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The Latest on the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, with games Friday night in Philadelphia and Chicago (all times Eastern):...
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S....
CHICAGO (AP) -- A man convicted in the 1957 abduction and slaying of a 7-year-old girl in northern Illinois couldn't have committed the crime, a prosecutor said Friday, marking a stunning turnaround in one of the oldest unsolved crimes in American history to make it to trial....
DENVER (AP) -- It's a provocative image, for sure, and Denver's police unions complained when they saw the student's artwork honored in the school system's annual best-of-city show: It depicts an officer wearing a KKK hood and pointing a gun at a black child, who has his hands up while wearing a white hoodie. In the background, a version of the American flag is ripped open to reveal a Confederate banner....
OSHKOSH, Wisconsin (AP) -- Donald Trump's latest rude comments about Ted Cruz's wife are raising new alarms among Republicans about the party front-runner's ability to win over women, especially in a potential fall presidential match-up with Hillary Clinton....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon said Friday it was moving to increase the number of American troops in Iraq amid new strikes this week that killed the Islamic State's finance minister and other senior leaders. Still, top U.S. defense officials say the deaths won't "break the back" of the extremist group, which is in a fierce fight for an ancient city in Syria and claimed responsibility for bombing a soccer stadium in Iraq....
GHENT, Belgium (AP) -- An American teenager wounded in the Brussels Airport attack is lucky to be alive. And he knows it....
(Vatican Radio) At St Peter's Basilica, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., gave the homily for the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion.In his reflection, Fr Cantalamessa focused on “reconciliation” – in particular, Christ’s work of reconciling God and man.Below, please find the full text of Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa’s homily for Good Friday (English translation courtesy of Zenit): Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcp.“BE RECONCILED TO GOD”Good Friday Sermon, 2016, in St. Peter’s BasilicaGod . . . through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At the acceptable time I ...
(Vatican Radio) At St Peter's Basilica, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., gave the homily for the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion.
In his reflection, Fr Cantalamessa focused on “reconciliation” – in particular, Christ’s work of reconciling God and man.
Below, please find the full text of Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa’s homily for Good Friday (English translation courtesy of Zenit):
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcp.
“BE RECONCILED TO GOD”
Good Friday Sermon, 2016, in St. Peter’s Basilica
God . . . through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation.” Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation! (2 Cor 5:18–6:2)
These words are from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. The apostle’s call to be reconciled to God does not refer to the historical reconciliation between God and humanity (which, as we just heard, already occurred “through Christ” on the cross); neither does it refer to the sacramental reconciliation that takes place in Baptism and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It refers to an existential and personal reconciliation that needs to be implemented in the present. The call is addressed to baptized Christians in Corinth who belonged to the Church for a while, so it is therefore also addressed to us here and now. “The acceptable time, the day of salvation” for us, is the Year of Mercy that we are now in.
But what does this reconciliation with God mean in its existential and psychological dimension? One of the causes, and perhaps the main one, for people’s alienation from religion and faith today is the distorted image they have of God. What is the “predefined” idea of God in the collective human unconscious? To find that out, we only need to ask this question: “What ideas, what words, what feelings spontaneously arise in you without thinking about it when you say the words in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘May your will be done’”?
People generally say it with their heads bent down in resignation inwardly, preparing themselves for the worst. People unconsciously link God’s will to everything that is unpleasant and painful, to what can be seen as somehow destroying individual freedom and development. It is somewhat as though God were the enemy of every celebration, joy, and pleasure—a severe inquisitor-God.
God is seen as the Supreme Being, the Omnipotent One, the Lord of time and history, that is, as an entity who asserts himself over an individual from the outside; no detail of human life escapes him. The transgression of his law inexorably introduces a disorder that requires a commensurate reparation that human beings know they are not able to make. This is the cause of fear and at times hidden resentment against God. It is a vestige of the pagan idea of God that has never been entirely eradicated, and perhaps cannot be eradicated, from the human heart. Greek tragedy is based on this concept: God is the one who intervenes with divine punishment to reestablish the order disrupted by evil.
Of course in Christianity the mercy of God has never been disregarded! But mercy’s task is only to moderate the necessary rigors of justice. It was the exception, not the rule. The Year of Mercy is a golden opportunity to restore the true image of the biblical God who not only has mercy but is mercy.
This bold assertion is based on the fact that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16). It is only in the Trinity, however, that God is love without being mercy. The Father loving the Son is not a grace or a concession, it is a necessity; the Father needs to love in order to exist as Father. The Son loving the Father is not a mercy or grace; it is a necessity even though it occurs with the utmost freedom; the Son needs to be loved and to love in order to be the Son. The same can be said about the Holy Spirit who is love as a person.
It is when God creates the world and free human beings in it that love ceases for God to be nature and becomes grace. This love is a free concession; it is hesed, grace and mercy. The sin of human beings does not change the nature of this love but causes it to make a qualitative leap: mercy as a gift now becomes mercy as forgiveness. Love goes from being a simple gift to become a suffering love because God suffers when his love is rejected. "The LORD has spoken: ‘Sons have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me’” (Is 1:2). Just ask the many fathers and mothers who have experienced their children’s rejection if it does not cause suffering—and one of the most intense sufferings in life.
***
But what about the justice of God? Has it been forgotten or underestimated? St. Paul answered this question once and for all. The apostle begins his explanation in the Letter to the Romans with this news: “Now the righteousness of God has been manifested” (Rom 3:21). We can ask, what kind of righteousness is this? Is it the righteousness that gives “unicuique suum,” each person his or her due, and distributes rewards and punishments according to people’s merits? There will of course come a time when this kind of divine righteous justice that gives people what they deserve will also be manifested. The apostle in fact wrote shortly before in Romans that God
will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. (2:6-8
But Paul is not talking about this kind of justice when he writes, “Now the righteousness of God has been manifested.” The first kind of justice he talks about involves a future event, but this other event is occurring “now.” If that were not the case, Paul’s statement would be an absurd assertion that contradicts the facts. From the point of view of distributive justice, nothing changed in the world with the coming of Christ. We continue, said Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, to see the guilty often on the throne and the innocent on the scaffold. But lest we think there is some kind of justice and some fixed order in the world, although it is upside down, sometimes the reverse happens and the innocent are on the throne and the guilty on the scaffold.[1] It is not, therefore, in this social and historical sense that the innovation brought by Christ consists. Let us hear what the apostle says:
Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus. (Rom 3:23-26)
God shows his righteousness and justice by having mercy! This is the great revelation. The apostle says God is “just and justifying,” that is, he is just to himself when he justifies human beings; he is in fact love and mercy, so for that reason he is just to himself—he truly demonstrates who he is—when he has mercy.
But we cannot understand any of this if we do not know exactly what the expression “the righteousness of God” means. There is a danger that people can hear about the righteousness of God but not understand its meaning, so instead of being encouraged they are frightened. St. Augustine had already clearly explained its meaning centuries ago: “The ‘righteousness of God’ is that by which we are made righteous, just as ‘the salvation of God’ [see Ps 3:8] means the salvation by which he saves us.”[2] In other words, the righteousness of God is that by which God makes those who believe in his Son Jesus acceptable to him. It does not enact justice but makes people just
Luther deserves the credit for bringing this truth back when its meaning had been lost over the centuries, at least in Christian preaching, and it is this above all for which Christianity is indebted to the Reformation, whose fifth centenary occurs next year. The reformer later wrote that when he discovered this, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”[3] But it was neither Augustine nor Luther who explained the concept of “the righteousness of God” this way; Scripture had done that before they did:
When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy” (Titus 3:4-5).
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our own trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. (see Eph 2:4-5)
Therefore, to say “the righteousness of God has been manifested” is like saying that God’s goodness, his love, his mercy, has been revealed. God’s justice not only does not contradict his mercy but consists precisely in mercy!
***
What happened on the cross that was so important as to explain this radical change in the fate of humanity? In his book on Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict XVI wrote, “That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored; it cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with; it must be overcome. Only this counts as a true mercy. And the fact that God now confronts evil himself because men are incapable of doing so—therein lies the ‘unconditional’ goodness of God.”[4]
God was not satisfied with merely forgiving people’s sins; he did infinitely more than that: he took those sins upon himself, he shouldered them himself. The Son of God, says Paul, “became sin for us.” What a shocking statement! In the Middle Ages some people found it difficult to believe that God would require the death of his Son in order to reconcile the world to himself. St. Bernard responded to this by saying, “What pleased God was not Christ’s death but his will in dying of his own accord”: “Non mors placuit sed voluntas sponte morientis.”[5] It was not death, then, but love that saved us!
The love of God reached human beings at the farthest point to which they were driven in their flight from him, death itself. The death of Christ needed to demonstrate to everyone the supreme proof of God’s mercy toward sinners. That is why his death does not even have the dignity of a certain privacy but is framed between the death of two thieves. He wants to remain a friend to sinners right up to the end, so he dies like them and with them.
***
It is time for us to realize that the opposite of mercy is not justice but vengeance. Jesus did not oppose mercy to justice but to the law of retaliation: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Ex 21:24). In forgiving sinners God is renouncing not justice but vengeance; he does not desire the death of a sinner but wants the sinner to convert and live (see Ez 18:23). On the cross Jesus did not ask his Father for vengeance.
The hate and the brutality of the terrorist attacks this week in Brussels help us to understand the divine power of Christ’s last words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:24). No matter how far the hate of human beings can go, the love of God always has been, and will be, greater. In these current circumstances Paul’s exhortation is addressed to us: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21).
We need to demythologize vengeance! It has become a pervasive mythic theme that infects everything and everybody, starting with children. A large number of the stories we see on the screen and in video games are stories of revenge, passed off at times as the victory of a good hero. Half, if not more, of the suffering in the world (apart from natural disasters and illnesses) come from the desire for revenge, whether in personal relationships or between states and nations.
It has been said that “Beauty will save the world.”[6] But beauty, as we know very well, can also lead to ruin. There is only one thing that can truly save the world, mercy! The mercy of God for human beings and the mercy of human beings for each other. In particular, it can save the most precious and fragile thing in the world at this time, marriage and the family.
Something similar happens in marriage to what happened in God’s relationship with humanity that the Bible in fact describes with the image of a wedding. In the very beginning, as I said, there was love, not mercy. Mercy comes in only after humanity’s sin. So too in marriage, in the beginning there is not mercy but love. People do not get married because of mercy but because of love. But then after years or even months of life together, the limitations of each spouse emerge, and problems with health, finance, and the children arise. A routine sets in that quenches all joy.
What can save a marriage from going downhill without any hope of coming back up again is mercy, understood in the biblical sense, that is, not just reciprocal forgiveness but spouses acting with “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience” (Col 3:12). Mercy adds agape to eros, it adds the love that gives of oneself and has compassion to the love of need and desire. God “takes pity” on human beings (see Ps 102:13). Shouldn’t a husband and wife, then, take pity on each other? And those of us who live in community, shouldn’t we take pity on one another instead of judging one another?
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, by the merits of your Son on the cross who “became sin for us” (see 2 Cor 5:21), remove any desire for vengeance from the hearts of individuals, families, and nations, and make us fall in love with mercy. Let the Holy Father’s intention in proclaiming this Year of Mercy be met with a concrete response in our lives, and let everyone experience the joy of being reconciled with you in the depth of the heart. Amen!
[1] See Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, “Sermon sur la Providence” (1662), in Oeuvres de Bossuet, eds. B. Velat and Y. Champailler (Paris: Pléiade, 1961), p. 1062.
[2] See St. Augustine, The Spirit and the Letter, 32, 56, in Augustine: Later Works, trans. and intro. John Burnaby (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 241; see also PL 44, p. 237.
[3] Martin Luther, Preface to Latin Writings, in Luther’s Works, vol. 34 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960), p. 337.
[4] Joseph Ratzinger [Benedict XVI], Jesus of Nazareth, Part II (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), p. 133.
[5] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 190, “Against the Errors of Abelard,” in Anthony N. S. Lane, Theologian of the Cross (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), pp. 201-202. See also PL 182, p. 1070.
[6] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, III, 5, trans. Henry and Olga Carlisle (New York: New American Library, 1969), p. 402.
Heeding the call of Pope Francis to include various sectors of the people of God in Holy Thursday’s Washing of the Feet ceremony as a radical sign of Christianity's service to those in the margins, Myanmar’s Cardinal Charales Bo commemorated Christ’s gesture of service with the faithful of a parish in the periphery of his Yangon Archdiocese. He celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, with the Washing of the Feet, with thousands of poor and squatters in the poor neighbourhood of St Joseph Church, Thingagyn. Populated by poor daily wage earners, rickshaw pullers and snacks vendors, the area is a microcosm of Myanmar's poverty and decades long discrimination. Earlier at Holy Thursday’s Chrism Mass, Cardinal Bo had instructed his priests to generously call forth to the altar all people, - men, women, non-Christians and poor and wash their feet. The prelate himself led by the example. Christians were...
Heeding the call of Pope Francis to include various sectors of the people of God in Holy Thursday’s Washing of the Feet ceremony as a radical sign of Christianity's service to those in the margins, Myanmar’s Cardinal Charales Bo commemorated Christ’s gesture of service with the faithful of a parish in the periphery of his Yangon Archdiocese.
He celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, with the Washing of the Feet, with thousands of poor and squatters in the poor neighbourhood of St Joseph Church, Thingagyn. Populated by poor daily wage earners, rickshaw pullers and snacks vendors, the area is a microcosm of Myanmar's poverty and decades long discrimination.
Earlier at Holy Thursday’s Chrism Mass, Cardinal Bo had instructed his priests to generously call forth to the altar all people, - men, women, non-Christians and poor and wash their feet. The prelate himself led by the example. Christians were unusually surprised to see non-Christians also lining up for the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper which used to be exclusively for Catholics. As the cardinal went about washing the feet of Muslims, women and sick people, the congregation followed with hushed silence, witnessing the enactment of Christ's love for all. A country known for hatred of Muslims and discrimination based on religion, the powerful witness of Christ's humility had a telling effect on those present. "We felt we are all brothers and sisters - whatever our religion may be" said a parishioner.
(Vatican Radio) Explosions have once again rocked the Belgian capital of Brussels in a police operation where at least one terror suspect has been shot and injured. Friday's violence came while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Brussels just days after at least 31 people were killed and 270 others injured in attacks on the Brussels airport and a subway train.It means that Good Friday in heavily Catholic Belgium was overshadowed by more anxiety. Special police forces, some wearing masks, rushed to Meiser Square in the Brussels suburb of Schaarbeek as part of a massive anti-terror operation.Soon after at least three explosions were reported. A man with a backpack was reportedly shot and "neutralized" after refusing to obey police orders. Eyewitnesses said they saw police shoot a man carrying a machine gun who had emerged from an underpass. He was reportedly rushed to hospital with injuries in a leg. Belgian television also showed bomb disposal person...
(Vatican Radio) Explosions have once again rocked the Belgian capital of Brussels in a police operation where at least one terror suspect has been shot and injured. Friday's violence came while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Brussels just days after at least 31 people were killed and 270 others injured in attacks on the Brussels airport and a subway train.
It means that Good Friday in heavily Catholic Belgium was overshadowed by more anxiety. Special police forces, some wearing masks, rushed to Meiser Square in the Brussels suburb of Schaarbeek as part of a massive anti-terror operation.
Soon after at least three explosions were reported. A man with a backpack was reportedly shot and "neutralized" after refusing to obey police orders.
Eyewitnesses said they saw police shoot a man carrying a machine gun who had emerged from an underpass. He was reportedly rushed to hospital with injuries in a leg. Belgian television also showed bomb disposal personal on the scene.
TEN DETAINED
On Friday, in total at least 10 terror suspects were known to have been detained in three European countries, including seven in Brussels, two in Germany and one in Paris.
The operations continued while US Secretary of State visited Brussels to commemorate the dozens of people who died in Tuesday's attacks, including at least two Americans. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the violence.
Kerry, standing next to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned the Islamic State group that the international community will eventually destroy its operations. "We - all of us representing countless nationalities - have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated," Kerry said.
"We will not be deterred. We will come back with greater resolve - with greater strength - and we will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth."
TURKEY'S CLAIMS
However the Belgian government faces a political crisis amid increasing evidence of intelligence and law enforcement failures to prevent this week's suicide bombings by Islamic militants.
Turkey claims that it had deported one of the suicide bombers and had warned Belgium about him. The revelation prompted two Belgian ministers to offer to resign on Thursday.
Yet, Belgian Prime Minister Michel has refused to accept their resignations. He has pledged to step up security.
Despite these efforts, government officials acknowledge that Tuesday's attacks on what is also the European Union's capital show that Europe is in their view now facing a long war against terrorism.
