Easter Monday

Now that we have been witnesses of Christ's work during these days of the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, we are called to climb out of the darkness into the Light of Christ. There is so much in our culture to suggest that Satan has the upper hand - in the oppression of truth and the rejection of the Gospel - yet, everything now belongs to Christ. These are some of the Holy Father's word taken from his Easter Message:

Dear Brothers and sisters, through
the wounds of the Risen Christ we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope. In fact, by his rising the Lord has not taken away suffering and evil from the world but has vanquished them at their roots by the superabundance of his grace. He has countered the arrogance of evil with the supremacy of his love. He has left us the love that does not fear death, as the way to peace and joy. “Even as I have loved you – he said to his disciples before his death – so you must also love one another” (cf. Jn 13:34).

During our outdoor Stations of the Cross on Good Friday we passed by a whole group of young people who were restraining a huge, muzzled dog from attacking us. This may have been a nice dog, but it represented everything that Satan is, snarling, angry, out of control and it did indeed alarm us as we passed it on the street. Now, when we passed by the same place at the end of the Stations the dog was gone and we noticed that the young lads were surprisingly respectful towards us. The truth is that whatever our culture throws at us to make it appear that our Christian lives are useless and out of place, is a lie. Our streets belong to Jesus Christ. Christ has reclaimed our lives from darkness and we need to know that. Our culture needs to be reclaimed from the darkness and we are uniquley placed to help. Not by reacting unreasonably to the falsehood and despair of the culture of death around us, but by being faithful to God each time we meet it. Then we will allow the Love of God to be present in our culture. And by being faithful to God we will allow Him to heal our wounds.