HAPPY EASTER! PEACE BE WITH YOU!

Easter 2007 Message

The last rites of the Holy Week have just been celebrated and Christianity has been ushered to the joyful Season of Easter. Vacationers return home, campaigners are back on trail pursuing their personal projects, those who reflected and prayed come back to work with some hope even over an unwelcoming future.

Empathizing with Christ’s passion, death and resurrection (which for the Christian is the Paschal Mystery) surely means more than just a long weekend! For in His Paschal-crossing episode, Jesus summarized and perfected all human crossings (experience) over difficult means—slavery, poverty, ignorance and oppression; making himself and his Pasch a model and a source of hope in human stories of liberation and salvation.

Jesus Christ is the only way and model for humans to save and develop self into a person who is fully human, fit for God’s Kingdom, and able to accept that what is good for him is also good for others.

Peace be with you! This is the true Christian greeting, because it was Jesus Christ’s testimony to love. After the Resurrection, Jesus has triumphed over all, including his enemies, by forgiving them, and over his unfaithful disciples by reuniting Himself in love with them again.

Easter recalls to us that in Christ there should never be any division, nor competition, but one vision of pursuing the love of God and the good of every human in the level ground of helping and inspiring everyone to share in the Kingdom of one Father of all.

For Christ Jesus Happy Easter really means “Peace be with you!”

+GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES, D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
Easter 2007