We approach the "culmination" of the life of Jesus (and of the Mysteries of the Rosary). The Sorrowful Mysteries reach their maximum intensity when the great theme enters the stage: the Cross... In the 4th Sorrowful Mystery, the Cross already appears (for now, on the Lord's back): the Via Crucis begins! On this journey, perhaps, the Virgin had the opportunity to see her Son up close and address him with some words...

The Cross concentrates the history of salvation. But in any case, the Cross is essentially associated with the Resurrection: there is no real Resurrection if there is no "real death on the Cross" first; in turn, the "death on the Cross" would have no saving power (with a horizon of eternity) if it were not overcome by the Resurrection (Read more: "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him").

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1st) "What do you want me to do with the King of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" (Mk 15:12-13). The governor, Pontius Pilate, acted frivolously: "What is truth?" (Jn 18:38), he ironically responded when Jesus tried to make him reflect. Therefore, without regard for the Truth, and seeing that Jesus Christ was innocent, he made an absurd offer to the people: to choose between Barabbas and Jesus. They, crazed and obsessed, chose Barabbas! (Read more: The “courage for truth”). We cannot even imagine the pain of the Virgin: despite her efforts to defend him, her Son was definitively being taken from her...

They have chosen Barabbas and the governor no longer knows what to do. "What evil has he done?" (Mt 27:23). Answer: "Crucify him, crucify him!" (Lk 23:21). There is no reflection in anyone: they are collectively insane (Read more: "It was night"). St. John - in his "Prologue" - pays homage to the Incarnate Word, but he does so by declaring the whole truth: "He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him" (Jn 1:11). That is the life of Christ! "The life of Christ is under the imperative of 'suffering greatly' (Mk 8:31)" (H.U. von Balthasar). Mary was already warned: her Son was going to be a "sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34). Centuries later, it still remains so, and perhaps it will continue to be so until the end of time. Only God knows!" (another mystery!)

2nd) "Pilate (...) took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood'." (Mt 27:24). Frivolity doesn't lead to good outcomes. There have been countless unjust (false!) trials throughout history, but what Pontius Pilate did was completely surreal: never before had someone been declared innocent and, at the same time, sentenced to death ("even death on a cross!": Phil 2:8). Finally, "they took Jesus away. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull" (Jn 19:16-17). In the end, "people loved darkness instead of light" (Jn 3:19)... (Read More: The "zeal of the Cross": love that gives itself).

3rd) "We preach Christ crucified (...), the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Cor 1:23-24). Pilate could hardly have imagined that, with his frivolous and utilitarian behavior - disregarding the Truth - he was going to be an instrument of the most true, the most radically decisive and definitive: in the words of St. Peter, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins..." (1 Pt 2:24). In his body on the Cross! This is the theme! (Read More: “There is something greater than Solomon; and there is something greater than Jonah here”).

As for the response of the Jews - "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Mt 27:25) - it would have been better if they had spared it: in 70 AD, the troops of General Titus besieged Jerusalem and left "not one stone on another" (Lk 21:6). "Make no mistake: God is not mocked" (Gal 6:7).

4th) "Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured" (Is 53:4). Christianity as a whole (not just Saint Peter) has been fully convinced of this theme from its first generation (Read more: The pain according to Christianity). There are countless passages in the New Testament about it. And Jesus' warnings about his Passion were clear and repeated (Read more: "Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?"). But the "music" had been playing for a long time: Isaiah, for example, was absolutely explicit about it (Peter's quote we mentioned earlier just "echoes" Is 53).

The unity (continuity) between the Old and New Testaments should not surprise us: the concepts do not change (Read more: The Passion of Christ). But there is a novelty: "The true originality of the New Testament does not consist in new ideas, but in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to the concepts: an unprecedented realism" (Benedict XVI). It is no longer the "flesh" of the firstborn of Egypt, or the flesh of animals sacrificed for atonement, nor is it the "flesh" of the Holy Innocents: it is the "flesh" of the incarnate God, and it is "crucified flesh" (in the "raw" but realistic words of Saint John Paul II).

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