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A blessed Easter to all.

Christians who are committed today in the social field are highly esteemed and appreciated. Whenever there are situations of need, of hardships, we can find Christians moved by the proposal that Jesus has made in the gospel. This is a beautiful image that the Church is giving of herself, but it is not complete, it is partial. Priests and Christians are proud to be holders of the sublime life proposal made by their Master and they do not fear confrontation with any other humanism. Think of the teaching of the Beatitudes of Jesus, his commandment of unconditional love, even for the enemy. A love that is free.

Jesus has truly touched the apex of moral proposals. There is no other proposal made by wise people in history that goes beyond the horizon that Jesus has touched. Further than that you cannot go. And many, even Christians, may be tempted to reduce their faith to this very beautiful teaching given by Jesus with his word and with his life. In fact, we hear that many Christians adapt to this language, also used by non-believers: the important thing is to do good. Then, being baptized or not is indifferent. One religion is as good as another.

Here, we try to ask ourselves some questions. Is Christianity exhausted of its sublime moral proposal or is there something else? Does Christianity give no answer to the most profound questions that emerge? And when we carve out a few moments of silence, does Christianity give no answer to these questions? Is it limited only to that great message of unconditional love? And another question: Is the world in which we live is the only one that exists, the one in which our whole destiny ends, all our history? Then the consequence will be that in addition to the memory, there will be nothing left of the good we have done.

Then we ask ourselves, is the love that I have received and that I have given in this world, it destined to disappear along with me? If the Church does not answer these questions, I believe that even her entire moral proposal will not remain standing for a long time. In fact, if we reflect for a moment, when it occurs to us to do something good and then we think that all those good works will end without a trace, then the temptation to do nothing is very strong. We will easily content ourselves with what the present moment offers us; inclined not to lose the opportunity to enjoy life, even the immediate ones that life offers that give us satisfaction. But build something big knowing that in the end none of that will remain is a thought that discourages us.

If life is only biological life, we ask ourselves if it is worthwhile to make sacrifices, to be interested in others and we arrive to the question posed before and the whole meaning of our life depends on the answer. And the question is this: Is Jesus, the one who has left us those wonderful teachings, is he alive or is he dead? Is he alive or was he absorbed by this material world, leaving behind only the good memory of his passage through history? Because only if Jesus is alive the life given is not lost, but it has an eternal value. and our whole life following his proposal of life makes sense. And joys, sorrows, youth, old age, even death, acquire a completely different vision, another perspective, another meaning.

Then, at least in Easter, on the faces of the Christians who participate in the liturgy of the holy night should shine the joy of those who received the answer to this question. Jesus is alive. Death has been defeated and we are no longer afraid because the moment of death, that of our second birth is the definitive moment when we feel this light of Easter. At daybreak on the first day of the week the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. The text of the gospel begins with an indication of time. It was early morning. The sun and the light of a new day are appearing, illuminating the darkness of night.

It seems a description of the darkness that enveloped humanity and that never found an answer to this question: Is this world the only one? And when we finish our life, do we disappear forever? It was dense darkness in the mind of humanity, a very long one. Now a new day appears. And the women went to the tomb bringing the perfumes. We can ask ourselves: what did they expect to find on Easter morning? A corpse. And the goal was to embalm it, to mummify it. Are the desperate attempts to retain the beloved an attempt to conquer death?

Embalming or mummifying means building a monument to victory. Death was the destiny of man, according to the conception of the Israelites, was what these women who went to the tomb had in mind. What did they expect? To find a corpse When we read the Old Testament, we find that until two or three centuries before Christ, the Israelites’ conception was no different from the other peoples of the ancient Middle East, and of the entire Greco-Roman world.

The Egyptians were the exception who had always believed in the continuity of human life. For both the Israelites and the other peoples, dying was a natural necessity. What did it mean to die? It meant ending in the world of the dead that was called in various ways. The Hebrews called it 'sheol' which probably comes from the verb 'shaal' = to call. It gives the idea that the tomb, the grotto dug in the rock, where the corpse is then placed... When we observed it, it seems that it has a mouth that calls and waits for everyone.

The fate of humanity is to enter that grotto. They called it 'sheol'. The Greeks called it 'hades', the god Pluto who reigned in the afterlife, together with Persephone. And in Latin 'inferus', not 'hell'. 'Inferi' which means the place that is below, underground. This is the world of the dead for all peoples, except for the Egyptians. They imagined it characterized by darkness; the dead lived in the dust like the larva, like shadows, they roamed in silence like zombies.

This was life in the afterlife. The person did not disappear completely, but it was not life. It was a 'life not life'. You have to bear in mind that, according to the conception of all ancient peoples, we will all end up there: all the kings, the beggars, the lords, the slaves, the old and the young, the good and the bad, there was no judgment on the part of God on the life of everyone. There the 'life' was the same for everyone. No reward for the good and no punishment for the wicked after death. All in all, the death of the evil ones --and this is also found in the Bible—was seen with some complacency, not because then the evil one was punished, but because finally also for him, who thought himself a superman, because he had been a 'boss' in this world, he had come to experience disintegration like everyone else.

We also find in the Bible that the Israelites did not consider this step of our world to the world of the dead as something terrible. It was a natural condition. The only problem for the one who descended to Sheol was if he did not enter that grotto full of years. The old man who had lived his days to the full and was now going to meet his ancestors. Thus, the book of Genesis describes the death of Abraham: "Abraham died at a good old age, filled with years, and met with his own" (Gn 25:8).

Naturally, the Hebrews, like us, loved life and when danger threatened of a premature death, what did they do? (And I think we do too), they went to the Lord so he would not let him enter that grotto so soon ... let him live in fullness this existence. We have many texts, many psalms in the Bible where we find these prayers, which we can also do ours. So Ben Sirach, in chapter 51, this psalmist says: "When I was already to die and almost in the depths of the Abyss... (the door of the Abyss is the door of the sheol—that you see in the background)... I remembered the compassion of the Lord and his mercy ... I called on the Lord: You are my Father, you have the power to save me, do not leave me in danger" (Sir 51:6-10). Also, Psalm 30: "Lord, you have delivered me from the Abyss, You revived me when I came down to the pit ... (Ps 30:4). I was not only close to the mouth that wanted to eat me, but I had already entered, but you saved me.”

It is, clearly, a disease that had taken him almost inside the 'inferi', inside the sheol. Also: "Lord, my God, I asked for your help, and you healed me" (Ps 30:3), "you took my life from sheol." "When I was already inside ... you took me out." This was the conception of all peoples, what they had in mind, even those women who went to the tomb. There was only one important difference between Israel and the other peoples. For the pagans, in the 'hades' was the god Pluto who ruled the kingdom of the dead. And for the Egyptians, the god Ra, the sun god, at dusk, proceeded with his course towards the west and at night illuminated the world of the deceased. The God of Israel had nothing to do with the world of the dead.

The God of Israel is the God of life and did not set foot in the kingdom of shadows; there was no god there. So, we understand the prayer of many psalms, when the sick person says to the Lord: 'Do not let me enter the sheol because later I will not be able to praise you... you will not receive my praises anymore because you have nothing to do with this kingdom of death.' Man has never resigned himself to this destiny to a larval life and in the last centuries before Christ they began to develop the idea. We know that, for some centuries, the Greeks had begun to talk about the immortality of the soul. T

he distinction between the material, that remains here, and the soul that continues to live. This idea had no acceptance among the Hebrews and among them was spreading another conviction, not among all the Hebrews, only in a minority. Thus among the Pharisees: the idea of the resurrection. But how did they understand this resurrection? As a return to this life. Then there were different opinions. Some argued that only the just would be resurrected and not the evil ones. But always understood as a return to this life. Remember what Martha responds to Jesus. She says: "I know that my brother Lazarus will rise on the last day" ...because he was a good man.

But this 'resurrection' did not convince people very much. It does not make sense to return to this life after millions of years. Let's be careful because some, even among Christians, affirm this conception that was that of the Pharisees. One day our brother will resurge, will return with the body that we have left in the tomb. But then many questions arose... 'The Lord takes my body... to give it to me again.' It does not make much sense, and, of course, this is not the Easter message. It is not about the resurrection that the Pharisees believed. Listen to what kind of revelation takes place at Easter. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered,
they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.

When the women arrive at the tomb, they find the stone was moved. That stone separated the world of the living from the world of the dead and someone had moved it. The world of the living should not be separated from the world of the dead. And, the fact that the stone was moved, is an invitation for the women to enter and look inside. The victim of death is no longer there, it has disappeared. And, in fact, when the women enter they do not find the body of the Lord Jesus. This is the enigma. Note: the absence of the body is not a proof of the resurrection.

The surprise of the women is understandable. It has no explanation and so, the text says: "They were bewildered," they did not understand anything. They found themselves, literally, without a way out. And it is at this point that appears the response of God presented in a different way by the evangelists. Mark says that the women saw 'a young man'... it has a beautiful meaning. They expected a life 'no life', an old person, NO. Young. The evangelist John says that the Magdalene saw two angels. Matthew describes a terrifying scene that these women witnessed. A great earthquake... an angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls the stone, and sits on it. It's about victory over death. Rolling the stone and sit on it... like a victor.

These disagreements are beautiful because they show that the evangelists do not describe a chronicle, something that happened materially, something verifiable, but they narrate a revelation of heaven to the women. These women have made a living experience, but how to present it in human language this inner experience of a light that women have received from heaven: that Jesus lives. The evangelists had at their disposal only the biblical images: earthquake, the lights, the white color, the angel, the glare, two men, the guards. God has sent his light to illuminate in the minds and hearts of these women, the mystery of death. The literary language used by several of the evangelists is diverse, but the message is the same.

And to understand this diverse language with which the four evangelists presented their message, we must bear in mind an important observation, because even today there is an ambiguity that many Christians have in mind. They think that Jesus has come out of the grave and he has returned to this world with his physical, material body and, therefore, verifiable by the senses. The resurrection of Jesus is not a verifiable event with the senses because it is not a return to live in this world. He does not turn back from that sheol's mouth. Even Jesus has not returned from there. In fact, that scene of Jesus coming out victorious from the grave, opening the tomb and leaving with the banner of the cross ...

This scene was born from the fantasy of painters. No evangelist narrates it ... and they could not do it because it was not an event verifiable with the senses. If Jesus had returned to this world with his body, why did he not show up on the streets of Jerusalem to be seen? That is not ‘resurrection’. It would have been only a 'resuscitation' of a corpse. The resurrection is another reality. It is an event that belongs to the world of God, escapes the senses and that is why they narrate it with a different language. When we think of the resurrection, we must imagine three worlds: first this world, where we live; then the sheol, the world of the dead—and we have already talked about this above; in that world of the dead we must all enter because we are human. And it's not a bad thing. It is our destiny.

If someone returned from this sheol and returned to this world it is a 'reanimation.' This can be verified. But this is not the resurrection. If you go back to this world, it is not a victory over death but it is to delay the defeat when the monster of death comes back to take the victim. What is the true victory over death? What is the resurrection? It's not the coming back here again, it's entering the world of God—the third world which I referred to above.

This experience of the entrance to the world of God can only be revealed by a light from heaven. And this revelation was presented in a different language by the four evangelists. They are not chronicling. They would have chronicled it if Jesus had returned here. What language does Luke use? He speaks of two men in shining garments. It is a biblical image. The number ‘two', two men, means that their testimony is reliable because two men were needed for a testimony to be accepted.

Then, covered in white. And the white vestment means that those who bring this message come from God. They are the explanation given by God for this absence of the body. Let us now try to understand the message that is derived from this image of the evangelist Luke. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, "Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified and rise on the third day." And they remembered his words. The evangelist Luke notes the fear of the women, that in biblical language means the experience that these women make of entering the world of God, in a light that is not of this world. And what do they do? They look at the ground.

Represents the community. It is hard to let yourself be wrapped in this light. It is our experience. We have difficulty accepting this light that shows us the meaning of our existence in this world. We retreat over a reality that we can touch, verify. We must look up, but, instead, the women look at the ground. They misdirect the vision. Then, when Jesus entered the world of God, in the ascension they look at the sky and there are also two men who say: "Why do you look up at the sky? Look down."

You are given the mission of building the new world initiated by Jesus. Now you must bring it to fruition... look towards the earth. They always look in the wrong direction. First, you must look up to receive the light that dissolves the darkness that has always enveloped humanity regarding the mystery of death. Now we know what the fate of the people is. And the voice: the message of these two men, therefore, guaranteed the message from heaven: Why do you search the living among the dead? Not the reanimated one. If it had been a resuscitation, it could be looked for, because he would have returned to this world. But he did not. He has not returned here. He went to the third world, to the definitive one, which is the world of God.

This is the victory over death. He is alive, fully, definitely. Then the women begin to understand that the grave, Sheol has been transformed by the intervention of God into a bosom from which a new life is born. And God has been the leaven that has caused this birth. "He is not here". They look for him in the grave; he is not there. And not only is he not there but now nobody is in the sheol because the Son of God has entered there. Jesus made our own experience of being mortal... because man cannot be otherwise.

Man is mortal by his very nature. Therefore, we must enter this sheol, but this is the light: the sheol is a womb from which we are born to the world of God, to the true life, to the definitive life. When Jesus has entered into this sheol, the life of the Eternal has entered and the sheol has been emptied, they were all introduced to the house of the Father in heaven. And God's message continues: "Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee." The women wanted to see Jesus, just as we do today, but the Risen One can only be perceived with the eyes of faith. The material look, even for us, what do we see at funerals? A coffin with the corpse. This is the physical look; beyond our gaze we cannot go. And here comes the look of faith that makes you see the invisible, our destiny. And this revelation can only come from heaven.

And the message of these two men says: Remember what he told you. It begins with the look of faith that makes you see the invisible. It is the remembrance of what Jesus said. Remember his words, open your heart to his word because it is given to the pure in heart to see the invisible, to see God. The pure of heart are those who have not inclined their minds and hearts to the idols of this world, to hypocrisy, to duplicity. People with a pure heart are prepared to receive this light. And these two men remind them of what Jesus had said, 'that he should be delivered into the hands of sinners, be crucified and rise on the third day' and enter the house of the Father.

And the women remembered those words. From that moment, it was given to these women this vision of the destiny that Jesus had. That is, he had not remained in the grave but his destiny—which will later be the destiny of his disciples and of all people. The final destination is the house of the Father. And the women move away from the sepulcher. It is at this moment that their hearts were opened to the faith in the Risen One. It is the remembrance of the words of the Lord that have given birth to the events. Otherwise, they would be absurd events. And the one with the pure heart, the one who has seen with the look of faith to the Risen One, feels the need to go and announce it to the brothers and sisters. Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven
and to all the others.

These women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles, but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb bent down and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened. The women move away from the tomb and run to announce to the disciples the experience they have had. They are named: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary of James. They are the ones that ratify this testimony, and they were the first to make this extraordinary experience.

What is the reaction of the disciples? They do not believe. A word used here: 'delirium'. They thought that these women were delirious. The 'eros' - delirium, appears only here. It is the only time in the New Testament. It gives the idea of how absurd it seemed what the women told. This means that the thought of a resurrection did not appear even in the thought of the disciples. They were very surprised. They were not prepared for this news.

It is a message for us too. The path that the women have made, and the disciples are doing in the text of Luke is our path. We begin thinking that this event is a delirium. Unbelief is an obligatory step because, otherwise, if we start from certainties, it means that we are confusing the 'resurrection' with the 'reanimation' and then we look for evidence. There are no proofs.

It is about remembering the words of the Lord and letting yourself be enveloped by this light, opening our heart that must be pure. And Peter leaves, gets up, runs to the tomb. It means that he is looking; he does not resign himself to not having an answer. And when he comes to the grave he bends down, sees only the sheet. He sees the signs of death and retires marveling. He does not believe... but he retires; does not deny, he begins a path of search for this truth. When will Peter have full light? Exactly like when he will do what women have done: open his mind to the understanding of Scripture.

It is the path of faith that we must also take. It necessarily passes through doubt, but then it does not fall back on the reality of this world, continues to receive and rethink the words of the Master. And this light tells him: He speaks the truth. He is right. And if we remember the Scripture, like the apostles, we will open our mind to this new light that gives meaning to our whole life.

I wish everyone a good Easter.