Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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The Passion of Christ
 


While the Lord seems to be mistaken because he is between two wrong-doers, one of them, aware of his sins, opens himself to truth, arrives at faith and prays...'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom'.
From the One who 'is before all things, and in him all things hold together', the so-called “Good Thief” straight away receives forgiveness and the joy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise'. With these words, Jesus, from the throne of the Cross welcomes every human being with infinite mercy.

 
Angelus Address
Solemnity of Christ the King
St Peter's Square
21 November 2010

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


The sacrifice of the Cross ensures that we become ‘God’s property’ because the Blood of Christ has redeemed us from sin, cleanses us from evil, and removes us from the slavery of sin and death.

 
General Audience
Paul VI Hall
Vatican City
20 June 2012

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, is recorded by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as the cry uttered by Jesus dying on the Cross (cf. Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34). It expresses all the desolation of the Messiah, Son of God, who is facing the drama of death, a reality totally opposed to the Lord of life. Forsaken by almost all his followers, betrayed and denied by the disciples, surrounded by people who insult him, Jesus is under the crushing weight of a mission that was to pass through humiliation and annihilation. This is why he cried out to the Father, and his suffering took up the sorrowful words of the Psalm. But his is not a desperate cry, nor was that of the Psalmist who, in his supplication, takes a tormented path which nevertheless opens out at last into a perspective of praise, into trust in the divine victory.

 
General Audience
Paul VI Audience Hall
14 September 2011

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


When his hour came he (Jesus) was to feel the full burden of humanity's sins upon him, like a wave at high tide about to break over him. That was indeed to be a terrible tempest, not cosmic but spiritual. It was to be the final, extreme assault of evil against the Son of God. Yet, in that hour Jesus did not doubt in the power of God the Father or in his closeness, even though he had to experience to the full the distance of hatred from love, of falsehood from the truth, of sin from grace. He experienced this drama in himself with excruciating pain, especially in Gethsemane, before his arrest, and then throughout his Passion until his death on the Cross. In that hour, Jesus on the one hand was one with the Father, fully abandoned to him; on the other, since he showed solidarity to sinners, he was, as it were, separated and felt abandoned by him.

 
Homily
San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy
21 June 2009

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


The Eucharistic sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord’s continuing passion in the members of his Mystical Body, the Church, in every age… In the life of the Church, in her trials and tribulations, Christ continues, in the stark phrase of Pascal, to be in agony until the end of the world.

 
Homily
Westminster Cathedral
London, England
18 September 2010

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


Let us pause to contemplate Christ’s disfigured face: it is the face of the Man of sorrows, who took upon himself the burden of all our mortal anguish. His face is reflected in that of every person who is humiliated and offended, sick and suffering, alone, abandoned and despised. Pouring out his blood, he has rescued us from the slavery of death, he has broken the solitude of our tears, he has entered into our every grief and our every anxiety.

 
Via Crucis
The Colosseum, Rome
Good Friday
10 April 2009

 
 
 
The Passion of Christ
 


The anguish of the Passion of the Lord Jesus cannot fail to move to pity even the most hardened hearts, as it constitutes the climax of the revelation of God’s love for each of us. Saint John observes: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). It is for love of us that Christ dies on the cross!

 
Via Crucis
The Colosseum, Rome
Good Friday
10 April 2009