Archbishop Charles Scicluna used his Palm Sunday homily to speak out against the aggression in the form of wars and terrorist attacks around the world, questioning what type of God can make humans hate so much.
“Today, on this Palm Sunday and Sunday of the Passion of Christ, we cannot help but remember the victims of so much violence and war. We remember the hundreds of victims of aggression in Ukraine, the hundreds of victims in Palestine, the land where Jesus lived, and the Israeli hostages who died. Our thoughts also go to the innocent victims of the terrorist attack in Moscow in the past days, innocent people who went for a moment of relaxation and fun but ended up victims of cruel violence in the name of God. Which God allows makes human beings hate so much?”
“Therefore, today we pray on the merits of the Passion of Jesus so that the Lord may heal us and heal the wounds of our souls. We unite ourselves with His call, praying for the Lord in His mercy to deliver us from the experience of being separated from God and that we never abandon Him,” the Archbishop said.
During his homily, he also referred to when he visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where millions of Jews were killed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
“Our guide told us: ‘The Jews say that one cannot pray here because in this place 'God has forgotten us, God has forsaken us.' But in that place of horror where the people of God in the past century felt that God had abandoned them, there is a small cell where St. Maximilian Kolbe died,” he said.
He continued, saying that in that cell, there is always a lamp burning in memory of this priest who offered himself to save a family man from being killed.
“St. Maximilian Kolbe died on August 14, and on that day, we celebrate his feast. This is a sign that even in the darkest and most abandoned moment, one still believes that God is with him,” he said.
Scicluna’s homily was based on the words found in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus asks God why he has forsaken him.
“‘Why have you forsaken me?’ The experience that Jesus undergoes on the cross resembles the experience of someone feeling completely abandoned by God or because they want Him or because the circumstances of life make them feel this way. Through Jesus' resurrection from the dead, we know that the Father never abandons His Son, and in His Son, He never abandons any one of us,” the Archbishop said.
“But today we pray much for our brothers and sisters who feel abandoned by God and estranged from Him, or because of the pain and violence of the world they feel that God has forsaken them.”