Easter is better celebrated with Good Friday in mind. This is especially the case as we reflect on the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Easter invites us to celebrate the fact that the light of Christ has come into the darkness of our world, providing us with hope for a future greater than we dare believe. It challenges us to share a kind of living that goes beyond the expectation of this earth.
This is a difficult message to hear and embrace, when we cannot even congregate to celebrate it. Yet the Easter event announces that love is present in the world and is more powerful than any evil that can manifest. The good news is that in all the dark and despairing moments of life the possibility of the resurrection exists because no defeat is final and no life is written off as hopeless.
The story of the priest, Fr. Giuseppe Berardelli, who died in Italy, shows us how light can defeat darkness. Some of his parishioners and friends rallied to buy him a ventilator for his failing lungs, ravaged by COVID-19. But Fr. Berardelli had a different idea. He gave it to a much younger man, who was abandoned by his friends and relatives.
Celebrating Easter under the shadow of COVID-19 challenges us to creatively seek ways, through acts of kindness, to make the light of the resurrection shine brightly in our world. Easter challenges us to become light in darkness.
