Today, March 15^th, starts the countdown for the launching of our new format "minor-evangeli.net". The great event will take place next Palm Sunday (April 15). From the very beginning, it will be edited in Spanish, Catalan, English, French and Portuguese. However, we have also started with the editing chores for Italian and Chinese …

We remind you that "minor-evangeli.net" will just complement the present "evangeli.net": this new feature offering (in 150 words) a brief DOCTRINAL EXPLANATION — by using a plain and reasoned language— about some aspects of our Christian faith (based always on the Gospel of the day).

Little by little, and along the liturgical year, there will be explanations as to the most diversified subjects of our Christian doctrine: Jesus’ divinity; the Most Holy Trinity, the Church, liturgy and the Sacraments, the Apostles, the Holy Scriptures and Tradition, family and marriage, the natural law, faith, reason, etc.

As some sort of scoop, we are attaching in this newsletter the "minor-evangeli.net" for the ,next Holy Wednesday, where Father Josep Mª Massana OFM (Friar Minor Order) explains the meaning of Easter. With this remarkable editing effort, we wish to support from Internet, Benedict XVI’s call for the new evangelism.

Best regards from the evangeli.net, team.

Contemplating today's Gospel

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Liturgical day: Wednesday of Holy Week

Today's Gospel (Mt 26:14-25): One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went off to the chief priests and said, «How much will you give me if I hand him over to you?». They promised to give him thirty pieces of silver, and from then on he kept looking for the best way to hand him over to them.

On the first day of the Festival of the Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and said to him, «Where do you want us to prepare the Passover meal for you?». Jesus answered, «Go into the city, to the house of a certain man, and tell him: ‘The Master says: My hour is near, and I will celebrate the Passover with my disciples in your house’». The disciples did as Jesus had ordered and prepared the Passover meal (…).

Commentary: Fr. Josep Mª Massana i Mola OFM (Bacelona, Spain)

The Easter

Today, the apostles are getting ready for Easter. Judas is plotting the “business” of surrendering the Master, without suspecting that his treason “provides” the Victim of the new Easter. The rest of the apostles are preparing the banquet, not realizing that Easter will not anymore be that of the Old Testament, but that of the New Testament: Jesus, Eucharistic food and victim on the Cross.

Easter means “passage”: passage or transition from slavery to freedom, passage through the desert, the Jordan, the Red Sea … A God’s step that always means protection and salvation. It was the Jews’ most important feast: sacrifice and banquet together, celebrating their history of salvation.

—Lord Jesus, I also wish to prepare your Easter as your disciples did. I know that your “hour” is approaching, by your own “surrendering”, by the sacrifice of the Cross and by the death. That your “passage” be also mine, and your Easter be my passage into a new life in You.