Surrexit Christus, spes nostra! Non est in alio aliquo salus:
Christ, our hope, is risen; in no one else can we attain salvation (cf. Acts 4:12).
Placed in the mystery of His resurrection by virtue of baptism, perfected by our religious consecration, we remain with Him abiding in His divine love which is stronger than death and sin.
Christ is risen, and the greatest gift we can invoke for the world, is that all may reflect, though in the precariousness and frailty of the human condition, the light of Christ: every human being in his singularity, as well as in the dynamics of social and community relations.
Since Christ has conquered sin and death, establishing a new dynamic in man’s relationship with God, nothing can be considered extraneous to the power of his crucified and risen divine love: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:4).
As consecrated Franciscans and Marians, let us be guided by the example of Mary Most Holy on her post-Easter pilgrimage, contemplating and imitating her as the praying Virgin in the cenacle, where she represents the very heart of Pentecost, She who has always interceded with God for men, and who participates in the descent of the Holy Spirit, Mediatrix who makes possible by her supplicating omnipotence the investiture of the Apostles and the promise of hope for all men.
Let us also contemplate and imitate her in the more intimate and ordinary dimension in the house of Ephesus, which symbolizes the place of our daily effort to proclaim, in the community life as well as in the pastoral action, Christ’s paschal victory.
I wish each of you to let the echo of the Lord’s voice resound in your lives as he invites us to bear upon ourselves his “yoke that is sweet, and his burden that is light” (cf. Mt. 11:30) and that we may experience the infinite sweetness of the Lord’s forgiveness, which is true resurrection and true life.
Fr. Immacolato M. Acquali
Happy Easter to all.