Passionist International Bulletin

seminar on the memoria passionisSt. Paul of the Cross understoodthat the only remedy for the evil ofthe world was the Passion of Jesus inits completeness and he associatesthe Passion of the Son with that ofthe Mother in a single Passion. Infact he compares the suffering ofMary with the sea, saying that “inthe Passion of Jesus there were twoseas of love, one of the son and theother of the mother.”22It is a suffering that is so distinctone from the other that it cannot beidentified, nor can the two becomeone, even so intimately bound thatthere is no discernable distancebetween them. Death of the heartwithout the shedding of blood, thatof the Mother and the death by theshedding of blood, that is entered bythe “narrow gate” just opened by thenails, by the scourging and by the head surrounded bya crown of thorns, that of the Son. Pensive and strong,she stood beneath the cross, her face, barely pallid,while Jerusalem pierced her heart. And now, they areeven wounded by the same pain that they share witheach other and with every living thing in absolutenakedness and poverty.For them, we are the “pearl of great price” and the“treasure hidden in the field” of the gospel parable(Mt. 13: 44-45) for which one must sell everything—reputation, suffering and even life—in order toacquire it. And now the judgment of Matthew 25: 31-41, that was just proclaimed, can be understood andidentified: “every time that you did this for one ofthese least of my brothers you did it to me.”(Mt.25:40) Fr. Breton says that “it is a way of being,that is, of bearing one’s own body, which for lack ofsomething better can be called staurological. This supplementarybody that Christ assumes in his faithful isprecisely a crucified body for which the cross remainsthe exemplar.” It is right to underline the exemplarynature of Christ who takes the initiative to tell usabout what should be the law of love to the point thatone can and one must love.Giving up his spirit, Jesus breaths upon us thewind whose origin and whose finality is unknown (Jn.3:8). We must hear that wind in absolute silence inorder to be able to feel the breeze as did Elijah at themouth of the cave on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:9 ff).God reveals himself in Christ who died crucified. Andhis is a revelation of love and fatherhood. He knowsthat by imitation of the Son, the cross has pardoned usThe Southern Crossof every thing and every system and it is as if we livein a continual exodus of life, without end. But we trustin his mercy, which is like a fountain at the foot of thecross. It takes into account our negativity that doesn’tdisappear, as the wounds of the Crucified One didn’tdisappear after the resurrection.I conclude with a memory of Breton taken from hisconference, “La croce del non essere” (the cross ofnon-being) given at the Spienza della Croce Congress:“This is how I read from the height of the cross,without apologetic illusions of immanence, the dispersedfragments of our pulverized world. I read themas a diaspora that the cross must reunite.It has been three years now since, in the immensityof Australia, in the almost total desert, alone, I celebratedmy first Mass for the world. In the magnificentsouthern sky, the constellation called the “southerncross” brilliantly shined as in no other place of theconstellation: the cosmic cross of my holy Mass.After the consecration I asked myself: What doesthis sign in the sky, sign and source of contradiction,say to me and to the world?I then remembered the ancient legend according towhich the first born of every generation is a questionmark.I then asked myself: Is the cross of my love and ofmy faith, perhaps this question mark, inserted for everin the fiber of the universe?”