of that event that shocked the world and changed the destiny of humanity.
There is an ancient Roman hymn that addresses the cross of Christ with these words: O Crux ave, spes unica,
O hail the Cross our only hope
in this passiontide
grant increase of grace to believers
and remove the sins of the guilty.
Why is the cross our only hope? This question is very essential for us, especially in this Holy Year of Jubilee where we are called to be pilgrims of hope. We are not simply migrants like others, we are pilgrims towards the kingdom of God. Indeed, we are migrants, but as part of our pilgrimage towards new heaven and new earth.
We know well from history that the cross was a feared reality, it was among the most atrocious and inhuman instrument of torture. How can we consider it to be our only hope? We need hope to be able to live our daily lives with dignity, to make plans for the future, to have a family and to raise up children. Hope is the engine that moves hearts towards the future.
The word hope is linked first of all to our desire. We hope for something that we desire and that we do not yet have. No one hopes for something that they already have. And no one hopes for something that they do not desire. We always desire a good that is capable of satisfying the deepest needs of the heart.
Again, we desire something good that we aspire for, therefore, hope is linked to the future, to the time that lies ahead of us. For this reason we are tempted to put our hope in wealth, in money, in a career, in our abilities. But this kind of hope is not enough because we have experienced that everything has limits and an end. Even the strongest people have weaknesses and can fail. That is why, if we place our hope in all these things, we deceive ourselves and end up being disappointed.
And when we are disappointed, we no longer listen to the deep desires of the heart and we no longer expect anything from the future. But today we say: O hail the cross, our only hope.
This is the hope that does not disappoint because on the cross Christ took upon himself all the evil of the world and our own death and became victorious over it. For this reason: "Our hope is called Jesus. He entered the tomb of our sin, he arrived at the farthest point where we were lost, he walked through the tangles of our fears, he carried the weight of our oppressions and, from the darkest depths of our death, he awakened us to life. Let us celebrate Easter with Christ! He is alive and still today he passes, transforms, frees. With Him evil no longer has power, failure cannot prevent us from starting again" (Pope Francis).
The prophet Isaiah describes the mysterious figure, the servant of the Lord who is prostrated full of pain and deformity because he took upon himself the sin of the world and atoned for it. Looking at Christ on the cross, his disfigured body, we recognize the love of God that frees us from evil and gives us the possibility of a new beginning. God saved us not with magic, but by sending his son Jesus, who took upon himself all the deformity of evil to make us new creatures.
This is why today we say: hail cross our only hope: because on that cross our evil was defeated forever. The letter to the Hebrews also speaks of Jesus as the eternal priest who was tested in every way and took upon himself our weakness. He is the face of the mercy of God the Father.
Finally, the Gospel that we just heard told us how Jesus from the Cross handed us all over to his Mother Mary: Jesus says to Mary: Woman, this is your son, pointing to the disciple he loved, John. And to the disciple he says: This is your mother. In this disciple, we have all been placed under the maternal protection of Mary.
Under the cross, a new relationship is born between all of us, a new familiarity with Christ. Under the cross, the Church is born, the new creation is born.
O hail the cross, our only hope.
At your feet we are reborn. We have been given the hope that does not disappoint. Let us continue our journey, our pilgrimage, together as the people of God, let us walk together in sharing and mutual love, with that love that was manifested on the cross.
O hail the cross, our only hope... Amen
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