HOMILY OF 30TH MARCH 1986 - HOLY EASTER

Today there is a password, the same every year : “Happy Easter!”

But we could call Easter, because it is really so, the victory: it’s the day of the Victorious, of Him Who wins forever. And He doesn’t only win, but the aim of His victory is to make also the others victorious. And what means does He employ to do this? The first one is the speech; we would never be sufficiently clear, precise and honest if we forgot to remind the believers that the great Vicar of Christ on the earth is their conscience. Then the visible Vicar is the Holy Father. You know that the Holy father can’t, absolutely he can’t, do without his conscience: he would ruin the Church.

So the conscience is above the Holy Father, so it’s above the man who visibly represents God: the conscience. And on this day, for all the men of good will, conscience is enlightened in a particular way by the great event, because the Resurrected is the Victorious. But the Victorious is Victorious because He is the living Word, the essential Word, the eternal Word, He is the Eternal Absolute: He is God.

Nobody can take His place. Nobody. And as a consequence He is really Victorious and He has proved it and probably, more than probably, we are living the days in which God will show the greatness of His Victory. And once more the world will have to tremble in front of the Victorious whom, as Satan’s slave, the world has foolishly tried to fight and to fight measureless and senseless.

Where is the Victorious now? Everywhere. He needs the plane neither to come near us, nor to go to the farthest countries in the farthest continent, with the same presence He has here. He , the Victorious, has established some food for the victory to feed those who become victorious following Him. If we follow the word of God, the Eternal Word, we are victorious.

But He has added something great, that is a kind of essential ceremony and so it’s not only a ceremony but an essential nutritive factor, which is called the Communion of His Body and of His Blood. Has He left it anywhere? Yes. Wherever there is a priest who has the sacred courage to feel guilty but repented, he wants to be the Priest of God and he celebrates the mystery of Easter, that is the resurrection together with the death of Christ, a Calvary that is transformed in a triumph; and he wants to do it, this is called to celebrate the Holy Mass. Here is why we say : “ I have missed the Mass… I don’t feel at ease… I’m a little absent-minded… I would like to be alone…”

Well, that’s all pretence. You don’t miss the Mass. But we get lost. The Mass remains eternal because the Supreme pontiff who first celebrated and established it and who continues to celebrate it in the Sanctuary of Heaven is God: Jesus Christ, the Eternal word, the Second person of the Holy Trinity.

And so every day there is always the Mass and the Communion.

We go to Holy Communion with a thoughtlessness that frightens. It frightens because we take almost poisoned food because the conditions make it poisonous. We need God’s grace. And God has established something very easy: the remission of sins, established with the generosity of His Blood on the Calvary, established with the living , active, short and sure formula of absolution. What is it for us to be absolved of sins?

Do you want me to tell you what it is to be absolved?

Less talk, fewer compliments, the sincere statement, as it is possible, of the most serious faults, a hint to lighter faults and the act of contrition. The priest only has to repeat a very simple formula: “I absolve you of your sins. In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Here is what we need to be alive and receive the immortal, divine and eternal Food: alive, being alive to be alive. Here is what is great in our Faith.

Then we very well know that this life has been lived, we haven’t invented it, it’s the story that the Gospels amply and at the same time moderately tell, it’s about what Jesus wanted to do. It’s the story of the mystic theology, the contemplation of elevated souls, of faithful souls, of souls enlightened by God, souls that are really precise in staring at the greatness of the Eternal Lord, and they speak of God.

Is this difficult? No, it isn’t. It is necessary some time of reflection and then say: “Lord, please, show Yourself to this poor creature. Don’t think my Lord that I’m asking You because I’m worth of it, but think my Lord of the truth, I’m telling You because I’m thirsty for truth, I’m thirsty for Love, I’m thirsty for eternal life.”

Present life is but a painful exposition and it’s patched up between a sin and a rising, between a swearword and a prayer, between an act of violence and an act of peace, a mixture of poison and life which is to be cured at all costs.

And so this is Easter: to receive Holy Communion in His grace, to expect, I say to expect, to ask the Christ for His intimate revelation at our Sanctuary, that is to our conscience. This is the victory.

Maybe, under this aspect, it’s not very far.

I hope you might perceive its beginning, the greatness of the sun which enlightens, the fertility of the vital duration that grants us that we are really alive and in the hands of the Absolute and Eternal Living Being, who is God. This is nice. We are so.

I hope that you might feel this way, that you might pray this way, that you might have the adorable and very tasty taste of this system of prayer and I hope that you might bless the moment, the solemn hour of this Easter that, here on Mount Fasce, one day it will be very famous, here you might remember to have received life in a different way from other places.

I believe in one only God…