Saturday, April 23 : Saint John-Paul II

The Paschal events-the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ-are also the time of the new coming of the Holy Spirit, as the Paraclete and the Spirit of truth (Jn 14,16-17). They are the time of the “new beginning” of the self- communication of the Triune God to humanity in the Holy Spirit through the work of Christ the Redeemer. This new beginning is the Redemption of the world: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3,16). Already… the gift of the Son expresses the most profound essence of God who, as Love, is the inexhaustible source of the giving of gifts. The gift made by the Son completes the revelation and giving of the eternal love: the Holy Spirit, who in the inscrutable depths of the divinity is a Person-Gift, through the work of the Son, that is to say by means of the Paschal Mystery, is given to the Apostles and to the Church in a new way, and through them is given to humanity and the whole world. The definitive expression of this mystery is had on the day of the Resurrection. On this day Jesus of Nazareth “descended from David according to the flesh,” as the Apostle Paul writes, is “designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead” (Rm 1,3-4). It can be said therefore that the messianic “raising up” of Christ in the Holy Spirit reaches its zenith in the Resurrection, in which he reveals himself also as the Son of God, “full of power.” And this power, the sources of which gush forth in the inscrutable Trinitarian communion, is manifested, first of all, in the fact that the Risen Christ does two things: on the one hand he fulfills God’s promise already expressed through the Prophet’s words: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,…my spirit” (Ez 36,26-27), and on the other hand he fulfills his own promise made to the Apostles with the words: “If I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 17,7). It is he: the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete sent by the Risen Christ to transform us into his own risen image.

maronite readings – rosary,team