Beloved Brethren,

"Jesus' death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form.......  God's passionate love for his people - for humanity - is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice." [Deus Caritas Est. [God is love], Encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, 25th December 2005, nos. 10 and 12]. 

Beloved brethren, we end the season of Lent soon, solemnly celebrating the rites of the Holy Week while commemorating and witnessing to the great love that the Lord Jesus Christ showed us, love through which He liberated us from the shackles of slavery to sin and death, opening for us the possibility of attaining the fulness of eternity and heavenly bliss. He did so with His most painful death on the Cross. This unending love of Jesus we celebrate in the Easter commemoration of Redemption recalling His salvific death and Resurrection. And these celebrations allow us to re-live those great moments of Christ's sacrifice and victory and thus they become a sacred and blessed moment for all of us.

Attending to our Lenten spiritual duties, we let this blessed time be a moment in which to experience a true spirit of repentance and conversion, to practice acts of self-denial and penance and thereby realize deeds of charity towards our needy brothers and sisters and to walk the path of the Cross with our Lord in order to experience the fulness of His victory at the Resurrection.

Today our world, as a result of consumerism and individualism, the yearning to go after wealth and power has caused many to experience a strong sense of emptiness and slavery, feeling tossed up from side to side in the storms of life, suffering from a sense of frustration at not being able to find true happiness and having to live, lives that are lost and aimless with a feeling of being utterly sad and lonely. Some of us seek to look for that elusive happiness in spiritual pursuits that are limited to rites and customs only, without any effective transformation of life. Such a situation we know is unable to yield true inner joy and happiness. 

What Christ shows us during this Lenten - Easter season is how, He, who was God, emptied Himself in obedience to the Father and subjected Himself to the Cross in saving us all from the slavery of sin and death.  He invites us, not to be misled by the attractions of this world but to, along with Him, embrace the Cross. The Cross is the path to true Christian freedom: "If anyone wishes to be my disciple let him renounce himself, take up his cross and follow me." [Mk. 8.34].

And so, the Lenten - Easter season for us Christians is a time of a pass over. This call to pass-over is a great challenge.  It is the call to pass-over from selfishness to love and communion; from sin to a life of grace; from slavery to freedom and from death to life. Like the people of Israel, we too need to have our own pass-over. Let us, during this period of blessed time, reflect about the endless and most eminent love of Christ which calls us to launch out with Him on that journey. Similarly turning to the love of God, let us purify ourselves from sin by making a good and truly transforming confession. Let us understand the value of the acts of penance and self-denial helping our brothers and sisters in need. Let us spend our Easter, pleasing God and giving up all inclinations to sin and worldly desires and loving our neighbour most sincerely thereby living a truly Christian life and experiencing a true spiritual Passover at Easter!

May you be blessed with a Happy Easter. 

+ Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith

Archbishop of Colombo

6th April 2025