Easter Reflections

“The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. And Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.” (John 20:21)

Today, in a very intense manner we have turned our mind, our heart and our eyes toward the splendor of the Risen Lord. His Passover is an anticipation of ours, since as the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments reminds us, “the death of a Christian is his own Passover.” “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” (1Cor 15:19)

Where it is sown death, it is raised strength, it is raised the spiritual body, it is raised glory. For this reason, aware of the Faith of the Church which we share by the grace of God, in the luminosity of these festivities we intensely experience the hope for the day of the fulfilling encounter in the Resurrection of the Lord.

To encounter Christ! Is it possible to imagine it? To participate in the Communion of Love! Is it possible to conceive it? It is, therefore, a day when we also remember our loved ones called to the Father’s House, in the intense and living hope that those who have died in the Lord Jesus, adhered to Him (cf. 1Thes. 4:14), rejoice in the life of God and His glory.

Today is also an occasion to make a commitment and to make it intensely and radically, expressing it in a daily life made prayer to give glory to God. It is an occasion to remember that the Lord says to the Father in an exemplary and paradigmatic example of loving obedience: “I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.” (John 17:4)

Today, as we can see, the solemn celebration of the Passover of the Lord opens us to the reality of the mystery of death and life. It opens us to the reality of the fidelity of God. Today, as Blessed John XXIII said: “Our passover, therefore, means for everybody, dying to sin, to passions, to hatred, to enmities, to all that is a source of instability, bitterness and torment, both in the spiritual and the material order. Because this death is nothing but the first step towards a higher goal, because our passover is, moreover, a mystery of life.”

Our passover means dying to death, to all that is death, in order to live for what is life. Easter is a great celebration of the love of God which reaches out to us in our journey and is the guarantee of our hope. Hope that when the moment to share in the fullness of death – which we have already received sacramentally in Baptism – in Christ comes, the horizon of the transformation of the mortal body into life, into a spiritual body, will also be open to us. “For, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10:9) “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” (1 Cor. 6:14)

Today is a celebration of faith, hope and love. Today is the feast in which we celebrate the great mercy of God who in His love has looked upon us and has opened the way to the fullness of reconciliation, already begun in this earthly journey, even though with its tribulations, but which, after the transformation, finds its way towards the horizon of true plenitude and joy. Today is a day of sensitivity towards all those who suffer, and especially towards those who expect the Lord Jesus to be proclaimed in their lives, inviting us to live with greater ardor and enthusiasm the mission with which we have been blessed. Today is a day of overflowing joy to sing the Alleluia, to chant the prayer of thanksgiving, to commit ourselves to remembering the Queen of the Apostles, whose “Fiat” brought us reconciliation by bearing in her virginal womb the Word made Flesh, the Lord Jesus who is risen. Today is a day to remember that we have made a commitment to make “the Light of Christ” shine, to carry it through the city, to protect it, to make it shine, since it will shine, shine ceaselessly.

Happy Easter of Resurrection! Let us be saints! Let us fulfill ourselves!

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