In these nine years I have had the pleasure and privilege of being able to offer you Easter greetings from the very places that recall the Resurrection of Jesus and his first apparitions: the empty tomb and the nearby chapels that recall the encounter with His mother, with Mary Magdalene and with the women; Emmaus where Jesus makes himself known as he breaks bread; the Upper Room where he appears to the disciples on Easter evening and eight days later.

This year I would like to offer you my best wishes from another special place: Tabgha, which is located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, not far from Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes and Magdala.

Jesus had asked Mary Magdalene to announce to His brothers that he had risen and that He was going ahead of them to Galilee, and that there they would meet Him again, where it all began, three years earlier.

In Tabgha, on the shore of the lake, Jesus appears to Peter and six other disciples who are trying to fish, as if they had shelved their call because they were overwhelmed by the death of the Master. In Tabgha, the risen Jesus appears at dawn, when it is no longer night but not yet day. It appears when it is more difficult to recognize the face but not the voice.

The Risen One appears and asks once again to fish though fishing now seems futile. That is, He asks us to trust Him, once again and to the end, because only He is able to overturn our failures and fill our emptiness.

The Risen One appears and asks Peter the most important question, the same one he asks us: “Do you love Me more than everything and more than everyone? If you really love Me, you can start following Me again. If you really love Me, you can start taking care of the people I entrust to you. If you truly love me, you too will be able to give your life completely, to the very end, just as I did”.

If we want to celebrate Easter, if we want to celebrate it fully, we too must learn not to remain imprisoned in an empty tomb. The Risen Jesus precedes us and walks before us.

If we want to celebrate Easter, we cannot remain imprisoned in our personal failures: on the human level as well as on the religious level.

If we want to celebrate Easter, we cannot even remain crushed under the heavy stone of the circumstances in which we find ourselves living, which speak of failure and death: wars, pandemics, earthquakes, economic crises, natural disasters and disasters caused by our human recklessness and sometimes even by our human cruelty.

The Risen Jesus has already overcome all this and only asks us: “Do you love me to the point of trusting me totally? Are you willing to start over with me? Do you want to put me back at the center of your life?” Then and only then will He be able to say to us once again: “Follow me and take care of the people I entrust to you, and together with Me learn to give your life”.

Then, and only then, will we also become capable of recognizing him present while it is no longer night but not yet day, and we will experience that by hoping in Him we will never be disappointed, deceived or confused, and we will be able to walk confidently, accompanied by Him, on the paths of time towards the eternal Easter.