Christian hope is not an escape from reality. It is born in a dark place, in the narrow confines of a sealed tomb, where God has already overturned the judgment of this world. Precisely for this reason, it dares to speak in a time of wars (Gaza, Kyiv, Darfur and Tehran) and of hundreds of millions of people who do not know how they will make it to tomorrow.
Our days are woven with justified expectations: health, a secure job, a measure of peace, a justice that is more than words. But when these become our entire horizon, we either treat them as idols or, at the first serious fracture, we take refuge in cynicism and resignation.
Easter does not erase these hopes; it re-centres them. It roots them in Another and in doing so, preserves them. A love stronger than death does not remove the burden of action; rather, it breaks the anxiety of having to save the world through our own efforts alone.
The final word on history is not ours, nor that of the victors of the day. It is the word spoken over the body of Jesus. And the word of Easter already refutes every claim of death to be definitive. For Paul, the resurrection of Christ is not an isolated episode in Jesus’ biography. It is the opening of a new scene into which all humanity is drawn: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). The Church Fathers followed this insight without attenuating it: the resurrection is the fulfilment of human nature in its entirety, not the privilege of a fortunate few. In Christ, God already contemplates the fullness of the human family: the faces of refugees in the Mediterranean, of those crossing the Sahara, of civilians hiding in basements in Darfur. For this reason, every wound to human dignity, every discarded body, is not only a social injustice; it is a profanation of a humanity that was conceived and loved within the very light of the Risen One.
Paul widens the horizon further: “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Rom 8:22). It is not only human conscience that groans, but the soil, the air and the seas. In 2026, the language of “labour pains” no longer sounds like pious symbolism: we read it in floods, in uncertain harvests, in villages forced to move because the water has run out. This groaning takes the form of protest; creation refuses to be treated as disposable material and Easter gives it a voice. In the risen Christ, every exploitation of the earth already appears for what it is: a choice against the future of all.
How, then, are we to live between a fulfilment already begun and a history still marked by too many failures? Not with paralysis, nor with superficial optimism. We live knowing that nothing authentically good is lost: a gesture of welcome, a choice to renounce something, honest work carried out under adverse conditions. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that “every serious and upright human action is hope in action,” and includes among these efforts working for a more humane world, sustained by the great hope grounded in God’s promises (Spe Salvi, 35). We can say even more: it is not an external addition to the Kingdom; it is already a visible fragment of it. Fulfilment belongs to God and yet God insists on passing through us as well. When we commit ourselves to refugees, to disarmament, to more humane working conditions, to a concrete and not rhetorical peace, we are not simply “preparing” something for later. We are allowing the life of the Risen One to take shape—humbly and fragilely—within our time.
Easter hope does not remain an idea or a feeling; it takes flesh. The resurrection teaches us that the logic of death has no power to determine the final outcome. For this reason, every war, every system of exploitation, every calculated indifference is already unmasked and stripped of ultimate meaning by the empty tomb. In the tomb of this world, something has already changed forever: life has begun to rise up through the cracks of history. Not as vague consolation or as a “reward” in some undefined elsewhere, but as a reality that, in Christ, has already been entrusted to humanity and to all creation. In the judgement of God revealed at Easter—a judgment that liberates, not crushes—it is decided once and for all that death will not have the last word over anyone or anything.
This is the great hope.
Happy Easter: a hope that does not remain closed within the church, but engages in history.
I wish that we could all have Easter eyes capable of looking into death, until we see life, into the hurts, until we see forgiveness, into separation, until we see unity, into the wounds, until we see glory, into the human person, until we see God, into God, until we see the human person, into Myself until I see You. And in addition to this, to see the power of Easter!
(Easter 1993)
Klaus Hemmerle La luce dentro le cose, Città Nuova, Rome 1998, p. 110.
Solitude, silence, do not frighten: they are made to protect, not to cause fear. Nevertheless, one can take advantage of such a suffering. The greatness of Christ is the cross. He was never so close to the Father and so close to the brothers as when naked, wounded, he cried out from the gallows: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. With that suffering he redeemed: in that fracture he reunited all men with God.
[…] Listen to it. Contemplate it, within the silence wherein God speaks. This is, in the day of life, the hour of dusk of contemplation, when the creatures gather together to assess the work that has been done and to prepare the actions of tomorrow: a tomorrow immersed in eternity. […] Detachment from the world, therefore, and attachment to God: thus not a separation from people, inasmuch as they are brothers, members of the same divine and human family.
(Igino Giordani, Excerpts taken from “Città Nuova” XXIII/13 10 July, 1979, pp.32-33)
This year, Holy Week found a special resonance in me.
Yesterday, Wednesday of Holy Week, I was especially touched by the reading of the Passion of Jesus. I became aware – and this is so important – of the very new value suffering has in our Christian life. I felt as if I was drawn to this most sublime calling amidst the many voices that fill every day and every moment of our life. Jesus, the “man of suffering”: this is the climax of his vocation.
… Today I feel enveloped by a wave of tenderness. It is the day of the New Commandment, of the Eucharist, of the priesthood, it’s the day when we serve one another.
Jesus reserved so many infinite riches for the last day of His life on earth!
How I wish to make every day a Holy Thursday.
Jesus, you who have chosen us for this pathway, which is so close to your heart, help us to follow it well, every day, until the end.
(Translation of the Italian text found in: Chiara Lubich, Diario 1964-1980, a cura di Fabio Ciardi, 2023, Città Nuova, Roma, p. 324)
The night is a symbol of darkness and of the unknown. It means the absence of that light which cannot be found without a lamp and a companion who travels beside us on our journey through life. The night envelops our wounded and violated planet that is marked by massacre and by war motivated by the lust for power and money. Night is what millions of people experience, people who no longer have a voice to cry out against injustice and oppression. What about us? How can we continue to believe in a renewed and better world which we do not see developing as we had expected? How can we recognise the signs of all that is good in our everyday relationships? These are questions to which we do not always know how to respond. Nonetheless, although it is difficult to discern the answers, they urge us to look for a companion who “walks” alongside us and to recognise the universal need for a spirituality that is inherent in human nature and that we experience if we live out mutual love with those around us. Sometimes there are brief flashes of light that shine out in the most unexpected ways – even through social media – and they light up the night. One example is the story of Chiara Badano and Sara Cornelio, two friends whose relationship spansacross time. Sara, born in 1998, ‘met’ Chiara, so to speak, who had died eight years before aged 19, when she was little more than a child. She heard about Chiara during one of the many meetings during which people spoke of her extraordinary life. Sara began to regard her as a friend, a companion in her dreams, a confidante and a strong presence. Sara had a captivating personality: she sang, danced, studied and had many friends. At the same time, however, she lived with the daily reality of a congenital condition that – literally and not just figuratively – ‘took her breath away’. Nevertheless, she was certain that “love conquers all” and this was the subject of an essay she wrote in the sixth form. She was fortunate to receive a lung transplant, and over time, became a gift for other people by bearing witness to this certainty through books, school visits, songs, short films, a blog and a theatrical performance. Her wonderful family lived an experience of falling in love and of love itself. Her death in 2022, when she was not even 24 years of age, left all those who loved her – even those who had simply come across her on Facebook – feeling devastated and alone. During her time on this earth, Sara regarded Chiara as a friend who was always close, accompanying, encouraging and supporting her and who ‘revealed’ herself in the most unexpected moments and circumstances. She was a friend who knew how to ‘be there’ in moments of pure joy as well as in the pain and loneliness of a hospital or an intensive care unit. In those final moments of solitude and weakness, Chiara’s presence became mysteriously silent, almost elusive, yet perhaps all the more authentic for it, and destined to become a friendship ‘forever’. Chiara and Sara: unique, just as every story is unique.
