LIFE, SERVICE AND LOVE
My brothers and sisters, my loved brothers in the sacerdotal ministry,
deacons, chaplains, chapter of Guadalupe; loved brothers and sisters
of the consecrated life, may the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ be
our unique pride, because we have the salvation, life, and the resurrection
in Him, and we have been saved and redeemed by Him.
The celebration of this afternoon has a special tone that wants to
recall that same intimate and intense atmosphere, that this encounter
of Jesus with His disciples had to have: “before the celebration
of the Easter, when Jesus knew that the time to pass from this world
to the father had come”. In these last moments, Jesus wants
to meet his friends, in order to take leave of them to leave his last
message them.
This afternoon, in the little house of the lady of heaven, we want
to be those friends of Jesus that were with Him, in that important
moment, because we love him and because for this, we want to fulfill
His will.
This afternoon, we start with a very special moment of grace, the
Paschal Triduum. Three days that submerge to us in a special way in
the mystery of the passion, death, interment and resurrection of our
redemeer Jesus Christ. We start today, celebrating the institution
of the Eucharist as memorial of the New Covenant.
The development of the celebration takes us to consider necessarily
other two aspects of the mystery: the service of the charity, and
the institution of the ministerial priesthood, intimately connected
to the Holy Eucharist.
But the joy of this holy triduum that achieve its highest point in
the paschal vigil can not be alien to the historical moment through
which the whole humanity and our dear Mexico (in concret) is passing.
This morning our archbishop, the cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera,
in the chrismal mass in the cathedral said: “The joy of the
Holy Week has been darkened by the attack to the values more loved
for the mexican people, the family´s values. First, with the
approval of an immoral law called “law of coexistence, that
it does not have another aim that the erosion of the marriage, project
that don´t obey to a social way of organization, but to the
God´s aims who constituted the marriage as the union between
the man and the woman. Second, the proposal of an immoral law that
tries to make legal the thing that is absolutely immoral, the elimination
of the baby in the womb of his mother.
We, the ministers of the Lord of live can not stay indifferent before
this attack from evil, our prophetic mission ask us to defend life
from its conception to the its natural end. Not to do it (our archbishop
said to the hundreds and hundreds of priests celebrating with him
there,) would be to betray the Gospel and to sin seriously of omission.
For that reason I ask you to give support decidedly to your parishioners
and all the iniciatives in favor to life. Do not allow (as the loved
servant of God Juan Pablo II asked) “That the abominable crime
of the abortion, shame of the humanity, condemns to the children conceived
to the most unjust of the executions, the one of the human being more
innocents”, until here the words of our Archbishop.
My dear brothers, I invite all of you to let that God through his
Son Jesus Christ makes us the service of making us to find the sense
of this absurd actions that contradict the plan that has been revealed
to us by the death and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Allow to Jesus that He washes our feet. It means, that he gives us
the services, because that is the reason for wich He came, to save
us from hatred, from lie, from corruption, from deceit, in order to
be able to open each other in love. Jesus gave his life for us, as
a supreme action of the God´s love for us, and he commanded
us to do the same thing, that our happiness did not depend on another
thing that were not love until death, specially for those who need
us.
My dear brothers, the Sacred Eucharist is the effective sign of the
God´s love for us, and for that reason, the source of love in
the service in each other. The service which gives sense is the one
which gives all the things that we live in the adventure and in the
misfortune. The servive is the thing that is more like God, because
it is the best expression of love.
This afternoon, my dear brothers and sisters, in the memorial of the
Lord´s supper, we make the intention to unite us to the prayer
of Christ for the whole humanity. Even for those who reject Him (because
Christ offered himself for everybody) which is very probable that
many people reject Him because of our fault.
The deepest sense of the Eucharistic celebration is the thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving for all His gifts, mainly for the more sublime gift:
His loved Son, with whom we have received grace on grace.
A multitude of gifts, and among them, the life to which we are invited
to participate from now on in the measure in which we unite us to
Him through the sacramet of the Eucharist and the practice of the
brotherly love. We are beings for life and from now on we must know
to live intensely, but we will life intensely in the measure that
we are disciples of the Lord Jesus and we keep an alive and existencial
comunion with Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life.
My loved brothers, the life to which we have been called by the love
of our parents is worth much, much more. In the hierarchy of values
it takes the first place. For that reason it deserves the maximum
respect in any of its stages, from the beginning until its natural
death.
Then, when we propose to the christians to defend life, and when we
oppose everything that tries to diminish or to eliminate it, we are
not doing another thing, just that Jesus did when He raised, when
He healed or improved it; but mainly when he offered his own life.
Doing all this, specially for the most unprotected, for those who
are not valued, it is as surely we are reaffirming the eternal life,
from now on, because the eternal life must be enjoyed now or it will
never be enjoyed, there is not a beyond, but here, there is no an
after, but here.
In other words, my dear brothers, Jesus has promised that we can get
the eternal life, but only through the way of service, that is of
the cross and love.
Brothers, love, service, and life are that we celebrate today, in
this Holy Thursday, in this holy afternoon. Jesus in his mortal life
taught to us, with His own example that are inseparable. And this
is that means the Eucharist that is mainly an encounter of brothers
with the Great Brother before the Father, the good Father God of Jesus
and ours. In addition to the Eucharist, Jesus has left the gift of
the ministerial priesthood.
First, it is a gift for the Church, more than a personal gift. The
Church is congregated by the sacerdotal exercise to listen the Word
and to offer Christ to the Father, and with Him also offers itself.
Today, my brothers, day of the priesthood, it is a good occasion to
value and to pray for the sacerdotal vocations. Loved brothers that
are in the little house of the mother, dear brothers that through
the radio and the television are united to us, why you do not offer
one of your children to the Lord for the sacerdotal ministry? It is
worth to be priest, it is worth to be a consecrated person.
Today, my brothers, we pray to beg the Father of mercy that He encourages
to the hearts of many youth people the desire to consecrate life to
the service of the kingdom and of their brothers. By our part, we
have to work in order to live the values of the Gospel in our families,
that our families become themselves in the best environment to cultivate
those vocations. My dear brothers and sisters, pray for your priests,
may the Lord spills abundantly on us His celestial gifts to be faithful
ministers of Christ, sublime and eternal priest, and to lead you to
Him who is the unique source of salvation; may we are an alive image
between you, and every time an image more perfect of the priest Christ,
good pastor, teacher and servant of everybody.
Let us our reflection being thankful to Jesus, because of his invitation
to be with Him this important afternoon, let us say to them that we
love them and that we want to fulfill His will and that we are convinced
that as His disciples, we have to distinguish ourselves by our capacity
to love, for our capacity of service, nobody has a greater love for
his friends that the one who gives his life for them.
Wherever a christian is, he or she must be recognized by a special
perfume, the one of the charity, of love, of service. A christian
is the one that loves more and the one that loves better. Said it
in a personal way, christian is the one that feels himself loved by
the Lord Jesus, and the one that wants to love like Him, to the way
of a God.
May the Lord keeps everybody in His love, and He takes all us, shepherds
and ewes, to the eternal life. May this be like this, my dear brothers.
