The Lion of the tribe of Judah

The author here is using the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation as a commentary on the Passion read during Good Friday. 

He has conquered! This is the news the sage was charged to make re-echo in the Church, just as the Church must make it re-echo throughout the world for all time: the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered! (The "Lion of the tribe of Judah" is the Messiah, so-called by Jacob in the book of Genesis 49:9, when he was blessing his son Judah). The Long-awaited event that gives meaning to everything has taken place. History can never go back. ...

That simple verb enikesen—"he has conquered"—contains the very principle that gives history a kind of absoluteness. It gives eternal and universal value to an event that took place at a given point in time and space. ... It represents for history what the principle of noncontradiction represents for metaphysics. It is impossible to go back to the previous state of things. Nothing and no one in the world, no matter how hard they might try, can change what happened—that is, that Jesus Christ died and rose again, that we are redeemed, that the Church was founded, the sacraments instituted, the kingdom of God established.

Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, The Power of the Cross

If the whole of Scripture were to start talking at once ...

Jesus suffered and died freely, out of love—not by chance, not out of necessity, not because of some hidden catalyst or misunderstanding that took him unawares or against his will. To assert such would be to nullify the Gospel, to remove its soul, because the Gospel is nothing other than the good news of God's love in Christ Jesus. Not only the gospel but the entire Bible is nothing other than the news of God's mysterious, incomprehensible love for people. If the whole of Scripture were to start talking at once, if by some miracle the written words were transformed into speech, that voice would be more powerful than the waves of the sea, and it would cry out: "God loves you."

Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, The Power of the Cross

I'm reading this book during Lent, and it is a powerhouse of reflection. He has been the papal preacher for three different popes over 4 decades. This is a collection of his Good Friday homilies, 43 of them from 1980 - 2022. It is truly amazing to see how many different topics are found in the same collection of readings every year.