Easter 2021
My dear friends in our association UNUM OMNES!
In the past year 2020 we had to celebrate Easter on a small scale with closed churches! How it will be in a few weeks is not yet clear!? The Christians were able to celebrate services via livestream or in some other way. But: Easter was not cancelled. Still, we suffered a lot of losses. This applies to pretty much all countries of the earth. The first reading of the Easter Vigil comes along with the famous creation hymn and actually speaks as a lead of the fact that everything is good, yes, very good! I have to admit, I am spontaneously in danger of asking rather sarcastically: “Dear God, are you sure that you really did everything well?” Maybe many people – including believers – feel the same way today? But we should make the effort to hear this text of creation again. Because actually we should put up with the counter question: Why are you asking that this year? Yes, the pandemic was and is bad, the consequences terrifying – but hasn’t Good Friday been around since the beginning of Christianity? Hasn’t Easter set a sign against death and ruin every year since then, in the firm belief that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ life is irrevocably given to us once and for all? That even today no illness, no suffering, no death can take this gift from us again. “God saw that everything was good” is not a cheap escape from reality and not ducking away from the experience that bad things are happening to us in life. On the contrary! This God, on whom we believe as the creator of the world, came out of the bondage through the desert with his people Israel, he was stronger than any mortal danger, stronger than the troops of the Pharaoh – or the henchmen of the ISS caliphate in IRAQ – stronger than the waters of the Red Sea. According to our Christian conviction, the same God died in the form of the Son on the cross and descended to the deepest ground of death. None of this overrides the basic belief that everything that is, was brought into being by him and is therefore good. The strength that lies in that belief is the reason we celebrate Easter. No matter what humanity has made of God’s good creation in the course of its history; no matter what challenges it has to face: God’s word, which brought everything into being, endures. The Life of Jesus could be ended on the cross through human violence – the real life that comes from God could not. Christ is truly risen; death never has the last word. He cannot have it because the last word belongs to the one who also spoke the first: This is the message of Genesis when it says “God said: Let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good” (1/3f). The good light of life cannot be extinguished by death. And so, we will rekindle the light of the Easter candle – regardless of the form and participation. May it shine anew for all of us through all the darkness of our life! I wish it all with all my heart. I thank you for the many years of togetherness in our association. I have been part of it since the 90s and as a responsible eccl. Assistant for the last 4 periods. Now I can say goodbye to this beautiful office at the end of the period in August. At the age of 76 it is time to entrust this task to younger people and empower them. I wish all the best and God’s blessings for the years to come for everyone who will work in UNUM OMNES and take on new responsibility.
Kind regards and happy Easter our Msgr. Willibald Steiner, GA