From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Jesus tasted death for every one   
      
       Jesus not only died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3); he also, by   
   the grace of God, tasted death for every one (Hebrews 2:9). It was a   
   real death that put an end to his earthly human existence. Jesus died   
   in mid afternoon and the Sabbath began at 6:00 pm. Since the Jewish   
   law permitted no work on the Sabbath, the body had to be buried   
   quickly. Someone brave enough would have to get permission from the   
   Roman authorities to take the body and bury it. The bodies of executed   
   criminals were usually left unburied as carrion (dead flesh) for the   
   vultures and dogs. Jesus was spared this indignity through the   
   gracious intervention of Joseph of Arimethea.   
      
      
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   April 1st - Bl Giuseppe Girotti, OP, Priest & Martyr   
    (1905-1945)   
      
   “On Good Friday 1940, the Nazi SS Guards of Dachau Concentration Camp   
   found pretext to punish sixty-some priest-prisoners with an hour on   
   “the tree.” One former Dachau prisoner describes the torture saying,   
   “They tie a man’s hands together behind his back, palms facing out and   
   fingers pointing backward. Then they turn his hands inwards, tie a   
   chain around his wrists and hoist him up by it. His own weight twists   
   his joints and pulls them apart.” The barbaric aptitude of the guards   
   of Dachau incarnated the demonic for the some 2500 priests condemned   
   to incarceration in the camp during the years 1933-1945. Priests were   
   crowned with crowns of barbed wire while groups of Jewish prisoners   
   were forced to hail them as kings. Guards mocked, spat upon, and   
   forced priests to carry railroad ties, all in imitation of the   
   crucified Lord.   
      
   Every passing day in that camp must have made all-too-real the   
   wickedness and cruelty of Good Friday for those seemingly forsaken   
   prisoners. Good Friday is the only calendar day during which priests   
   do not offer the sacrifice of the Mass. Intermittently denied the   
   ability to celebrate the sacraments, the priest-prisoners found   
   themselves scrounging for scraps of bread to consecrate in clandestine   
   Masses, often going long periods without the sacraments. The few   
   luxuries they were allowed (extra helpings of food, permission to   
   gather for prayer, etc.) evoke the comforts offered Christ during his   
   passion, such as Veronica wiping his face or Simon helping to carry   
   his cross. Even these comforts though were used against the priests,   
   as the rest of the camp’s prisoners envied the liberties occasionally   
   accorded them, making the priests despised even by the other   
   prisoners: not unlike the rejection Christ endured from the angry mob.   
      
   To be sure, not all of the priest-prisoners of Dachau were saintly   
   men--some were actually notorious criminals--but some of Dachau’s   
   resident clergy have been held up as model Christians by the Church,   
   worthy of public veneration. One such priest is the relatively obscure   
   Italian Dominican friar Giuseppe Girotti.   
      
   Fr. Giuseppe--a former student of the Servant of God Père Marie-Joseph   
   Lagrange, OP--taught scripture and theology at the Dominican school of   
   theology in Turin (S. Maria della Rose). He was universally beloved by   
   his students. Fr. Giuseppe’s chef d’oeuvre, on the book of Isaiah,   
   includes a detailed study of the beautiful passages on the Suffering   
   Servant, passages applied in the New Testament to Christ in order to   
   interpret his suffering and death on the Cross.  After Italy changed   
   course to collaborate with the Allies in 1943, Fr. Giuseppe dedicated   
   himself to aiding the Jews of Italy. Having studied in Jerusalem, he   
   had a great respect for the Jewish people, whom he fondly called   
   “elder brothers” and “carriers of the word.” When asked once about his   
   work, he candidly said, “Everything I do is for charity.” He would   
   arrange escape and hideouts for Jews.  Nevertheless, his illegal work   
   on behalf of the persecuted Jews was eventually discovered. Fr.   
   Giuseppe’s own via crucis (way of the cross) began on August 29, 1944,   
   when he was betrayed, like his Master, and handed over to the police.   
      
   From the prison in Turin, Fr. Giuseppe was transferred to Milan, then   
   to Gries, finally arriving at Dachau. As Isaiah says, “Like a lamb led   
   to slaughter or a sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his   
   mouth. Seized and condemned, he was taken away. Who would have thought   
   any more of his destiny?” (Isa. 53:7-8). In the midst of the horrific   
   conditions of the camp, during the cold of the winter of 1944–1945 Fr.   
   Giuseppe often said, “We have to prepare to die, but peacefully, with   
   lighted lamps and the happiness of the saints.” On Christmas he gave   
   two lectures on the theological virtues, and was known for regularly   
   teaching his fellow inmates about Sacred Scripture. Fr. Giuseppe fell   
   ill from the camp’s inhumane state, and was transferred to the   
   infirmary.  He died there on Easter Sunday, 1945. It is assumed his   
   life was extinguished by a lethal injection of gasoline, as was the   
   common practice of the Nazi prison camps. “Because of his anguish he   
   shall see the light; because of his knowledge he shall be content”   
   (Isa. 53:11). When word spread through the camp that he had died, a   
   fellow prisoner carved into his empty bed the words, “Here slept Saint   
   Giuseppe Girotti.”   
      
    Fr. Giuseppe’s remarkable, humble witness of charity stands in stark   
   contrast to the forces of evil which tormented him. This is the   
   self-effacing embrace of the passion we memorialize on Good Friday,   
   the day of the death of Christ, the Suffering Servant. In the words of   
   the Prophet Isaiah, “Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings   
   he endured. We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and   
   afflicted. But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity.   
   He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were   
   healed” (Isa. 53:4-5). Through his own passion, Fr. Giuseppe   
   participated in Christ’s redemptive suffering for the sake of the   
   Church (see Col 1:24). His entrance into eternal life on the glorious   
   day of the Resurrection sheds a ray of hope in a dark world that one   
   day will be transformed through the saving promise of Christ’s sacred   
   Paschal Mystery.”   
   --by Br Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Look, look on Jesus, poor and crucified,look on this Holy One, who for   
   your love has died,and remember as you contemplate the sacred   
   mysteries, this Jesus whom you gaze upon, loves you most tenderly.   
   --Saint Clare of Assisi   
      
   Bible Quote:   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)