Dear Brothers, pace e bene!
wherever you may be around the world.
“Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous,” reads the Easter Sequence. If we look at this world—at what has been happening for some time now, at what is worsening in various parts of the world—death seems increasingly to be casting its shadow over so many people and families, over so many individuals, the vast majority of whom have no reason to be subjected to such a violent fate.
We might say that, in reality, we are living through a moment of death. Pope Francis referred to it as a Third World War, and we are struck by so much arrogance, so much ignorance, so much insolence, so much violence, and so little regard for the value of human life and the dignity of people. Death—a death that battles life in a “combat stupendous”. It may be that even within the soul of each of us there are moments when death, life, sin, and resurrection battle one another. It is not so strange, as long as we are human beings walking with the limitations inherent in human nature. It is not so strange that death and life confront one another. But we Christians, fortunately, by grace, solely by grace, can count on the work of the Lord Jesus. Even in the story of Jesus, death and life confront one another. Indeed, in the story of the Passion, in the Lord’s death, it is our entire death that is taken up by the Son of God, carried to the cross with the gift of his life. But it is not the final word in this battle between death and life. The cross is not God’s final word.
Death passes through the cross, but only to be finally defeated by the Lord Jesus, defeated in the resurrection. So, as we look at this world, at this struggle that is constantly renewed, at the situation of each one of us, and above all at the work of Christ, we can with great certainty wish one another a Happy Easter—an Easter where the lives of those who have come to know the Lord Jesus and seek to follow him every day, with all their humanity, but who sincerely seek to follow him, may flourish. I hope you will always look to Christ’s victory over death. Happy Easter, brothers and sisters, to all of you!