BOLZANO. In a packed Bolzano cathedral the Bishop Ivo Muser celebrated today (April 9) the Resurrection Easter, the central holiday of the Christian faith. In his homily, the bishop recalled that Easter “is the turning point in which the meaning of the whole story was decided, for all those who entrust themselves to the God of life. The Lord has truly risen!” Archbishop Muser urged to live in this certainty: “Let’s bring it into our society, into all areas of personal, social, economic and political life.”
Easter is the most important message that has ever come and will ever come: God did not leave Jesus crucified in death. This is the concept reaffirmed by Bishop Ivo Muser in his homily in the cathedral in Bolzano: “The Easter event is the good news par excellence – said Muser – it gives life an ultimate meaning, in spite of everything and through everything. What happened on the first Easter morning in Jerusalem remains the initial spark and foundation of the Christian faith.” Easter is therefore not the celebration of a miracle that took place in the distant past, added the bishop, “but it is the turning point where the meaning of the whole story was decided – for all those who entrust themselves to the God of life. In Jesus Christ, at his tomb in Jerusalem, a hope arose for this world that not even death can destroy.” And Muser wanted to quote a sentence pronounced by the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer before being killed by the National Socialists: “Those who know Easter cannot despair”.
The bishop then recalled a touching personal experience: “On Easter Sunday last year I told of some young Ukrainian women who, together with their children, had fled the atrocities of war finding refuge in the diocesan house of San Giorgio in Sarnes of Bressanone. At the time, I asked one of these women what she was thinking regarding as she boarded the bus that would take her away from her homeland. Her answer surprised me: ‘Easter will definitely come back, for us and for our land. This is my strength and it is what I cling to together with my two children.'” In the meantime the woman wanted to return to Ukraine and in a letter she wrote to the bishop: . I had to go home to help rebuild my country. It’s Easter that gives me the strength to do it”. Both of the woman’s responses, Muser said, “moved me a lot. Only those who believe and believe in Easter can speak and act like this.”
The bishop’s final invitation: “The Lord has truly risen! Let’s live in this certainty, let’s bring it into our society, in all areas of personal, social, economic and political life. Let us proclaim it in the many crisis situations of our time, in existential and relational ones, and above all where hope fades away. As the Ukrainian woman said, Easter gives me the strength to do it. This is my sincere Easter wish to the entire community of our land.”
