“Resurrexit Sicut Dixit, Alleluia!! Let us announce it to the whole world”.
Today is the day of the resurrection, today is the day when the memory of Christ who defeated death becomes alive. Today is the day to be witnesses.
This is the message of the celebration of Easter, which His Beatitude Mons. Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem announces to the faithful gathered in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre for today’s Mass. It is a luminous celebration in a very crowded church. Compared to the Vigil of yesterday morning, far more pilgrims have been able to enter the church. This time too, the function takes place in front of the place of the Anastasis. The Hallelujah is repeated and the voices of the choir are mixed with those of the faithful and the celebrants.
“The tomb is empty,” announces the homily of Mons. Twal. “Christ, his body of flesh and blood, is no longer in the tomb, nor amongst the dead. Through faith and the commandment of love, He wants to invade humanity and asks us to do what he told the women: to announce Him. Today, like then, it is not sufficient to announce Christ and his Resurrection only in words, but we have to bear witness with our actions, our unity, our processions here, in this land, with our institutions.”
The Patriarch recalls the need to bear witness “to the thousands of pilgrims and tourists who come to seek Christ and to rediscover their roots of faith, to the many people who still cannot believe in God, to the many people who cannot be freed from their conflicts and incomprehension.”
The announcement of the Resurrection is also made in the solemn procession that closes the celebration. In four different corners of the Basilica, passages from the Gospel of John, Luke and Mark are read and the choir sings the joy and the glory of the triumph of Christ.
“He has risen, as he had said. Let us announce it to the whole world.”
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso
Today is the day of the resurrection, today is the day when the memory of Christ who defeated death becomes alive. Today is the day to be witnesses.
This is the message of the celebration of Easter, which His Beatitude Mons. Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem announces to the faithful gathered in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre for today’s Mass. It is a luminous celebration in a very crowded church. Compared to the Vigil of yesterday morning, far more pilgrims have been able to enter the church. This time too, the function takes place in front of the place of the Anastasis. The Hallelujah is repeated and the voices of the choir are mixed with those of the faithful and the celebrants.
“The tomb is empty,” announces the homily of Mons. Twal. “Christ, his body of flesh and blood, is no longer in the tomb, nor amongst the dead. Through faith and the commandment of love, He wants to invade humanity and asks us to do what he told the women: to announce Him. Today, like then, it is not sufficient to announce Christ and his Resurrection only in words, but we have to bear witness with our actions, our unity, our processions here, in this land, with our institutions.”
The Patriarch recalls the need to bear witness “to the thousands of pilgrims and tourists who come to seek Christ and to rediscover their roots of faith, to the many people who still cannot believe in God, to the many people who cannot be freed from their conflicts and incomprehension.”
The announcement of the Resurrection is also made in the solemn procession that closes the celebration. In four different corners of the Basilica, passages from the Gospel of John, Luke and Mark are read and the choir sings the joy and the glory of the triumph of Christ.
“He has risen, as he had said. Let us announce it to the whole world.”
By Serena Picariello
Photos by Marco Gavasso