Dear reader friends, it’s very impressive to see the door of the Holy Sepulcher sealed in these Easter days and the access denied to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem even on Palm Sunday, when in normal times the rites of the Holy Week. Rightly so, the Israeli government’s decision sparked international outrage. And if politically it appears to be a very questionable decision, spiritually it clashes with the Easter Gospels, in which we read that the women at Jesus’ tomb for the funeral rites “observed that the stone had already been rolled away, although it was very large” (Mark 16.4).
Yes, the Scriptures tell us about rolling stones, shocking encounters at the tomb and apparitions, while our present, made up of disturbing daily news on international conflicts, seems to go in the opposite direction to the evangelical Good News.
In this regard, the statement of a biblical scholar is striking, which needs to be meditated on in these Easter days: «I am not a Christian because I believe in the resurrection; but because I believe in the resurrection, I am a Christian” (Mateo Bautista). Believing in the resurrection is the original, founding fact of our faith, which does not depend on the “facts of the day”. And which becomes the foundation of our life as Christians, of our hope, of our testimony.
Like that of the Christians of Lebanon who, despite being tried by precariousness, live their faith with simplicity and, indeed, testify to the welcome of many refugees, often Muslims, offering them help, support and closeness. A testimony, as Father Jean Fatah tells us, in Credere 14/2026 on newsstands this week, which often strikes and questions who this Jesus is and why Christians are so gentle and ready to help anyone.
Another statement, in the report on Paolo Pomata, makes us reflect. Recounting his experience of faith, which he saw falter in the face of the strong shocks that life had in store for him, and his encounter with the Lord, he states: «It was almost an epiphany: the Lord made himself present and accompanied us in a discreet but real way».
It is an experience similar, ultimately, to that made by the disciples of Jesus with his apparitions: in a mysterious form, difficult to express in words since it is a divine mystery, they experience that Christ is alive and comes to meet them. It is an elusive presence, grasped with difficulty, of which we perceive as glimmers, yet real, an irrepressible certainty, a bit like those experiences we have every now and then in life as believers, when we realize the “passage of God” in our lives.
This is the wish that, together with the entire editorial staff of Credere, I would like to make to you, dear reader friends: that this Easter season will help us to grasp, in the plot of a story wounded by evil and injustice, the living presence of the risen Christ.
It is the experience transmitted to us by Saint Paulthe paradigm of the Christian experience of all time: «I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And this life, which I live in the body, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
In collaboration with Credere
Credere, the magazine for living the “adventure of faith”
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