Pope’s Way of the Cross references perspectives from Asia
By John Thavis
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – This year’s meditation for Pope Benedict XVI’s
Good Friday Way of the Cross has a distinctly Asian perspective,
referring to Hindu scriptures, an Indian poet and Mahatma Gandhi.
But the linchpin of this Eastern reflection is the passion of Jesus
Christ. In that sense, it reflects Pope Benedict’s view of
Christianity’s relationship with the non-Christian world – that the
Gospel enlightens and fulfills the beliefs of other faiths.
Indian Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil of Guwahati wrote the meditation
on the 14 stations, to be read as the Pope leads the candelit “Via
Crucis” at Rome’s Colosseum.
The Pope chose Archbishop Menamparampil, a 72-year-old Salesian, after
hearing him deliver an impressive talk at last year’s Synod of Bishops
on Scripture. The archbishop took it as a sign of the Pope’s interest
in Asia.
“His Holiness regards very highly the identity of Asia, the cradle of
civilisation. Moreover, our Holy Father has a prophetic vision for
Asia, a continent very much cherished by him and his pontificate,” he
said.
The immediate assumption among many Vatican observers was that the
choice of an Indian would serve to highlight religious freedom issues
in the wake of anti-Christian violence in parts of India. Archbishop
Menamparampil has taken a leading role in conflict resolution among
warring ethnic groups in northeast India, and his Good Friday
meditation reflects his conviction that violence is never the way to
resolve problems.
But he doesn’t explicitly mention anti-Christian discrimination. His
aim here is not to list Christianity’s grievances, but to present its
hopes and its answers to universal questions.
The archbishop is chairman of the Federation of Asian Bishops’
Conferences’ Commission for Evangelisation, and has spoken many times
about the receptivity of Asians to the Gospel.
He has argued that the Church’s presentation of the Christian message
tends to be intellectual and doctrinal, but that it works best in Asia
when it is more personal, experiential and poetic.
He follows that approach in his “Via Crucis” meditation, focusing on
the way Jesus deals with violence and adversity, and finding parallels
in Asian culture.
Condemned to death before the Sanhedrin, for example, Jesus’ reaction
to this injustice is not to “rouse the collective anger of people
against the opponent, so that they are led into forms of greater
injustice,” the archbishop wrote.
Instead, he said, Jesus consistently confronts violence with serenity
and strength, and seeks to prompt a change of heart through nonviolent
persuasion – a teaching Gandhi brought into public life in India with
“amazing success.”
He cited another Christian success story in India, Blessed Mother
Teresa of Calcutta, when reflecting on how Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus
carry his cross.
Simon was like millions of Christians from humble backgrounds with a
deep attachment to Christ – “no glamour, no sophistication, but
profound faith,” in whom we discover “the sacredness of the ordinary
and the greatness of what looks small,” the archbishop said.
It was Jesus’ plan to lift up the lowly and sustain society’s poor and
rejected, and Blessed Mother Teresa made that her vocation, he said.
“Give me eyes that notice the needs of the poor and a heart that
reaches out in love. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in
service,” he said, borrowing a line from the Indian poet Rabindranath
Tagore.Archbishop Menamparampil echoed one of Pope Benedict’s favourite
themes when he spoke about Jesus being mocked before his crucifixion.
Today, he said, Jesus is humiliated in new ways: when the faith is
trivialised, when the sense of the sacred erodes and when religious
sentiment is considered one of the “unwelcome leftovers of antiquity.”
The archbishop said the challenge today is to remain attentive to God’s
“quiet presences” found in tabernacles and shrines, the laughter of
children, the tiniest living cell and the distant galaxies. His text
reflected the idea that Jesus’ own life embodies Indian values,
including an awareness of the sacred through contemplation.
“Allow us not to drift into the desert of godlessness. Enable us to
perceive you in the gentle breeze, see you in street corners, love you
in the unborn child,” he wrote.Archbishop Menamparampil seemed equally
comfortable drawing from the Western and Eastern Christian traditions.
He illustrated the “mystic journey” of personal faith set in motion by
Christ’s death on the cross with a verse from a psalm and an
eighth-century Irish hymn.
He ended with a meditation on Jesus’ entombment, borrowing insights
from the Eastern spiritual distinction between reality and illusion.
“Tragedies make us ponder. A tsunami tells us that life is serious.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain pilgrim places. When death strikes near,
another world draws close. We then shed our illusions and have a grasp
of the deeper reality,” he said.