Trebeski - Forte

The Via Crucis of Alberto Trebeschi
where the Word is Light of Hope
by
Bruno Forte
Archbishop of Chieti Vasto
As memory of the love of Christ who delivered himself to death for us, the work of the Via Crucis rings in a simple but profound way the good news of the infinite value of every grief offered with love. In the hour of suffering and trial this tells us that we are not alone: an Other has preceded us and gives significance to out solitude and our grief. This Other one is Jesus, Christ, the Crucified Resurrected from the dead: it is Him the Living One who continues to accompany us, loving us right to the end, even when our paths appear marked by the weight of solitude, of abandonment and of the trial that seems to crush us.
It is not individual grief alone which is reached and redeemed by His Cross: the memory of the Passion of our Lord also touches collective grief, the grief of time. The absence of sense and hope which frequently brings obscurity to the horizon of our life together, the violence and injustice which every day makes up the great history of the world and the small history of each one of us, find in the Passion of the Son of God a gleam of light, a source of strength and of new life. The path of the Cross leads to the Gospel that the Crucifixion, full of all human suffering and the infinite grief of not understanding its sense, is life risen again.
The cry of the Abandoned One has not been left unheard. The Father has resuscitated Him from the dead with the power of the life-giving Spirit. During our epoch sickened by lack of hope, Jesus vanquisher of death, offers himself as the great hope, that which does not delude, the sole one which opens the future voyage towards a confidence greater than any delusion or defeat. The God who gave a full and new life to the one Abandoned on Good Friday, is truly the God of life for all of us! The path of the Cross evokes in the sign of grief, the love which wins over suffering and death.
Exactly because of its permanent power of feeling, the Via Crucis has inspired the most diverse forms of human creativity: works of art, of poetry, of thought and prayer have deigned to relate it. It does not therefore surprise me that an Artist of our days, at the peak of his figurative itinerary, has felt the need to represent the Path of the Cross. Starting from the crisis of