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Dear Brothers and Sisters,
May the Lord give you peace!
This Easter presents us with the face of Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen Lord, who went through life and death to the end and experienced all our reality as creatures.
Here my thoughts turn to St Francis. When he met the leper at the beginning of his conversion, Francis experienced that "what seemed bitter to me was changed to sweetness of mind and body" (2Test 3). As a result, he was able to share Easter with the leper, between bitterness and sweetness, death and life!
The path is marked out for us.
St Francis gave us the Rule, life according to the Gospel, 800 years ago. In Greccio, Francis heard the Gospel again, as he saw the hardship and poverty in which the Son of God was born, who remained with us under the little form of bread.
St Francis helps us to have an Easter look at reality. We need it so much.
To live and proclaim the primacy of God and faith in Him.
To become builders of reconciliation and peace all the more, a leaven of fraternity.
To care for our common home.
To live our mission with and among the little ones and the poor of today.
To learn to meet and dialogue with many.
Here is an Easter path for us today so that the treasure of the Gospel, lived as brothers and sisters, may fill this time plagued by so much violence and longing for true peace.
With the blessing of St Francis, I truly wish everyone an Easter of life. Life, in and through the reality of humanity today, which so many of us share all across the world.
Br Massimo Fusarelli
Minister General