Superior General – Easter 2010

With joyous and festive hearts, we celebrate the triumph of Christ, who passed from death to life so as to be with us always.

            We lived Lent intensively, allowing ourselves to be converted and enlightened by the Word of God that the Liturgy sowed in our minds and hearts day after day. We sought to perform good and kind deeds toward our brothers and sisters as an expression of the vitality of the Word sown in us. We contemplated the face of the Lord, transfigured and suffering, in the persons of many of our traveling companions, who are living in their own flesh the mystery of the cross.

Now, in faith, we contemplate the glorious face of our Master and Savior, and welcome with wonder the paschal announcement: “Christ is risen!” This is the cry of our faith and hope. The paschal Alleluia invites us to celebrate, to rejoice, to live as new creatures. In the risen Jesus, life explodes. Nothing is the way it was. Everything has taken on new, profound and definitive meaning.

With the resurrection, the Divine Master inaugurates a new world: the world of God, in which love triumphs, peace reigns and solidarity prevails. Unfortunately, this is not the world our eyes behold every day. Instead, we see a world filled with suffering, injustice, wars, violence, corruption, sickness, poverty, catastrophes. Only a profound and genuine experience of the presence of the crucified and risen Lord gives us the certainty that he has conquered death and therefore also suffering, divisions and injustices. Thus the last word is not death but life.

“Yes, indeed! This is the fundamental core of our profession of faith; this is the cry of victory that unites us all today. And if Jesus is risen, and is therefore alive, who will ever be able to separate us from him? Who will ever be able to deprive us of the love of him who has conquered hatred and overcome death? The Easter proclamation spreads throughout the world with the joyful song of the Alleluia. Let us sing it with our lips, and let us sing it above all with our hearts and our lives, with a manner of life that is “unleavened,” that is to say, simple, humble, and abounding in good works. ‘Surrexit Christus spes mea: praecedet vos in Galileam’ (‘Christ my hope is risen, and he goes before you into Galilee’). The Risen One goes before us and he accompanies us along the paths of the world. He is our hope; he is the true peace of the world” (Benedict XVI, Easter 2009).

Filled with this hope that springs from the resurrection of Christ, it is my fervent wish that each one of you will recognize our risen Lord and Master in the events of life and history, and renew your faith and love in him so as to communicate the Good News of salvation to everyone, both near and far.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to accompany with your prayers our brothers of the Society of St. Paul, who will celebrate their General Chapter from 25 April-15 May 2010. I also want to thank you for your solidarity in sending in financial contributions to help meet the needs of the earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile.

With faith, joy and hope, I extend to each and every one of you my heartfelt best wishes for a Blessed Easter!