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JOHN CLIMACUS, Monk
#1 in Catechetical Cycle on
Medieval Christian Writers

Dear brothers and sisters,

After 20 catecheses dedicated to the Apostle Paul, I wish to resume today a presentation of the great writers of the Church of the East and West in the medieval era. I will speak about John called Climacus, the Latin transliteration of the Greek word klimakos, which means ‘of the ladder’(klimax).

It is taken from the title of his principal work in which he describes the ascent of human life toward God.

He was born around 575, so he lived around the time when Byzantium, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, experienced the greatest crisis in its history. All of a sudden, the geographical framework of the empire changed, and a torrent of barbarian invasions made all its structures crumble.

The only structure that remained was the Church, whic continued in those difficult times to carry out her missionary, human and socio-cultural activities, especially through a network of monasteries in which great religious personalities like John Climacus worked.

John Climacus lived and wrote about his spiritual experiences among the mountains of Sinai, where Moses encountered God and Elia heard his voice. Information about him is conserved in a brief Vita (PG 88, 596-608), written by the monk Daniele di Raito.

At age 16, John became a monk on Mt. Sinai as a disciple of the abbot Martyrius, an “ancient’, which meant in those days, ‘a wise man’. When he was about 20, John chose to live as a hermit in a cave at the foot of the mountain, in a locality called Tola, eight kilometers from the present Monastery of St. Catherine.

But solitude did not keep him from meeting persons who were desirous of spiritual direction, nor from visiting other monasteries near Alexandria. Indeed, his hermetic ‘retirement’, far from being an escape from the world and human reality, was channeled into an ardent love for others (Vita 5) and for God (Vita 6).

After 40 years of a hermetic life in the love of God and for his neighbor – years during which he wept, prayed, and fought his demons - he was named hegumen (abbot) of the great monastery on Mt. Sinai, thus returning to the cenobitic (communal) life of the monastery.

A few years before he died, nostalgic for the hermit’s life, he passed on the leadership of the community to his brother, who was a monk in the same monastery. He died after 650.

John’s life 'took place' between two mountains – Sinai and Tabor – and one can truly say that he radiated the light seen by Moses on Sinai and contemplated by the three apostles on Tabor [at the Transfiguration of Jesus].

He became famous, as I noted earlier, for his work Scala (Climax), which in the West was called Scala del Paradiso (The ladder to Paradise) (PG 88,632-1164).

Written at the insistent request of the abbot from the nearby monastery of Raito, Scala is a complete treatise on spiritual life, in which John describes the path of the monk, from his renunciation of the world to his perfection in love.

It is a path which, according to this book, consists of 30 steps, each of which leads on to the next.

The path can be summarized in three successive stages: the first is expressed as a rupture with the world, with the aim of going back to ‘evangelical infancy’ – in which the essential point is not the break {with the world), but connecting to what Jesus said, therefore, a return to true infancy in the spiritual sense, becoming like children.

John comments: “A good foundation is that formed by three bases and three pillars: innocence, fasting and chastity. All who are newly born in Christ (cfr 1Cor 3,1) should begin with this, like newborn babies” (1,20;636).

Voluntary detachment from persons and places near and dear to one allows the spirit to enter in a more profound communion with God. This renunciation flows into obedience, which is a way of humility through humiliation – of which there will never be a lack – by one’s own brothers.

John comments: “Blessed are those who have mortified their own will to the utmost and have entrusted the care of their own selves to the Lord – indeed they will find themselves on the right hand of the Crucified Lord!” (4,37; 704).

The second stage of the path is spiritual combat against the passions. Every step of the ladder is linked to a major passion, which is defined and diagnosed, followed by a proposed therapy through its corresponding virtues. All these steps together, without a doubt, constitute the most important spiritual strategy that we possess.

But the struggle against our passions is vested with positivity – it is not only negative - thanks to the image of ‘fire’ from the Holy Spirit. “All those who undertake this good fight (cfr 1 Tim 6,12), a difficult and arduous one… know that they are casting themselves into the fire if they truly want the immaterial fire to dwell within them” (1,18;636) – the fire of the Holy Spirit, which is the fire of love and truth. Only the power of the Holy Spirit assures us of victory.

But according to John Climacus, it is important to be aware that the passions are not bad in themselves – they become bad through their wrong use by man’s freedom. If purified, passions can open up to man the way towards God with the energies derived from asceticism and grace and, “since virtues have received from the Creator an order and a beginning… the boundaries of virtue are endless” (26/2,37; 1068).

The last stage of the path is Christian perfection, which is developed through the last seven steps of the Scala. These are the highest stages of spiritual life, which is possible to ‘esicasts’, the solitary souls who have arrived at interior peace and quiet - but they are also accessible to the most fervent cenobites.

Of the first three steps – simplicity, humility and discernment – John, in line with the desert Fathers, considers the last one as the most important, the capacity to discern. Every action must be subjected to discernment – in fact, everything depends on profound motivations that need to be weighed.

This goes to the very heart of the person, and seeks to awaken in the hermit, in the Christian, a spiritual sensitivity and the ‘sense of the heart’ – which are gifts from God.

“As our guide and rule in every thing, after God, we should follow our conscience” (26/1,5;1013). This is how one achieves peace of spirit, esichia, thanks to which the soul can face the abyss of divine mysteries.

This state of quiet, of interior peace, prepares the ‘esichiaast‘ for prayer, of which there are two kinds, according to John: ‘corporeal prayer’ and ‘the prayer of the heart’. The first is that of those who need to be aided in prayer by bodily gestures: extending the hands, making crying sounds, beating the breast, etc (15,26;900).

The second is spontaneous, because it is the result of an awakened spiritual sensibility, a gift of God to those who are dedicated to corporeal prayer. John calls it ‘the prayer of Jesus' (Iesoû euché), and consists simply in invoking the make of Jesus, a continuous invocation like breathing: “The memory of Jesus becomes one with your breath, and thus you will know the usefulness of esichia”, of interior peace (27/2,26; 1112). So ultimately, prayer becomes very simple – it is the word Jesus that has become one with our every breath.

The last step on the ladder (#30), suffused with the 'solemn inebriation of the Spirit', is dedicated to the supreme ‘trinity of virtues” – faith, hope, and above all, charity. John too speaks of charity as eros, human love, a symbol of the soul’s matrimonial union with God.

And once again he uses the image of fire to express the burning, the light, the purification coming from God’s love. The power of human love can be re-oriented towards God, just as the wild olive tree can be grafted to the good tree (cfr Rom 11,24)(15,66;893).

John is convinced that an intense experience of eros can help the soul to progress much more than a hard struggle against passions, because its power is great. Thus, it is positivity that prevails along our spiritual path.

But charity is also seen tightly linked to hope: “The power of charity is in hope, thanks to which we expect a reward for charity…. Hope is the gateway to charity… The absence of hope annuls charity: our efforts are linked to hope, our travails are sustained by hope, and thanks to hope, we are surrounded by the mercy of God” (30,16; 1157).

The conclusion of Scala contains the synthesis of the work in words that the author takes from God himself: “May this ladder teach you the spiritual disposition of virtues. I am at the top of this ladder, as my great initiator, St. Paul, says: “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13,13) (30,18; 1160).

At this point, a last question presents itself: Can this work, written by a hermit monk who lived 1400 years ago, still say something to us today? Can the existential itinerary of a man who only ever lived on Mount Sinai in a remote time have any relevance for us?

At first, it might seem that the answer is No, because John Climacus is too remote from us today. But if we look closer, we see that the monastic life is merely a great symbol for baptismal life, for Christian life. It shows, so to say, in capital letters that which we write daily in fine print. It is a prophetic symbol that reveals what it means to live as a baptized person, in communion with Christ, his death and his resurrection.

For me it is particularly important that the top of the ladder, the last steps. are also the fundamental virtues, the initial and simplest ones – faith, hope and love. They are not virtues accessible only to moral heroes, but are a gift of God to all baptized persons. Our life grows in and with these virtues.

The beginning is also the end. The point of departure is also the point of arrival. The entire path follows an ever more radical application of faith, hope and charity. The entire ascent is found in these virtues.

Faith is fundamental, because this virtue implies that I renounce my arrogance, my own thought, the claim of judging by myself, without recourse to others. This path to humility, towards spiritual infancy, is necessary. One must overcome the arrogant attitude which leads us to say, “I know better – in my time, during this 21st century – than those in his time could ever have known”.

Instead, one must trust only in Sacred Scripture, in the Word of the Lord, to face the horizon of faith with humility in order to be able to enter the enormous vastness of the universe, of God’s world. This is how our spirit - the sensitivity of our heart to God – grows.

John Climacus rightly says that only hope can make us live in charity - the hope with which we transcend everyday things, not expecting success in our earthly days but looking forward in the end to the revelation of God himself.

Only in this expansion of our spirit, in this self-transcendence, can our life become great – we can support the efforts and the disappointments of every day, and we can be good to others without expecting a reward.

Only if there is God, the great hope towards which I aspire, can I take the small steps of my life daily and, doing so, learn to love. In love is hidden the mystery of prayer, of personal knowledge of Jesus – simple prayer that aims only to touch the heart of the divine teacher. In this way, our own heart opens up and learns goodness directly from him, from his love.

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ON ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE

Dear brothers and sisters,

The saint whom we will look at closely today is Bede, who was born in Northumbria, northeastern England, in 672 or 673.

He himself recounts that at the age of 7, he was entrusted by his parents to the abbot of a nearby Benedictine monastery to be educated.

"Since then," he recalls, "I always lived in that monastery, dedicating myself intensely to the study of Scripture and, while I observed the discipline of the (Benedictine) Rule and the daily duty to sing in church, it was always a pleasure for me to learn or teach or write" (Historia eccl. Anglorum, V, 24).

In fact, Bede became one of the most illustrious figures of erudition in the high Middle Ages, having been able to avail of the many precious manuscripts that his abbots brought him back from their numerous trips to the continent and to Rome.

His teaching and the fame of his writings earned him the friendship of the principal personages of his day who encouraged him to continue with his work from which so many were benefiting.

Even ailing, he never stopped working, always conserving an interior joy that he expressed in prayer and song. He ended his most important work, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, with this invocation:

"I pray you, good Jesus, who benevolently allowed me to draw sweet words from your wisdom, to grant me kindly to be with you one day, source of every wisdom, and to always have your face in front of me".

He died on May 26, 735, on Ascension Day.

The Sacred Scriptures were the constant source of Bede's theological reflection. According to a careful critical study of his text (what has come down to us is a copy of the monumental Codex Amiatinus of the Vulgate, on which Bede worked), he comments on the Bible, reading it in a Christological key, thus bringing together two things:

On the one hand, he listens to what the Biblical text says exactly - he really wanted to listen to the text itself and understand it as text.

On the other hand, he was convinced that the key to understand Sacred Scripture as the only Word of God was Christ, and that with Christ, in the light of Christ, the Old and the New Testaments could be understood as a unit - 'one' Sacred Scripture.

The events of the Old and New Testaments go together - they are a journey towards Christ, although expressed through different signs and institutions - what he calls concordia sacramentorum [sacramental agreement].

For example, the Tent of the Covenant which Moses put up in the desert and the first and second temples of Jerusalem are images of the Church, the new temple erected on Christ and the apostles as living stones, cemented by the charity of the Spirit.

And just as pagans participated in the construction of the old temple, offering precious materials and the technical experience of their master artisans, likewise, in the edification of the Church, the apostles and other teachers contributed, coming not only from the ancient Jewish, Greek and Latin lineages but also from the new peoples, among whom, Bede was pleased to name the Celtic-Irish and Anglo-Saxon peoples.

St. Bede saw the universality of the Church grow, not limited to a specific culture, but comprising all the cultures of the world who must open themselves to Christ and find in him their point of arrival.

Another subject beloved by Bede was the history of the Church. Following his study of the period described in the Acts of the Apostles, he examined the history of the Fathers of the Church and the Councils, convinced that the work of the Holy Spirit continues in history.

In the Chronica Maiora, Bede traces a chronology that would become the basis for the universal calendar 'ab incarnazione Domini' [from the incarnation of the Lord]. Already at that time, the foundation (year) of the city of Rome had been estimated.

But Bede, seeing that the true point of reference, the center of history, was the birth of Christ, gave us this calendar which reads history beginning from the Incarnation of the Lord.

He reported on the first Ecumenical Councils and their respective developments, clearly presenting Christological, Mariologic and soteriologic [on salvation theology] doctrine, and denouncing the heresies of monophysites and monothelites, iconoclasts and neo-Pelagians.

Finally, he edited with documentary strictness and literary expertise the aforementioned Ecclesiastical History of the English Peoples, for which he has been recognized as the 'father of English historiography".

The characteristic features of the Church that Bede chose to play up were these:

1) Catholicity as faithfulness to tradition while simultaneously being open to historical developments, and as a search for unity in multiplicity, despite differences in history and culture, according to the indications that Pope Gregory the Great had given to the Apostle of England, Augustine of Canterbury;

2) Apostolicity and Romanity: In this regard, he considered it of primary importance to convince all the Irish-Celtic and Pith churches to celebrate a common Easter according to the Roman calendar.

The computation he elaborated scientifically to establish the exact date of the annual Easter celebration, and thus the entire cycle of the liturgical year, has become the reference text for the entire Catholic Church.

Bede was also a distinguished teacher of liturgical theology. In his Homilies on the Sunday and festive Gospels, he developed a true mystagogy, educating the faithful to celebrate joyfully the mysteries of the faith adn to reproduce them consistently in their lives, anticipating their full manifestation with the return of Christ, when with our glorified bodies, we shall be admitted into the offertorial procession of God's eternal liturgy in heaven.

Following the 'realism' of the catecheses of Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine, Bede taught that the sacraments of Christian initiation are constitutive of a faithful soul that is "not only Christian but Christ (himself)". He meant that every time the soul of a baptized person receives and keeps the Word of God with love, it imitates Mary in conceiving and generating Christ anew.

And that every time a group of neophytes receives the Paschal sacraments, the Church 'regenerates itself', or using an even more daring expression, the Church becomes 'the mother of God", participating in the generation of her children through the work of teh Holy Spirit.

Thanks to his way of theology that interweaves the Bible, liturgy adn history, Bede has a relevant message for the different 'states of life':

a) To the scholars (doctores ac doctrices) he reminds them of two essential tasks: to scrutinize the wonders of the Word of God in order to be able to present them attractively to the faithful; and to proclaim doctrinal truths avoiding heretical complications and keeping to 'Catholic simplicity', with the attitude of the small and the humble to whom it pleases God to reveal the mysteries of the Kingdom.

b) To the pastors who, on their part, should give priority to preaching, not merely through verbal and hagiographic teaching, but also through icons, processions and pilgrimages. He urged them to use the local language, as he himself did, explaining the 'Our Father' and the Apostles Creed in the Northumbrian language, and carrying on to the last day of his life his commentary on the Gospel of John in the vernacular.

c) To consecrated persons who are dedicated to the Divine Office, living in the joy of fraternal communion and progressing in spiritual life through asceticism and contemplation, Bede recommends tending to the Apostolate as well - no one should keep the Gospel to himself but he should consider it as a gift even for others - whether by working with the bishops in various kinds of pastoral activity among the young Christian communities, or by being available for evangelizing missions among pagans, outside their own land, as 'pilgrims pro amore Dei'.

From this perspective, in his commentary on the Song of Songs, Bede presents the Synagogue and the Church as co-workers in spreading the Word of God.

Christ the Bridegroom wants an industrious Church, "darkened by the tasks of evangelization" - the reference is clear to the words of the Song of Songs (1,5 , where the bride says, 'Nigra sum sed formosa' [I am dark but lovely'], intent on tilling other fields or vineyards, in order to set up among the new peoples "not a provisional hut by a stable dwelling", that is, to set the Gospel into the fabric of society and cultural institutions.

From this perspective, the holy Doctor exhorted the lay faithful to be assiduous in religious instruction, imitating those "insatiable crowds in the Gospel, who would not give the Apostles time even to take a bite".

he taught them how to pray continually, "reproducing in life what they celebrate in liturgy", offering all their actions as a spiritual sacrifice in union with Christ.

To parents, he explained that even in their small domestic circle, they could exercise "the priestly office of pastor and guide", forming their children in the Christian way, stating that he knew many faithful - men and women, married or celibate - "who are capable of irreproachable conduct which, by observing properly, they could joyously come to Eucharistic communion every day" (Letters to Ecgberctum, ed. Plummer, p. 419)

The fame for holiness and wisdom that Bede enjoyed while still alive earned him the title of Venerable. Even Pope Sergius I called him that, when he wrote Bede's abbot in 701 to request that he be sent to Rome temporarily to give advice on matters of universal interest.

After his death, his writings were extensively spread throughout his homeland and the European continent.

The great missionary of Germany, Bishop St. Boniface (died 754), asked the Archbishop of York and the Abbot of Wearmouth several times to have some of Bede's works transcribed and sent to him so that he and his companions could enjoy the spiritual light that they emanated.

One century later, Notker Galbulus (died 812), abbot of St. Gall, taking note of the extraordinary influence of Bede, likened him to a new sun who God had caused to rise not from East but from the West in order to illumine the world.

Besides this historical emphasis, it is a fact that, with his works, Bede contributed effectively to the construction of a Christian Europe, in which different populations and cultures were amalgamated, conferring a unitary physiognomy inspired by the Christian faith.

Let us pray so that even today, there may be personages of Bede's stature who can keep the continent united. Let us pray that all of us may be disposed to rediscover our common roots, in order to be builders of a Europe that is profoundly human and authentically Christian.

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CATECHESIS ON THE PASCHAL TRIDUUM


Dear brothers and sisters,

Holy Week, which for us Christians is the most important week of the year, offers us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the central events of the Redemption, to re-live the Paschal mystery, the great mystery of the faith.

Starting tomorrow afternoon, with the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the solemn liturgical rites will help us to meditate more vividly on the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord on the days of the Holy Paschal Triduum, the fulcrum of the entire liturgical year.

May the divine grace open our hearts to understanding the inestimable gift of salvation obtained for us by the sacrifice of Christ. We find this immense gift described wonderfully in the famous hymn from St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians (cfr 2,6-11), which we have meditated on many times during Lent.

The apostle reviews, in a way that is as essential as it is effective, all the mystery of the story of salvation, citing the arrogance of Adam who, not being God, wished to be like God.

And he contrasts this arrogance of the first man - which all of us feel a bit in our being - the humility of the true Son of God who, having become man, except for sin, pushed himself to the depths of death.

This descent to the ultimate depth of suffering and death is followed by his exaltation, true glory, the glory of love which gives to the end.

It is therefore right, as Paul says, "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (2,10-11).

St. Paul refers, with these words, to a prophecy of Isaiah where God says, "I am God... To me every knee shall bend" (cfr Is 45, 23). This, says Paul, applies to Jesus Christ. It is truly he, in his humility, in the true greatness of his love, who is the Lord of the world, and before him every knee should bend.

How marvelous, as well as surprising, is this mystery! We can never sufficiently meditate on this reality. Jesus, although he was God, did not wish to keep his divine prerogatives as his exclusive possession. He did not want to use his being God, his glorious dignity and his power, as an instrument of triumph and a sign of distance from us.

On the contrary, "he emptied himself", assuming the misery and weakness of the human condition - and here, Paul uses a Greek word pregnant with meaning, kenosis, for this descent by Jesus.

Divine form (morphe) concealed itself in Jesus under human form - that is, under our reality which is marked by suffering, poverty, our human limitations, and death.

This radical and true sharing of our nature, sharing everything except sin, led him to that frontier which is the sign of our finiteness, death.

But all this was not the fruit of some obscure mechanism or blind fatality: it was, rather, his free choice, out of generous adherence to God's plan for salvation.

The death towards which he went, Paul says, was that on the cross, the most humiliating and degrading that one can imagine. All this, the Lord of the universe fulfilled out of love for us. Out of love, he wished to empty himself and make himself our brother. Out of love, he shared our human condition, that of every man and every woman.

A great witness of the Oriental Christian tradition, Theodoretus of Ciro, wrote about this: "Being God, and God by nature, and being equal to God, he did not consider this of any importance, as those who receive any honor above their true merits, but hiding his own merits, he chose the most profound humility and took the form of a human being" (Commentary on the Letter to the Philippians, 2,6-7).

A prelude to the Paschal Triduum which, as I said, starts tomorrow with the evocative afternoon rites of Maundy Thursday, is the solemn Mass of the Chrism, which in the morning, the Bishop celebrates with his own priests, during which together, they will renew the priestly vows they made on the day of their ordination.

It is a gesture of great value, an occasion that could not be more propitious for priests to reaffirm their faithfulness to Christ who chose them to be his ministers.

This priestly gathering additionally takes on a particular significance at this time, because it is almost like a preparation for the Year of the Priest that I declared on the occasion of the 150th death anniversary of the Holy Curate of Ars (St John Vianney) and which will start on June 19.

Also at the Chrismal Mass, the oils for the sick and for catechumens will be blessed, and the Chrism will be consecrated.

These rites symbolically stand for the fullness of Christ's Priesthood and that ecclesial communion that should animate the Christian people, gathered together for the Eucharistic sacrifice and revived in unity by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In the afternoon Mass, called 'in Coena Domini' (of the Lord's Supper), the Church commemorates the institution of the Eucharist, the priestly ministry, and the new commandment of love left by Jesus to his disciples.

About what happened in the Cenacle on the eve of the Lord's passion, St. Paul offers one of the oldest testimonies. He writes:

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...the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way also, he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." (1Cor 11,23-25)

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Words charged with mystery, which manifest clearly what Christ wanted:Iin the form of bread and wine, He makes himself present, giving up his body and shedding his blood. It is the sacrifice of the new and definitive covenant offered to everyone, without distinction of race or culture.

For this sacramental rite, which he hands over to the Church as the supreme proof of his love, Jesus made his disciples ministers, along with all those who would follow such ministry in the course of centuries.

Thus, Maundy Thursday constitutes a renewed invitation to give thanks to God for the supreme gift of the Eucharist, to be received with devotion and to be adored with sincere faith.

That is why, the Church encourages, after the celebration of the Holy Mass, a prayer vigil in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament to remember the sad hours Jesus spent in prayer at Gethsemane before he was arrested and eventually sentenced to death.

And so we come to Good Friday, the day of the passion and crucifixion of the Lord. Every year, in silence before Jesus suspended from his wooden Cross, we realize how full of love were the words he said during the Last Supper: "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many" (cfr Mk 14,24).

Jesus offered his life in sacrifice for the remission of man's sins. Just as it is in front of the Eucharist, so too, in the face of the passion and death on the Cross of Jesus, the mystery becomes unfathomable to reason.

We are before something which appears humanly absurd: a God who not only becomes man, with all the needs of man; who not only suffers to save man by taking upon himself all the tragedy of mankind, but dies for man.

The death of Christ reminds us of the accumulation of sorrows and evils that have weighed on man at all times: the crushing weight of our death, the hatred and the violence that continue to make the earth bloody. The passion of the Lord continues in the suferrings of man.

As Blaise Pascal rightly wrote, "Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time." (Pensees, 583)

If Good Friday is a day full of sorrow, it is at the same time the day most propitious to reawaken our faith, to consolidate our hope and the courage for each of us to carry our own cross with humility, trust and abandonment to God, certain of his support and his victory.

The liturgy of this day sings, "O Crux, ave, spes unica – Ave, o croce, unica speranza!" (Hail, O Cross, the only hope).

This hope is nourished in the great silence of Holy Saturday, in expectation of the resurrection of Jesus. On this day, the churches are stripped bare and no particular liturgical rites are prescribed.

The Church keeps vigil in prayer like Mary, and with Mary, sharing her sentiments of sorrow and trust in God. Rightly, it is recommended to keep a prayerful atmosphere throughout the day, one that is favorable to meditation and reconciliation.

The faithful are encouraged to approach the sacrament of Penitence, in order to be able to participate truly renewed in the Easter celebrations.

The meditation and silence of Holy Saturday lead to the solemn Easter Vigil that night, 'the mother of all vigils', when the song of joy over the resurrection of Christ erupts in all churches and communities .

Once more, the victory of light over shadows will be proclaimed, that of life over death, and the Church will rejoice in her encounter with the Lord. Thus we enter the climate of Easter, the Sunday of Resurrection.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us prepare ourselves to experience the Holy Triduum intensely, so that we may participate evermore profoundly in the Mystery of Christ.

May the Blessed Virgin accompany us on this itinerary, she who followed her son Jesus in silence up to Calvary, taking part with great pain in his sacrifice, thus cooperating in the mystery of Redemption and becoming the Mother of all believers (cfr Jn 19,25-27).

Together with her, let us enter the Cenacle, let us stay at the foot of the Cross, let us keep vigil ideally next to the deceased Christ, awaiting with hope the dawn of the radiant day of Resurrection.

In this regard, I express to all of you my most heartfelt wishes for a joyous and holy Easter together with your families. parishes and communities.

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Dear brothers and sisters,

The usual General Audience on Wednesday is pervaded today with spiritual joy, that joy which no suffering or pain can annul. Because joy arises from the certainty that Christ, through his death and resurrection, has definitively triumphed over evil and death.

"Christ is risen, Alleluia!" - the Church sings in celebration. And this festive atmosphere, the sentiments typical of Easter, continue not only this week - the Octave of Easter - but extends through the 50 days till Pentecost. Better yet, we might say that the mystery of
Easter embraces the entire arc of our existence.

At this liturgical period, there are so many Biblical references and stimuli to meditation that are offered to us which deepen the significance and the value of Easter.

The Via Crucis, which during the Sacred Triduum we travelled with Jesus towards Calvary, reliving thereby his sorrowful Passion, became the comforting Via Lucis - way of light - at the Easter Vigil.

Seen from the Resurrection, we can say that all these paths of suffering are a way of light and spiritual rebirth, of interior peace and firm hope.

After the tears and the loss of Good Friday, followed by the expectation-laden silence of Holy Saturday, on the dawn of 'the first day after the Sabbath', the proclamation of Life defeating death resounded vigorously: "Dux vitae mortuus/regnat vivus" - The Lord of life was dead; but now he lives and triumphs.

The mind-blowing novelty of the Resurrection is so important that the Church does not cease to proclaim it, prolonging its remembrance especially every Sunday. Every Sunday is, in fact, the day of the Lord, the weekly Easter for the people of God.

Our Oriental brothers, as if to testify how much this mystery of salvation invests our daily life, refer to Sunday as the 'day of the resurrection' (voskreshenye).

It is therefore fundamental for our faith and for our Christian testimony to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a real event, a historical happening attested to by many authoritative witnesses.

We affirm it forcefully because, even in our time, there is no lack of those who seek to deny its historicity, wo would reduce the evangelical account to a myth, to a 'vision' of the Apostles, rehashing and presenting old and exhausted theories as new and scientific.

Certainly the resurrection was not a simple return by Jesus to his preceding life on earth. In this regard, in fact, it would be a thing that had happened before. Two thousand years ago, someone had resurrected and returned to his previous life - Lazarus. [Jesus worked this miracle the Friday before Palm Sunday.]

But Christ's resurrection is in a different dimension: it is the passage to a profoundly new dimension of life which is of interest to us, which involves the human family, history and the universe.

This event which introduced a new dimension of life, an opening of our world to eternal life, changed the existence of its eyewitnesses, as the Gospel accounts and other New Testament writings show.

It is an announcement that entire generations of men and women through the centuries have welcomed with faith and to which they have borne witness, not rarely, at the cost of their blood, knowing that they were entering thereby into this new dimension of life.

Even this year, the Good News resounds at Easter unchanged and ever new, in every corner of the earth. Jesus who died on the Cross is resurrected; he lives gloriously because he has defeated the power of death. He has brought the human being to a new communion of life with God and in God.

This is the victory of Easter, our salvation! Thus, we can sing with St. Augustine: "The resurrection of Jesusis our hope", because it introduces us to a new future.

It is true: the resurrection of jesus establishes our firm hope and illumines our entire earthly pilgrimage, including the human enigma of suffering and death. Faith in Christ crucified and risen is the heart of the entire Gospel message, the central nucleus of our Credo.

We can find an authoritative expression of this essential creed in a famous Pauline passage, from the First Letter to the Corinthians (15,3-8), where the Apostle, to answer some in the community of Corinth who paradoxically proclaimed the resurrection of Christ but denied that of the dead - our hope - faithfully transmits what he, Paul, had received from the first apostolic community about the death and resurrection of the Lord.

He begins with a statement that is almost peremptory: "Now I am reminding you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you indeed received and in which you also stand. Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain" (vv 1-2).

He adds immediately that he transmitted to them what he himself had received. Then follows the pericope which we heard at the start of our meeting today. [Those who follow the audiences on radio or who have attended one in person know that the GA is usually opened with a Gospel reading by one of the priests, which I believe the Vatican should include in its bulletin on the GA.]

St. Paul presents, first of all, the death of Jesus, and adds, in a rather sparse text, two points to the statement "Jesus died". The first addition is: he died 'for our sins', and the second, 'according to the Scriptures' (v 3).

This expression, 'according to the Scriptures', places the event of the Lord's death in relation to the Old Testament story of God's covenant with his people, and makes us understand that the death of the Son of God belongs to the fabric of the story of salvation, and that this story receives from Scripture its logic and its true meaning.

Until the moment of Christ's death, it had remained almost an enigma, whose outcome was still uncertain. In the Paschal mystery is fulfilled the words of Scripture: that is, this death that happened 'according to the Scriptures' is an event that carries in itself a logos, a logic; the death of Christ testifies that the Word of God had become 'flesh' to the very depth, it had become part of human 'history'.

How and why this took place one understands from the other addition that St. Paul makes: Christ died 'for our sins'. With these words, the Pauline text takes up the prophecy of Isaiah contained in the Fourth Song of the Servant of God (cfr Is 53,12).

The Servant of God, says the song, 'stripped himself to death', he carried 'the sins of many', and interceding for the 'sinful, was able to bring the gift of reconciliation to men among themselves and of men with God: his death therefore put an end to death itself; the way of the Cross leads to the Resurrection.

In th4 verses that follow, the Apostle dwells on the resurrection of the Lord. He says that Christ "rose on the third day according to the Scriptures". Again, "according to the Scriptures"!

Not a few exegetes have seen in this expression, "He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures", a significant recall of what we read in Psalm 16, where the Psalmist proclaims:"For you will not abandon me to Sheol [the underworld] , nor let your faithful servant see the pit" (v 10).

This is one of the Old Testament texts, often cited in early Christianity, to prove the messianic character of Jesus. Since according to Judaic interpretation, corruption [of the body] begins after the third day, the word of Scripture is fulfilled in Jesus who rises on the third day, before corruption can set in.

St. Paul, faithfully transmitting the teaching of the Apostles, underscores that the victory of Christ over death takes place through the creative power of God. This divine power brings hope and joy: this is the definitive liberating content of the Paschal revelation.

In the Resurrection, God reveals himself and the power of the Trinitarian love which annihilates the destructive forces of evil and death.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us allow ourselves to be illuminated by the splendor of the risen Lord. Let us us receive his Gospel and adhere to it generously as did the privileged witnesses to his resurrection, as several years later, St. Paul did when he met the divine Master in an extraordinary manner on the road to Damascus.

We cannot keep to ourselves the announcement of this truth which changes the life of everyone. With humble trust, we pray: "Jesus, who in rising from the dead, anticipated our resurrection, we believe in you!"

I would like to conclude with an exclamation that Silvanus of Mt. Athos liked to repeat: "Rejoice, my soul. It is always Easter, because the risen Christ is our resurrection!"

May the Virgin Mary help us cultivate in ourselves and around us, this climate of Paschal joy, so we may be witnesses of divine love in every situation of our existence.

Once more, a happy Easter to all of you.

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CATECHESIS ON ST. AMBROSE AUTPERT

Dear brothers and sisters,

The Church lives in persons and whoever wants to know the Church and understand its mystery must consider the persons who have lived and who are living its message, its mystery.

That is why for some time now, I have been speaking in these Wednesday catecheses of persons from whom we can learn what the Church is.

We started with the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church, and by now, we have come to the eighth century, in the time of Charlemagne.

Today I wish to speak of Ambrose Autpert, a rather unknown writer - indeed, his works were largely attributed to other better-known personages, from St. Ambrose of Milan to St. Ildephonsus, not to mention those that the monks of Montecassino chose to attribute to one of their abbots also named Ambrose who lived one century later.

Apart from some brief autobiographical references in his great commentary on the Apocalypse, we have very few sure data about his life. But attentive reading of those works whose paternity has been attributed to him allows us nonetheless to discover in his teaching a precious theological and spiritual treasure even for our time.

Born in Provence into a distinguished family, Ambrose Autpert - according to his eventual biographer Giovanni - served in the court of the Frankish King Pepin the Brief, where, besides his official responsibility, he was also in some way the preceptor for the future Emperor Charlemagne.

Probably going with the entourage of Pope Stephen II who visited the Frankish court in 753-754, Autpert came to Italy and had occasion to visit the famous Benedictine abbey of St. Vincent, at the source of the Volturno river, in the duchy of Benevento [located roughly between Montecassino and Naples]. Founded at the start of the eighth century by three brothers from Benevento, the abbey was known as an oasis of classical and Christian culture.

Shortly after his visit, Ambrose Autpert decided to embrace the religious life and entered that monastery, where he could be formed appropriately, above all in theology and spirituality in the tradition of the Church Fathers.

He was ordained a priest around 761, and in October 777, he was elected abbot with the support of Frankish monks and the opposition of the Longobards who favored their compatriot Potone. The nationalistic tension did not quiet down in the following months, with the result that in 778, Ambrose thought of resigning and retreated with some of the Frankish monks to Spoleto, where he could count on the support of Charlemagne.

Even with this, however, the dissidence at the abbey of St. Vincent did not calm down, and a few months later, when after the death of Autbert's successor, Potone himself was elected abbot (787), the conflict broke out anew, resulting in a denunciation of the new abbot to Charlemagne, who sent the contenders to the Pontifical Tribunal which convened them in Rome. Autpert was called in as a witness but he died unexpectedly on his way to Rome on January 30, 784, probably murdered.

Ambrose Autpert was a monk and abbot during an epoch marked by strong political tensions which had repercussions even on life within the monasteries. We find frequent and concerned echoes of these in his writings.

He denounced, for example, the contradiction between the splendid exterior appearance of the monasteries and the tepidness of the monks, and surely with this criticism, he also meant his own abbey. Thus, he wrote the life of its three founders with the clear intention of offering the new generations of monks a reference standard against which to measure themselves.

A small ascetic tract entitled Conflictus vitiorum et virtutum (Conflict between vices and virtues) had the same purpose. It was a great success in the Middle Ages and was republished in 1473 in Utrecht (Holland) under the name of Gregory the Great, and one year later, in Strasbourg, under the name of St. Augustine.

In it, Ambrose Autpert intended to teach monks concrete ways on how to face spiritual combat in day to day life. In a significant manner, he applied the statement from 2 Tim 3,12: "All who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" - no longer to external persecution, but to the assault from the forces of evil that the Christian must confront within himself.

Twenty-four pairs of combatants are presented in a kind of dispute: each vice seeks to hook the soul with subtle reasonings, while its opposite virtue rebuts these insinuations, preferably using the words of Scripture.

In this tract on the conflict between vices and virtues, Autpert countered cupiditas (greed) with contemptus mundi (contempt for the world) which would become an important element in monastic spirituality.

This contempt for the world is not contempt for Creation, of the beauty and goodness of Creation and the Creator, but a contempt for a false vision of the world presented and insinuated to us by greed itself.

Greed insinuates that 'to have' is the peak value of our being, of living in the world with the appearance of being 'important'. Thus, greed falsifies creation and destroys the world.

Autpert notes that the greed for profit among the rich and powerful in the society of his time also existed in the souls of monks, and therefore, he wrote another tract entitled De cupiditate (about greed), in which, following the Apostle Paul, he denounces greed from the start as the root of all evil.

He wrote: "Many thorns sprout from the ground from different roots. But in the hearts of men, the sharp points of all vices come from one root only, greed" (De cupiditate 1: CCCM 27B, p. 963).

I point this out especially since it is revealed in all its actuality in the light of the present world economic crisis. We see that it is from this very root of greed that such a crisis is born.

Ambrose imagines the objections that the rich and powerful may raise, who would say, "But we are not monks, and certain ascetic practices do not apply to us."

To which he responds: "That is true, but the narrow and steep road applies even to you, according to your social status and the measure of your powers, because the Lord has proposed only two doors and two ways (the narrow door or the wide, and the steep road or the easy one). He did not indicate a third door and a third way" (l.c., p. 978).

He saw clearly that lifestyles are many and different. But even the man of the world, even the rich man, has the duty to fight greed, to fight the desire to possess and to appear well, to fight the false concept of freedom as the faculty to decide everything according to one's own will. Even the rich man must find the authentic road of truth and love, and therefore of right living.

Thus, Ambrose Autpert, as a prudent pastor of souls, could say a word of comfort at the end of his penitential preaching: "I have spoken not against the greedy, but against greed; not against nature, but against vice" (l.c., p. 981).

Ambrose's most important work is certainly his ten-book commentary on the Apocalypse: it constituted, after centuries, the first ample commentary in the Latin world to the last work of Sacred Scripture.

The commentary was the fruit of several years of work, carried out in two stages between 758 and 767, thus before he was elected abbot. In the preface, he indicates his sources with precision, something which was absolutely not the norm in the Middle Ages.

Through his most significant source - the commentary of the Bishop Primatius Adrumetan, written around the middle of the sixth century - Autpert came into contact with the interpretation of the Apocalypse left behind by the African Tyconius, who had lived a generation before St. Augustine. He was not Catholic, he belonged to the schismatic Donatist church, but he was a great theologian.

In his commentary, Tyconius saw above all the mystery of the Church reflected in the Apocalypse. Tyconius had concluded that the Church was a two-part body: one part, he said, belonged to Christ, but the other part belonged to the devil.

Augustine led this commentary and profited from it, but he strongly underscored that the Church is in the hands of Christ, it remains his Body, forming a single subject with him, and participating in the mediation of grace. Thus, he underscored that the Church can never be separated from Jesus Christ.

In his reading of the Apocalypse, similar to that of Tyconius, Autpert was not so much interested in the second coming of Christ at the end of times, as he was in the consequences for the Church of his first coming - his incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

And he leaves us a very important statement: that "every day, Christ must be born, die and be resurrected in us, who constitute his Body" (In poc. III: CCCM 27, p. 205).

In the context of the mystical dimension which invests every Christian, he looks at Mary as the model of the Church, a model for all of us, because even in us and through us, Christ should be born.

Along with the Fathers who saw in 'the woman clothed with the sun' in Ap 12,1 the image of the Church, Autpert argues: "The blessed and pious Virgin... gives birth to new peoples daily, from which the is formed the general Body of the Mediator. It is not therefore surprising if she, in whose blessed womb the Church itself meris being united to its Head, represents the Church itself."

In this sense, Autpert sees a decisive role by the Virgin Mary in the work of Redemption (cfr also his homilies In purificatione s. Mariae and In adsumptione s. Mariae).

His great veneration and profound love for the Mother of God inspired him at times to formulations which somewhat anticipated those of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and of Franciscan mysticism, without deviating to questionable forms of sentimentalism, because he never separates Mary from the mystery of the Church.

For good reason, Ambrose Autpert is considered the first great Mariologist of the West. He taught that piety which, according tp him, should liberate the soul from attachment to earthly and transitory pleasures, should be united with a profound study of the sacred sciences, above all, meditation on the Sacred Scriptures, which he describes as 'profound heaven, unfathiomable abyss' (In Apoc IX).

In the beautiful prayer with which he concludes his commentary on the Apocalypse, underscoring the priority that truth owes to love in every theological research, he turns to God with these words: "When by us, you are scrutinized intellectually, you are not discovered as you truly are, but when we love you, then we reach you."

We can see today in Ambrose Autpert a personality who lived in a time when the Church was strongly instrumentalized politically, when nationalism and tribalism disfigured the face of the Church.

But in the midst of such difficulties such as even we have known, he understaood what it meant to be a Catholic, to be a Christian, to live in the Word of God, to enter the abyss and thus live the mystery of the Mother of God - by giving new life to the Word of God, by offering our own flesh to the Word of God in our own time.

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