On Good Friday, Vatican preacher
says authentic intelligence is found in self-giving love
Father Roberto Pasolini, OFM Cap, gives the homily during
a two-hour Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica on Good
Friday, April 18, 2025. | Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CAN
Vatican City, Apr 18, 2025 /
13:29 pm
Rather than an “artificial”
intelligence, Christ’s death teaches us the authentic “intelligence of the
cross,” which is the freedom to choose self-giving love in relationship with
God and others, the papal preacher said at the Vatican on Good Friday.
Preaching during a two-hour
Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica, Father Roberto Pasolini,
OFM Cap, underlined how, “in a time like ours, so rich in new intelligences —
artificial, computational, predictive — the mystery of Christ’s passion and
death proposes to us another kind of intelligence: the intelligence of the
cross, which does not calculate, but loves; which does not optimize, but gives
itself.”
The intelligence of the cross,
he continued, is not artificial “but deeply relational, because it is entirely
open to God and to others. In a world where it seems to be algorithms that
suggest to us what to desire, what to think, and even who to be, the cross
restores to us the freedom of authentic choice, based not on efficiency but on
self-giving love.”
According to custom, the
preacher of the papal household writes and delivers the homily at the Vatican’s
Good Friday liturgy. This year, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery
for Eastern Churches, celebrated the liturgy in Pope Francis’ place as the
88-year-old pontiff continues his slow recovery from double pneumonia and other
respiratory infections.
Father Roberto Pasolini, OFM Cap, delivers the homily
during the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica on Good
Friday, April 18, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CAN
Pasolini, in his homily,
emphasized the importance of self-gift over self-reliance and on surrender of
one’s life and suffering to God.
“The expression ‘full
surrender,’ with which the Letter to the Hebrews describes Christ’s conduct,
could also be translated as the ability to accept with confidence what happens,
to take well even what initially appears hostile or incomprehensible,” he said.
“In his passion, in fact, Christ did not simply suffer events but welcomed them
with such freedom that he transformed them into a path of salvation. A path
that remains open to anyone who is willing to trust the Father to the fullest,
allowing himself to be guided by his will even in the darkest passages.”
“Jesus reveals to us that it is
not strength that saves the world but the weakness of a love that holds nothing
back,” the preacher added. “The time in which we live, marked by the myth of
performance and seduced by the idol of individualism, struggles to recognize
moments of defeat or passivity as possible places of fulfillment.”
In fact, when suffering hits us,
he continued, we tend to feel inadequate and out of place. We try to endure,
gritting our teeth, but “the last words of the crucified Jesus offer us another
interpretation: They show us how much life can flow from those moments when,
with nothing left to do, there actually remains the most beautiful thing to
accomplish: to finally give of ourselves.”
The Liturgy of the Lord’s
Passion on April 18 opened in silence, as Gugerotti processed to the altar to
lie prostrate before the crucifix for one minute. The service proceeded with
readings from Scripture, including the sung proclamation of the Passion account
from the Gospel of St. John.
Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti lies prostrate at the start of
the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, April 18, 2025, in St.
Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CAN
During veneration of the holy
cross, first, a crucifix was carried down the main aisle of the Vatican
basilica while the choir chanted three times in Latin, “Ecce lignum Crucis, in
quo sales Mundi pependit,” which means, “This is the wood of the cross, on
which hung the Savior of the world.” Together, the choir and congregation
responded in Latin: “Come, let us worship.”
Afterward, some people in
attendance at the liturgy approached the cross to make a sign of veneration,
which was followed by the reproaches and a hymn.
A priest in attendance at the Good Friday liturgy in St.
Peter’s Basilica venerates the cross on April 18, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CAN
The third, and final, part of
the two-hour service was the reception of holy Communion.
In his homily, delivered after
the Gospel, Pasolini also drew attention to three phrases Christ uttered during
his Passion — “I am,” “I thirst,” and “it is finished” — and what they can
teach us about abandonment to God.
Pointing out the freedom with
which Jesus offered himself at the moment of his arrest, identifying himself to
the soldiers, the preacher said this confident surrender to God can be an
example for us “at times when our lives suffer some setbacks — a painful
setback, a serious illness, a crisis in relationships.”
“How is it possible to do this?
By taking a step forward. By presenting ourselves first to the encounter with
reality,” he said. “This attitude hardly ever changes the course of events — in
fact, Jesus is arrested soon after — but if lived with faith in God and trust
in the history he leads, it enables us to remain inwardly free and steadfast.
Only then does the burden of life become lighter, and suffering, while remaining
real, stops being useless and begins to generate life.”
Faithful gather for the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on
Good Friday, April 18, 2025, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Credit:
Daniel Ibañez/CAN
When Jesus cried out from the
cross, “I thirst,” he demonstrated his human need, Pasolini said, noting that
“when pain, weariness, loneliness, or fear lay us bare, we are tempted to close
ourselves off, to stiffen up, to feign self-sufficiency. … Asking for what we
need, and allowing others to offer it to us, is perhaps one of the highest and
most humble forms of love.”
Full trust and abandonment to
God, as Christ exemplified in his final words, “it is finished,” are also part
of the theme of the jubilee year, Pasolini said.
Pope Francis wanted to remind
us, he recalled, “that Christ is the anchor of our hope, to whom we can remain
firmly united, tightening the rope of faith that binds us to him beginning from
our baptism.”
But this is not easy, the
preacher emphasized, especially when we experience evil, suffering, or
loneliness. Which is why it is important “to accept the invitation of the
Letter to the Hebrews: to approach the cross with full confidence, recognizing
in it the ‘throne of grace in order to receive mercy and find grace, so as to
be helped at the appropriate time.’”
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