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    DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE TO YOU?

    Dear friends, peace be with you from Jerusalem, from Gethsemane! 

    The Easter season is a strong time in which we have the opportunity to deepen the great Mystery of the Resurrection. It should not be understood only by reason, it would be inaccessible and abstract, it should be known in life, with faith and humility. "The wind blows where it wants and you hear its voice - says Jesus to Nicodemus - but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes: so it is of everyone who is born of the Spirit". We too can perceive the wind, but just as Jesus said, we do not know where it goes and where it comes from! This is also the Mystery of the Resurrection: we cannot possess it, but we experience it and one day we will live it ourselves! In the same way the disciples lived it: as they knew the Risen Lord they became increasingly docile to the voice and the gift of the Holy Spirit. They became 'great' in the eyes of those around them, but their secret seems to me to be told by the 'smallness' and the continuous need they had for the Risen Lord.
    We too are called to be like this: lovers of the Lord and to make the beauty of the Risen One excel in us, even in all the difficulties that this pandemic is causing, insinuating into us words, thoughts and feelings that push us away from the Lord. Let Him be the one to speak and to say the last Word to this humanity, He can! He has the right and he will, if we are available.
    In this regard we recall how in ancient times, the Bishops made the so-called ‘mystagogical catechesis' to Christian neophytes who had just received the sacraments of initiation. These catechesis had the task of instructing the new members of the Church explaining to them what they had lived. Thus does the Lord with us! There are phrases in the Gospel that are full of supernatural light and force (it is his Word!) that ask for our consent, our love and our docility to let the Lord do: "Then he opened their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures and said: thus it is written, Christ must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day" (Lk 24:45-46). Another sentence that moves me and is illuminating, is always found in the context of the Upper Room, after the Last Supper and the washing of the feet. Jesus says to his disciples: "Do you know what I have done to you?" (Jn 13:12). It is as if, approaching me, looking at me lovingly and calling me by my name he said to me: "I did all this for you, for all of you my beloved children".
    In the light of the Mystery of the Resurrection this Word acquires a dense and profound meaning! He tells us all the Mystery of his Passion and his boundless love for us all. That which I have shared with you is the Word which I have received. What is the Word that the Lord has given to you? What does he want to say to the life of each? What meaning does his Word hide? Let the Lord provoke us! Let us live in communion with him as Jesus witnessed to us in his intimate and profound relationship with the Father (Jn 5:17-30; 10:22-30; 14:7-14).
    Let us pray for the whole Church, for humanity in search of meaning, so that there may be in every Christian an ever deeper, intimate and living relationship with the Lord, in listening to what He desires from us in this time of grace.

    Happy expectation of the Holy Spirit and renewed Pentecost in the Lord!

    Hora Sancta

    We are the sons of St. Francis, and we are THE custodians, according to the will of God, of one of the places that Jesus loved the most: the garden called GETHSEMANE. This is a unique place in the world. It is the place where the Lord manifested his Yes forever by being ready to enter where nobody else had ever entered, where he plunged into darkness, in the final battle against death, in which humanity has always ended up being a loser.

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