Pope Benedict: 'Good Friday is the day of greatest hope'

Colosseum

Pope Benedict lead the Way of the Cross last night at the Colosseum in Rome. During his reflection he said: "Good Friday is the day of greatest hope"... "During the Way of the Cross we discover how profound Christ's love is for us."

"This night we have reflected on Jesus' face full of pain, ridiculed, insulted, disfigured by the sin of man. Tomorrow night we will contemplate his face full of joy, radiant and luminous.

"Since the moment Christ was placed in the sepulcher, the tomb and death are no longer hopeless places where history is closed with the most complete failure, where man touches the ultimate limit of his powerlessness."

The Holy Father said that when Christ died, he cried out, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit." .. "Surrendering his existence into the hands of the Father, he knows his death becomes the fount of life. As the seed in the ground has to be broken so the plant can grow. If the grain of wheat fallen in the earth does not die, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

"Jesus is the grain of wheat that falls in the earth, is torn, is broken, dies, and because of this, can bear fruit."

"From the day on which Christ was raised up on it, the cross, which looked like a sign of abandonment, loneliness and failure, became a new beginning. From the depths of death is raised up the promise of eternal life; upon the cross already shines the victorious splendor of the Easter dawn."

He said: "The Church now waits for Easter Sunday, for the dawn of the third day, the dawn of the victory of the love of God, the dawn of the light that enables the eyes of the heart to see life, difficulties and suffering in a new way. Our failures, our disillusions, our bitterness that seem to signal the collapse of everything, are enlightened by hope. The act of love of the cross, confirmed by the Father and the radiant light of the resurrection, envelops and transforms everything. From betrayal, friendship can be born; from rejection, pardon; from hate, love."

Source: VIS