The Prior General of the Order of Saint Augustine, Fr. Alejandro Moral Antón, addressed his Easter greetings to the brothers, sisters and laity of the Augustinian Family.
Dear brothers and sisters:
As Holy Week concludes with the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, I want to send you a greeting on behalf of the entire General Council, wishing that the Life that the Risen One has brought us will enter into us and increase among us.
Today is March 29 and the Catholic Church celebrates Good Friday. Saint Paul captures the humiliation of the cross in a wonderful text that we all know: "[Christ], who being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are, and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even in accepting death, death on a cross." (Phil 2, 6-8).
In that hour in which the Son of God assumed all our guilt, the world "was covered in darkness" (Mt 27, 45), but he did not end his story there. The death of the Son of God, an extreme and supreme gesture of his infinite love, gave way to his Resurrection, and with it the history of humanity was reborn, saved by that infinite and divine Love.
"God never abandons us, not even when we move farther away from Him"
Today, in the world, we live in a continuous Good Friday. We live anguished by senseless wars, by the pain of so many who see their loved ones die, of mothers clinging to the bodies of their newborn children clinging to those children who have not been able to enjoy their mother's love. We live surrounded by the pain of so many people who have to flee their countries, emigrate, because there they only find violence, pain and hunger. We live a continuous Good Friday that has its origin in the selfishness of human beings and our pride.
In the face of all this pain, sometimes we even come to doubt whether God is present in our lives. But God never abandons us, not even when we distance ourselves further from Him. God's silence was also experienced by his Son even in the most tragic moments of his existence. Remember the great anguished cry of a suffering Israel to the God who apparently remains silent (Psalm 22): "Despite my cries, my prayer does not reach you," says the same psalmist who writes the words that Jesus himself will shout from the cross.
"Let us share the experience of renewed life in our communities and places of encounter and mission." Fr. Alejandro
But God's total compassion for us, his fragile and helpless children, that compassion with which he forgives our weaknesses, and which we can deeply experience anew today, this compassion would be meaningless without the Resurrection of the Son. Our Father Saint Augustine says: "with the true sacrifice of his death, offered for us on the cross, he purified, abolished and extinguished everything that was guilty in man, and that the principalities and powers rightly demanded be expiated with torture; and with his resurrection he calls the predestined to new life, for those whom he called he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified" (Saint Augustine, De Trinitate 4,13,17).
In the Son of God, that which resembles a tragedy has an inverse and light-filled meaning, helps us to read into the shadows and sorrows of human nature. The Lamb that is led to the slaughter gives life to everything that was dead through sin.
I ask that each of us, called, like the first disciples, to live a new life by faith in the Resurrection of the Son of God, to be witnesses of the Easter Light that illuminates every human being. Let us not, therefore, let death and pessimism invade us, even in this difficult time. Let us share the experience of renewed life in our communities and places of meeting and mission. We understand that, as pilgrims on the way toward the promised Homeland, although physical death may enter our earthly lives and cause us concern, this death has changed its meaning and has been defeated, giving way to the life that awaits us with God.
While we are pilgrims in this world "let us wash one another's feet" and build fraternity. May we, with simplicity and humility, help build a world according to the will of God, and not based on selfishness and pride, but rather built on selflessness and service, so that we truly become "one heart and one mind on the way together to God".
Happy Easter everyone,
A fraternal Greeting,
