In the dark night of the Mount of Olives, “Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom”, said Pope Benedict XVI this Holy Thursday, duringMissa in coena Domini, Mass of Our Lord’s Supper. “We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom”. This he said, is “the fundamental lie which perverts life”.
As sun set over the Tiber, Pope Benedict XVI crossed Rome to the church dedicated to the Saviour, the Cathedral of St John Lateran, his seat as Bishop of Rome. There among the faithful of his diocese, the Holy Father marked the end of Lent and the beginning of the sacred “Triduum” (three days) of Holy Week: From sundown Holy Thursday to Vespers on Easter Sunday, the memorial of Christ’s Passion, death and Resurrection.
Mass of Our Lord’s Last Supper begins in the evening, because Passover began at sundown; it commemorates Our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper in the Upper Room. But not only, as Pope Benedict pointed out in his homily: “Holy Thursday also belongs to the dark night of the Mount of Olives”.
It is into this dark night that Jesus goes, in prayer to encounter the darkness of death. “Night”, said the Pope, “signifies lack of communication, a situation where people do not see each other”, it is “a symbol of incomprehension, of an obscuring of the truth”, where evil has room to grow. Jesus enters this night to overcome it.
Pope Benedict then turned to the prayer of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, saying that from it we can learn trust in God who is goodness and power. “Christians, in kneeling enter into Jesus’ prayer”. “When menaced by the power of evil, as they kneel, they are upright before the world, while as sons and daughters, they kneel before the Father”.
Furthermore, he added, Jesus’ dread on the Mount of Olives is of one “who is completely pure and holy as he sees the entire flood of this world’s evil bursting upon him”. But who “also sees me and prays for me”. This moment of mortal anguish, said Pope Benedict “is an essential part of the process of redemption”. “Jesus struggles with the Father. He struggles with himself. He struggles for us”.
POPE: A PRIEST NEVER BELONGS TO HIMSELF
Pope Benedict on Thursday morning presided at the Chrism Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, addressing his homily especially to priests on the day the Church commemorates Christ’s institution of the priesthood. Some 1600 priests from the Rome diocese were present in the Basilica to hear the Pope’s words and to renew their vows during this Holy Thursday liturgy. Speaking about the dramatic situation of the church today, Pope Benedict responded directly to a call to disobedience made recently by a group of priests in Austria that is calling for changes to the teaching on women priests and other traditional aspects of the Magisterium.
Recalling the words of his predecessor, John Paul II who said the Church has no authority from the Lord to ordain women priests, Benedict asked ‘Is disobedience a path of renewal for the Church?’
Pope Benedict said anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognise the process of true renewal which, he added, often took – and continues to take – unexpected forms. If we look at the people from whom these fresh currents of life burst forth, he said, we see this requires being filled with the joy of faith, the radicalism of obedience, the dynamism of hope and the power of love.
Pope Benedict stressed that configuration to Christ is the precondition and basis for all renewal in the Church and he reminded priests they are charged with teaching the faith to a society that is growing increasingly illiterate in matters of the basic foundations of faith. While they must be concerned with the whole human person and therefore the physical needs of the sick, the hungry, the homeless, he said priests should also be filled with enthusiasm as they respond also to the needs of the soul.