Today we celebrate the first day of the Paschal Triduum. It is therefore the day of the victorious Cross, where Jesus Christ left the best of Him: the Virgin Mary as his mother, the forgiveness —for the slayers, too— and total trust in God Father.
We have heard it in the reading of the Passion, transmitting us saint John's testimony, witness in the Calvary with Mary, our Lord's mother, and the other women. It is a narration rich in symbology where every little detail counts. But today, the silence and austerity of the Church help us also to live in an environment of prayer, fully attentive to the gift we celebrate.
In front of this great mystery, we are called —first of all— to see. Christian faith is not the reverential relationship to a distant and even abstract God, we know nothing about, but the adhesion to a Person, true man like us and, at the same time, true God. The Invisible one became flesh of our flesh and assumed to be a man until death, a death on the Cross. But, it was a death accepted as a ransom for us all, redeeming death, death that brings us life. Those who were there and saw it, are those who now transmit these feats while simultaneously revealing the significance of Christ's death.
In front of this, we feel grateful and admiring. We know the price of love: «Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends» (Jn 15:13). Christian prayer is not meant to beg only, but —first of all— to gratefully admire.
Jesus, is the model to imitate, that is, for us to reproduce his attitudes. We must be persons that can love all the way and trust the Father in the face of adversity.
This contrasts with the indifferent atmosphere of our society; that is why we must bear a bolder testimony than ever before, as the gift is for all of us. As saint Meliton of Sardis says «He made us go from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from death to life. He is the Paschal mystery of our salvation».