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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis presided over the Passion Liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday.

In keeping with tradition, the Preacher of the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM. Cap., preached the sermon on the occasion.

This year, the Preacher’s remarks focused entirely on the Cross of Christ: the only hope of the world.

Listen to our report: 

“The Cross,” said Fr. Cantalamessa, “does not ‘stand’ against the world but for the world: to give meaning to all the suffering that has been, that is, and that will be in human history.”

The Preacher of the Papal Household went on to say, “It is written that at the moment of Christ’s death, ‘The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised (Matt 27:51).’”

Though these signs often receive an apocalyptic explanation, he said, “[T]hey [also] indicate what should happen in the heart of a person who reads and meditates on the Passion of Christ.”

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis presided over the Passion Liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday. In keeping with tradition, the Preacher of the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM. Cap., preached the sermon on the occasion. Below, please find the full text of his prepared remarks, in their official English translation.

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Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap

“O CRUX, AVE SPES UNICA”

The Cross, the Only Hope of the World

Sermon for Good Friday, 2017, St. Peter’s Basilica

We have listened to the story of the Passion of Christ. Apparently nothing more than the account of a violent death, and news of violent deaths are rarely missing in any evening news. Even in recent days there were many of them, including those of 38 Christians Copts in Egypt killed on Palm Sunday.  These kinds of reports follow each other at such speed that we forget one day those of the day before. Why then are we here to recall the death of a man who lived 2000 years ago? The reason is that this death has changed forever the very face of death and given it a new meaning. Let us meditate for a while on it.

“When they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:33-34). At the beginning of his ministry, in response to those who asked him by what authority he chased the merchants from the temple, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). John comments on this occasion, “he spoke of the temple of his body” (Jn 2:21), and now the same Evangelist testifies that blood and water flowed from the side of this “destroyed” temple. It is a clear allusion to the prophecy in Ezekiel about a future temple of God, with water flowing from its side that was at first a stream and then a navigable river, and every form of life flourished around it (see Ezek 47:1ff).

But let us enter more deeply into the source of the “rivers of living water” (Jn 7:38) coming from the pierced heart of Christ. In Revelation the same disciple whom Jesus loved writes, “Between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). Slain, but standing, that is, pierced but resurrected and alive.

There exists now, within the Trinity and in the world, a human heart that beats not just metaphorically but physically. If Christ, in fact, has been raised from the dead, then his heart has also been raised from the dead; it is alive like the rest of his body, in a different dimension than before, a real dimension, even if it is mystical. If the Lamb is alive in heaven, “slain, but standing,” then his heart shares in that same state; it is a heart that is pierced but living—eternally pierced, precisely because he lives eternally.

There has been a phrase created to describe the depths of evil that can accumulate in the heart of humanity: “the heart of darkness.” After the sacrifice of Christ, more intense than the heart of darkness, a heart of light beats in the world. Christ, in fact, in ascending into heaven, did not abandon the earth, just as he did not abandon the Trinity in becoming incarnate.

An antiphon in the Liturgy of the Hours says, “the plan of the Father” is now fulfilled in “making Christ the heart of the world.” This explains the unshakeable Christian optimism that led a medieval mystic to exclaim that it is to be expected that “there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing [sic] shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).

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The Carthusian monks have adopted a coat of arms that appears at the entrance to their monastery, in their official documents, and in other settings. It consists of a globe of the earth surmounted by a cross with writing around it that says, “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis” (“The Cross stands firm as the world turns”).

What does the cross represent in being this fixed point, this mainmast in the undulation of the world? It is the definitive and irreversible “no” of God to violence, injustice, hate, lies—to all that we call “evil,” and at the same it is equally the irreversible “yes” to love, truth, and goodness. “No” to sin, “yes” to the sinner. It is what Jesus practiced all his life and that he now definitively consecrates with his death.

The reason for this differentiation is clear: sinners are creatures of God and preserve their dignity, despite all their aberrations; that is not the case for sin; it is a spurious reality that is added on, the result of one’s passions and of the “the devil’s envy” (Wis 2:24). It is the same reason for which the Word, in becoming incarnate, assumed to himself everything human except for sin. The good thief to whom the dying Jesus promised paradise, is the living demonstration of all this. No one should give up hope; no one should say, like Cain, “My sin is too great to be forgiven” (see Gen 4:13).

The cross, then, does not “stand” against the world but for the world: to give meaning to all the suffering that has been, that is, and that will be in human history. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:17). The cross is the living proclamation that the final victory does not belong to the one who triumphs over others but to the one who triumphs over self; not to the one who causes suffering but to the one who is suffering.

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 “Dum volvitur orbis,” as the world turns.  Human history has seen many transitions from one era to another; we speak about the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, the imperial age, the atomic age, the electronic age. But today there is something new. The idea of a transition is no longer sufficient to describe our current situation. Alongside the idea of a change, one must also place the idea of a dissolution.  It has been said that we are now living in a “liquid society.”  There are no longer any fixed points, any undisputed values, any rock in the sea to which we can cling or with which we can collide. Everything is in flux.

The worst of the hypotheses the philosopher had foreseen as the effect of the death of God has come to pass, which the advent of the super-man was supposed to prevent but did not prevent: “What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness?” (Nietzsche, Gay Science, aphorism 125).

It has been said that “killing God is the most horrible of suicides,” and that is in part what we are seeing. It is not true that “where God is born, man dies” (Jean-Paul Sartre). Just the opposite is true: where God dies, man dies.

A surrealist artist from the second half of the last century (Salvador Dalí)  painted a crucifix that seems to be a prophecy of this situation. It depicts an immense, cosmic cross with an equally immense Christ seen from above with his head tilted downward. Below him, however, is not land but water. The Crucified One is not suspended between heaven and earth but between heaven and the liquid element of the earth.

This tragic image (there is also in the background a cloud that could allude to an atomic cloud) nevertheless contains a consoling certainty: there is hope even for a liquid society like ours! There is hope because above it “the cross of Christ stands.” This is what the liturgy for Good Friday has us repeat every year with the words of the poet Venanzio Fortunato: “O crux, ave spes unica,” “Hail, O Cross, our only hope.”

Yes, God died, he died in his Son Christ Jesus; but he did not remain in the tomb, he was raised. “You crucified and killed Him,” Peter shouts to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, “But God raised him up” (see Act 2:23-24). He is the one who “died but is now alive for evermore” (see Rev 1:18). The cross does not “stand” motionless in the midst of the world’s upheavals as a reminder of a past event or a mere symbol; it is an ongoing reality that is living and operative.

* * *

We would make this liturgy of the Passion pointless, however, if we stopped, like the sociologists, at the analysis of the society in which we live. Christ did not come to explain things but to change human beings. The heart of darkness is not only that of some evil person hidden deep in the jungle, nor is it only that of the western society that produced it. It is in each one of us in varying degrees.

The Bible calls it a heart of stone: “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone,” God says through the prophet Ezekiel, “and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26). A heart of stone is a heart that is closed to God’s will and to the suffering of brothers and sisters, a heart of someone who accumulates unlimited sums of money and remains indifferent to the desperation of the person who does not have a glass of water to give to his or her own child; it is also the heart of someone who lets himself or herself be completely dominated by impure passion and is ready to kill for that passion or to lead a double life. Not to keep our gaze turned only outward toward others, we can say that this also actually describes our hearts as ministers for God and as practicing Christians if we still live fundamentally “for ourselves” and not “for the Lord.”

It is written that at the moment of Christ’s death, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matt 27:51). These signs are generally given an apocalyptic explanation as if it is the symbolic language needed to describe the eschatological event. But these signs also have a parenetic significance: they indicate what should happen in the heart of a person who reads and meditates on the Passion of Christ. In a liturgy like today’s, St. Leo the Great said to the faithful, “The earth—our earthly nature—should tremble at the suffering of its Redeemer. The rocks—the hearts of unbelievers—should burst asunder. The dead, imprisoned in the tombs of their mortality, should come forth, the massive stones now ripped apart.” (“Sermon 66,” 3; PL 54, 366).

The heart of flesh, promised by God through the prophets, is now present in the world: it is the heart of Christ pierced on the cross, the heart we venerate as the “Sacred Heart.” In receiving the Eucharist we firmly believe his very heart comes to beat inside of us as well. As we are about to gaze upon the cross, let us say from the bottom of our hearts, like the tax collector in the temple, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” and then we too, like he did, will return home “justified” (Lk 18:13-14).

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Translated from Italian by Marsha Daigle Williamson

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(Vatican Radio) The former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan says it warned a western ally before last week's deadly truck attack
in Stockholm that the suspected perpetrator was a recruit of the Islamic State group. Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov suggested
that last week's truck attack in the Swedish capital, in which four people died, could have been prevented.

Listen to Stefan Bos' report:

He said the man who allegedly carried out the attack, 39-year-old Rakhmat Akilov, was recruited by the Islamic State group after leaving Uzbekistan in 2014. Minister Kamilov said that information about Akilov had been passed to one of Uzebekistan's "Western partners so that the Swedish side could be informed".

Kamilov did not identify the intermediary country or organization.

Minister Kamilov said the suspect had "actively urged his compatriots to travel to Syria in order to fight for Islamic State". Akilov allegedly used online messaging services to recruit potential fighters.

It is seen as rare for the Uzbek authorities to disclose such intelligence details. Sweden's security service says it can neither confirm nor deny receiving the information from Uzbekistan.

TRYING SYRIA 

An Uzbek security source said this week that Akilov had tried to travel to Syria
in 2015 to join the Islamic State group. But he was reportedly detained at the Turkish-Syrian border and deported back to Sweden.

Security sources said Uzbekistan authorities had in February put him on a wanted list of people suspected of religious extremism.
But Swedish police revealed last week they had intelligence on Akilov in 2016, but that they could not verify the information.

Rakhmat Akilov was detained after four people were killed and 15 injured when a truck rammed a department store in central Stockholm.
He has already guilty to terrorist crimes. However Swedish prosecutor Hans Ihrman said the investigation is still ongoing. “We’ll do whatever we can to
get all the guilty persons and put them in front of the court. If there is one person or others. That is what we are investigating right now.
That is our main purpose,” he said.

No group has claimed the Stockholm attack. Suspect Akilov reportedly ran from the scene of the crash, still covered in blood and glass, and was
detained later in a northern suburb of Stockholm.

He reportedly left a wife and four children behind in Uzbekistan to earn money to send home.

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Vatican City, Apr 14, 2017 / 10:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Even as sinful people in a society filled with violence and increasing secularism, we have hope because Christ's cross perdures, the papal preacher said at the Vatican's Good Friday Service.

“The cross, then, does not ‘stand’ against the world but for the world: to give meaning to all the suffering that has been, that is, and that will be in human history,” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., said April 14.

He gave the homily during the Celebration of the Lord's Passion presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica. Fr. Cantalamessa also gave the homilies at Mass at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta on Fridays throughout Lent.

Today, we are constantly hearing about death and violence, he said. “Why then are we here to recall the death of a man who lived 2,000 years ago?”

“The reason is that this death has changed forever the very face of death and given it a new meaning,” he said.

Fr. Cantalamessa preached: “The cross is the living proclamation that the final victory does not belong to the one who triumphs over others but to the one who triumphs over self; not to the one who causes suffering but to the one who is suffering.”

He explained how the Carthusian monks have adopted a coat of arms that hangs at the entrance to their monastery. It has a globe of the earth with a cross above it, and written across it: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis,” or “The cross stands firm as the world turns.”

He described a painting by Salvador Dali, called “Christ of St. John of the Cross.” It depicts Christ on the cross as if you are looking from above. Beneath him are clouds, and below that, water.

In a way, the water beneath Christ in this image, instead of earth, is a symbol of the lack of firm foundation of values in our current society, he explained. But even though we live in this very “liquid society,” there is still hope, because “the cross of Christ stands.”

“This is what the liturgy for Good Friday has us repeat every year with the words of the poet Venanzio Fortunato: ‘O crux, ave spes unica,’ ‘Hail, O Cross, our only hope.’”

The point of Christ’s Passion, however, is not an analysis of society, he said. “Christ did not come to explain things, but to change human beings.”

In each of us, to varying degrees, is a “heart of darkness,” he said. In the Bible, it is called “a heart of stone.”

“A heart of stone is a heart that is closed to God’s will and to the suffering of brothers and sisters, a heart of someone who accumulates unlimited sums of money and remains indifferent to the desperation of the person who does not have a glass of water to give to his or her own child; it is also the heart of someone who lets himself or herself be completely dominated by impure passion and is ready to kill for that passion or to lead a double life,” he said.

He explained that even as practicing Christians we have these hearts of stone when we live fundamentally for ourselves and not for the Lord.

Quoting God’s words through the prophet Ezekiel, Fr. Cantalamessa said: “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh.”

He went on to explain how in Scripture we are told that at the moment of Christ’s death, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”

This description, using apocalyptic language and signs, indicates “what should happen in the heart of a person who reads and meditates on the Passion of Christ.”

“The heart of flesh, promised by God through the prophets, is now present in the world: it is the heart of Christ pierced on the cross, the heart we venerate as the “Sacred Heart,’” he said.

We believe that though he was slain, because Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, his heart has also “been raised from the dead; it is alive like the rest of his body.”

And when we receive the Eucharist, we “firmly believe” that the very heart of Christ has come to “beat inside of us” as well, he explained.

“As we are about to gaze upon the cross, let us say from the bottom of our hearts, like the tax collector in the temple, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ and then we too, like he did, will return home ‘justified’.”

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Jaclyn Lippelmann, Cat

By Chaz Muth

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As U.S. Catholics prepared for Easter, the hierarchy of the church used the symbol of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ as a path to bring peace to society's troubled spots.

In cities across the country, the Good Friday Way of the Cross has become a modern-day portrayal of the 14 Stations of the Cross in the passion of Jesus and a way of drawing attention to social justice issues of the day.

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago led a Good Friday "Walk for Peace" April 14 through the Englewood neighborhood of his city that has been a hot spot for violent crime.

The walk was organized by the archdiocese, its parishes and a host of other Catholic groups and Chicago organizations.

In addition to pausing as participants traced the Stations of the Cross, there were testimonies from people who have lost loved ones to violence in Chicago during the past year.

During his Palm Sunday homily at Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral, Cardinal Cupich said this neighborhood was chosen for the Good Friday walk to let the local citizens overwhelmed by violence know they have not been forgotten.

"We do so at a time when all efforts to quell the violence seem useless, the problems so complex and the challenges so enormous; when people have lost hope because all they see around them is in total collapse," he said. "But, we also do so in a week called holy, when grace surges in us again as we look at the crucifix and are reminded that no act of love is ever wasted."

Monuments and art exhibits in Washington were used as the backdrop for an April 7 Stations of the Cross walk, giving participants points of reference to relate more contemporary sufferings and renewal from hardship to Jesus' passion.

"These 14 moments in which Christians recall the emotion, the feeling, the thoughts in those final hours of Jesus' life actually evoke issues that are pertinent to so many issues of social justice today," said the Rev. Catriona Laing, interim associate rector at the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church in Washington, and co-curator of the walk in the nation's capital.

"The Stations of the Cross has become more and more of a way for Christians to voice their solidarity, their compassion, their empathy, to those who suffer in different ways, who find themselves on the margins of society today," she said.

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington washed the feet of 12 people Holy Thursday, just as Christ washed the feet of the 12 apostles at the Last Supper.

The foot washing also was in solidarity with Pope Francis, who washed the feet of 12 inmates at a maximum security prison outside of Rome on Holy Thursday, a sign of service to people on the margins of society.

In its 35th annual Good Friday Way of the Cross in New York, the Catholic peace organization Pax Christi Metro New York called on its participants to reflect on the many ways Jesus called the world to active nonviolence.

The politically charged issue of immigration was to be the focus of an evening Good Friday event a few miles away from Manhattan.

Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, New York, was scheduled to lead thousands of Italian-Americans through the streets of Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood praying the Way of the Cross during the evening hours of Good Friday, to honor the influx of immigrants from southern Italy who populated the area and brought the tradition from their homeland.

Holy Week is meant to remind Catholics what it means to be a Christian in today's world and how they can bring hope and possibility to an uncertain society, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said in an April 13 column for Angelus, the magazine and online news site of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

"When we know Jesus, we feel his desire to change the world," Archbishop Gomez said, "to give homes to the homeless and food to the hungry, to visit the prisoner and welcome the stranger; we want to defend the most vulnerable -- the child in the womb, the elderly and disabled."

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Follow Chaz Muth on Twitter: @Chazmaniandevyl.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jesus came to the world not just to teach, but to radically change human hearts that have hardened from sin, the preacher of the papal household said during a service commemorating Christ's death on the cross.

"A heart of stone is a heart that is closed to God's will and to the suffering of brothers and sisters," but God, through the son, offers the world "a heart of flesh," Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said in the homily.

Pope Francis presided over the Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord's Passion April 14 in St. Peter's Basilica, which began with a silent procession down the central nave under dim lighting to emphasize the solemnity of the ceremony.

The pope then lay prostrate on the floor before the main altar of the basilica, his head resting upon his clasped hands on a red pillow, in silent prayer, in a sign of adoration and penance. As is customary, the papal household's preacher gave the homily.

Father Cantalamessa said the motto of the Carthusian monks, "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" (The cross is steady while the world is turning), represents Christ and his cross standing firm, not against the world, which is always in flux, "but for the world, to give meaning to all the suffering that has been, that is and that will be in human history."

Jesus came not to condemn sinners, who "are creatures of God and preserve their dignity," but to admonish the sin, which is the "result of one's passions and of the 'devil's envy,'" he said.

Today's world seems especially "fluid," he continued, with no fixed moorings, no undisputed values, where "everything is in flux, even the distinction between sexes."

The cross standing in and over the world as represented in the monks' coat of arms, he said, is the "mainmast that holds the boat afloat in the undulation of the world" and marks the "definitive and irreversible 'no' of God to violence, injustice, hate, lies -- to all that we call 'evil,' and at the same it is equally the irreversible 'yes' to love, truth, and goodness."

No one should ever give up hope, he said, because "the cross is the living proclamation that the final victory does not belong to the one who triumphs over others but to the one who triumphs over self; not to the one who causes suffering but to the one who is suffering."

Father Cantalamessa said, "Christ did not come to explain things, but to change human beings," who each possess some varying degree of "a heart of darkness," a heart hardened by sin.

The Bible calls it a heart of stone, he said, which is the heart of those who ignore God's will and others' pain; it is someone, for example, who "accumulates unlimited sums of money and remains indifferent to the desperation of the person who does not have a glass of water to give to his or her own child; it is also the heart of someone who lets himself or herself be completely dominated by the instincts of the flesh and is ready to kill or to lead a double life."

It is also the heart of the church's ministers and practicing Christians who "still live fundamentally 'for ourselves' and not 'for the Lord,'" he said.

When Christ died, the earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs were opened. These signs also indicate, the papal preacher said, "what should happen in the heart of a person who reads and meditates on the Passion of Christ."

Quoting St. Leo the Great, the preacher said people's earthly nature should tremble at the suffering of the savior, "the rocks -- the hearts of unbelievers -- should burst asunder. The dead, imprisoned in the tombs of their mortality, should come forth, the massive stones now ripped apart."

The heart of flesh God promised "is now present in the world" and in receiving the Eucharist, "we firmly believe his very heart comes to beat inside of us as well."

He asked the assembly to gaze upon the cross and implore, like the tax collector in the temple, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" so "we too, like he did, will return home 'justified, that is, reconciled with God, and if it's necessary, with our cross.'"

After the homily, the assembly venerated the cross, which was carried down the central nave and held before the pope, who kissed and caressed it.

Pope Francis was scheduled to speak briefly later that night at the end of the Stations of the Cross in Rome's Colosseum.

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Follow Glatz on Twitter: @CarolGlatz.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy Margie Legowsk

By Rhina Guidos

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (CNS) -- Far from the Easter baskets and dresses, the pastel-colored candy and the White House Easter egg roll, Washington resident Margie Legowski found herself anticipating her second Easter season surrounded by some of the most impoverished masses of El Salvador.

She decided to spend Holy Week 2017 in a section of San Salvador considered so violent by locals that it's difficult to find a taxi to take you in or out.

Legowski, a parishioner at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington's tony neighborhood of Georgetown, said she has found that the place known as La Chacra is one of the top places she'd rather spend the holiest of days in Christianity. 

There's nothing like it, said Legowski, who mingled about with the locals of Maria Madre de los Pobres, or Mary Mother of the Poor Catholic Church, participating with them in religious processions with life-size statues of the saints through the streets of La Chacra, meditating with the neighborhood's Catholic residents on the real-life Stations of the Cross they endure.

La Chacra is filled with those who identify with the pain and suffering associated with the Stations of Cross en route toward the Resurrection because they go through tougher challenges than most people in daily life.

Many of them have seen their children die in the rampant gang killings that plague their neighborhood almost daily. 

They've seen the children, and other youth they've known, flee in the middle of the night, never to return after they've refused to join a gang against their will. They've seen their neighbors and friends suffer after gang members drop by their homes to collect "rent," the name the vandals have given to the organized extortion, a monthly fee they impose on La Chacra's poverty-stricken residents. They suffer marginalization by others in San Salvador who alienate them sometimes simply because of the place where they live.

"Every week is Holy Week here," because of the suffering, said Legowski.

For more than 20 years, her Washington parish has had a "sister parish" relationship with Maria de los Pobres so the problems of La Chacra are well-known to Legowski and other Holy Trinity parishioners who make regular visits throughout the year to "accompany" their fellow Catholics at the Salvadoran parish. There's a lot of joy and kinship that has developed between the two parishes that couldn't be situated in more different environments.

The Jesuit-run Holy Trinity Church in Washington is surrounded by homes of some members of Congress, diplomats and other Washington notables. John F. Kennedy occasionally attended Mass there when he was U.S. president. Maria Madre de los Pobres' claim to fame is that, because of its high homicide rate, it's appeared in the pages of The New York Times and other publications whenever there's a need to illustrate the depravity of gang violence in Latin America.

But the way Legowski sees it, the sense of community and faith found in La Chacra, makes it also a place to strengthen and fill one's spiritual well.

She said saw a real-life Stations of the Cross in a recent incident in which a community member named Carlos was stripped, beaten, and left for dead, or in a mother mourning the murder of her son at the hands of local gangs.

In another church nearby, during a "migrant Via Crucis" focused on those who are forced to flee their native countries, she thought about Jesus' suffering during one of the stations depicting one of the many Salvadoran women who have left the country for the U.S. looking for work. The scene at that particular station depicted an injured migrant near the U.S.-Mexico border. Like the biblical Veronica, who stepped in to wipe Jesus' forehead when he was carrying his cross to Golgotha, another woman, a Veronica of sorts, stepped in to wipe the brow of the migrant.

"I now see the (Stations of the Cross) as something present in our lives, in the here and now, and not just a series of events that happened to one man 2,000 years ago," she said.

Being in El Salvador during Holy Week and entering Resurrection Sunday here "has caused me to think very differently about the images I'd seen painted or carved on church walls throughout my childhood," she said in an interview with Catholic News Service. Today, she sees what they mean as they pertain to situations unfolding before her eyes.

Just as Holy Trinity-Georgetown is part of her spiritual community, so is Maria Madre de los Pobres, and the worries of the parishioners there are her worries, too, she said. While she has seen a lot of suffering, she also has learned that the parish doesn't allow other members of the community to bear his or her burdens alone. Maria Madre de los Pobres is a place, she said, "where the entire community reaches out to help carry the collective cross. It may be poor financially, but not socially. 

"What I receive is a powerful sense of connection and community, in spite of my nascent (Spanish) language skills. When I later encounter someone with whom I walked and prayed, we smile and nod at each other. We are now one," she said.

And that's where, in the midst of all suffering, she has discovered the great lesson of Christianity : "There is hope of change, of resurrection," she said.

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Follow Guidos on Twitter: @CNS_Rhina.

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