Easter

This face full of suffering, motionless; this body covered with blood, beaten, suspended on the cross... this is the image of the most horrible and atrocious suffering and death that we could ever contemplate! We feel like not looking at it anymore, or to go away so as not to see it! Our heart cries: there is already too much of that in the world! Too many sufferings! Too many monstrosities! Too many brutalities, wars, evil of all kinds and lack of love!

We thirst for something else! We aspire to beauty, joy, and happiness!

You are right to think like that, and it was certainly God's desire that we live always in peace and happiness. He gave us the key to happiness in His Ten Commandments of love. Since we cannot be forced to love, He also gave us the freedom to choose to love Him and follow Him, or to reject Him and keep Him out of our life. That is the greatness - but also the danger - of the test of our existence. God has willed to take this risk because He doesn't want us to be His slaves but His free children!

The human being is weak, yet he believed himself to be self-sufficient and equal to God. He turned to idols created by himself. Through this act of disobedience towards God, like the Bible tells us, everything was lost for Man, definitely and without hope.

It is at this moment of human history that the cross acquires all its significance. God comes to our rescue and offers Himself on the cross, out of love, to make reparation for our faults, to save us and give us NEW LIFE.

The cross shows thus the immensity of God's love for us; the cross is THE SIGN of this love.

Through the cross, God calls us to come back to Him, and, through Jesus, He comes to free us from evil. Easter makes us live this pressing invitation from God to reconcile ourselves with Him.

The next time you stand before a cross, meditate on this mystery. And consider very seriously... through His suffering...

how much He really loves YOU!