This Holy Week has been a truly dramatic experience here in Italy as our hearts go out to the victims of the earthquake which hit the region of Abruzzo last Holy Monday. The tremors were also strongly felt here in Rome where I live and even as I lay awake those wee hours of the morning, I started to pray for the people who would be greatly affected by the catastrophe.And who could ever imagine seeing those scenes of inhabited places turned into ghost towns! It was a slow awakening for all of us as we followed the news day after day, of persons seeking for their children, or children searching for their parents.
The intensity heightened as we drew close to the end of the Holy Week, on Good Friday, with the funeral of 203 of almost 300 victims found in the rubble of the devastated towns. It was heartbreaking to hear the wailing of young mothers and fathers, and the voiceless plea of old men and women who lost their sons or daughters much younger than them. People searched for meaning, for answers: “why?” And “where is God in all these?”
At the other end of the line, there are those who continue to believe, to search for signs of hope, strengthened by the faith that God walks and cries and struggles with them. In the death and loss of loved ones, in the destruction of everything they hold dear, God continues to hold their hands, embrace them, infuse courage, desire and determination to start all over again.
As I contemplate this living calvary, I sense Christ rising from the dead. And in this darkness-slowly-turning-into-light, I live my Easter, struggling to let God’s grace take me out of the tomb of my trivial pains and lamentations.
