Br. Jozo Grbeš, Provincial of the Herzegovinian Franciscan Province of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, sent a message for Easter 2025, which we are transmitting in its entirety.
Dear friends!
Man lives in a world of separation and departures. Sooner or later we all have to leave our “garden”. We cannot stay here! At some point in our lives we discover that life and death, both negative and positive, are part of the same reality. Everything lives and dies at the same time. We separate from those we love. In partings, we pass through the path of sadness, darkness, separation and love, and the splitting of our own lives into fragments of memory. Separations are our preparation for parting with that which we call ourselves, and pain and suffering, wounds and forgiveness become our wealth.
Man’s longing for immortality is constant within him. Therefore, he expresses it in his physical offspring, intellectual legacy, and glorious name. Since man has no permanence in himself, he wants to continue existing only in another, but his existence in another is only a shadow without permanence and finality, because both the other and the other must disappear. Therefore, only one provides permanence, which he calls eternal: “He who is,” (Ex, 3:14), who does not come into being but remains despite the world whose main essence is transience. Jesus knew this. That is why He told His followers that they were mistaken if they did not understand the Scriptures or the Powers of God, for “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You greatly err.” (Mk 12:24,27). Let us not be deceived today by the appearance of the transitory. Misunderstanding creates delusions.
We know that the cross is only understood through the resurrection. This is the logic behind all suffering. The later understands the earlier! Sooner or later we encounter Jesus who walked where there is no way. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6) We do not know the way without Him! Without Him we cannot reach Him. Without Him we only walk, and we do not know where, we are busy, and we do not know what, we speak, and we do not know what about. He is! The Resurrection is a question of faith, but also a question of readiness for earthly disappearance, for oblivion from people’s memory, for not recognizing that I ever existed. Yes, that is how it will be. Except with Him! Therefore, Happy Easter means: I believe that it is so! I live by this belief that it is so. I abandon everything outside of such and thus I subordinate my life only to love! To nothing else! The great Pope Ratzinger expressed this belief with the words: “It is very reasonable to believe in the love that has conquered death”.
The way has been shown to us. Happy Easter!
Br. Jozo Grbeš, OFM
The Provincial
