Easter does not work magic, says Benedict

EASTER SUNDAY AT THE VATICAN
BY CAROL GLATZ IN ROME
WITHOUT Christ’s sacrifice and Resurrection, life would be without hope and human destiny would end only in death, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Easter message.
But “Easter does not work magic” and the human journey will still be marked by grief and anguish, as well as joy and hope for the future, he said in his message urbi et orbi (“to the city and the world”). Humanity today needs to free itself from sin, not by making superficial changes, but through a true moral and spiritual conversion, he said.
“It needs the salvation of the Gospel, so as to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences,” the Pope said.
Under cold rain Pope Benedict read his message and gave his blessing after celebrating Easter morning Mass with tens of thousands of people gathered in front of St Peter’s Basilica. Even huddled under umbrellas the crowd was jubi lant, chanting the Pope’s name and waving soggy banners and flags.
The Pope offered Easter greetings in 65 different languages, including Tamil, Aramaic, Chinese and Guarani.
The night before, during the Easter Vigil Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict baptised and confirmed a woman from Sudan, a woman from Somalia, two women from Albania and a man from Japan. The Pope also baptised a small boy from Russia. The boy’s godfather, a priest, hoisted the boy up in his arms to hold his head over the baptismal font.
The Pope used a gold shell to pour the holy water over each catechumen’s head. The newly baptised, wearing white shawls, had a brief personal exchange with the Pope when they brought the offertory gifts to the altar.
In his homily at the vigil Mass the Pope said baptism marked the beginning of a process of renouncing a world of greed, lies and cruelty and a culture that worships power.
Through baptism, the person is freed from the pursuit of pleasure, which has done nothing but destroy all that was best in humanity, he said. Becoming a Christian is not “mere cleansing, still less is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death and resurrection, rebirth to a new life,” he said.
Once stripped of the “old garments” of one’s life of sin, he said, the Christian puts on new clothes of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Baptism is “the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life — it makes us fit for eternity”, so that a person is worthy of appearing before God and can live with him forever. The next morn ing, after celebrating the Easter Mass, the Pope called for an end to “the multiple tragic expressions of a culture of death which are becoming increasingly widespread, so as to build a future of love and truth in which every human life is respected and welcomed”.
He called on world leaders to find the inspiration and strength to promote economic policies that follow “the criteria of truth, justice and fraternal aid”.
In his Easter message he called for an end to war and violence in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land; he offered consolation to persecuted Christian minorities, especially in Iraq and Pakistan; he denounced “the dangerous resurgence of crimes linked to drug trafficking” in Latin American and the Caribbean, and expressed his hopes that the people of Haiti and Chile could rebuild the areas struck by earthquakes earlier this year.
The Pope also called for peace and reconciliation in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Nigeria; and he asked that social harmony come to those places experiencing terrorism and social and religious discrimination. On Good Friday thousands of people, most holding candles, attended the evening service and listened to the meditations written by Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini.
On a hill overlooking the Colosseum the Pope stood and then knelt through the entire 90-minute service while women and men from Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy, as well as two Franciscan friars from the Holy Land, carried a black wooden cross through and around the Colosseum. After the 14th station Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the papal vicar for Rome, handed the cross to the Pope.