These days you will surely have heard a mountain of spiritual and secular words with original images and thoughts to wish each other a Happy Easter. Today I would like to focus on a thought that we can all understand, because we have all been children and retain memories that arouse the curiosity of the unseen. Above all, I would like to wish Happy Easter to those who never set foot in church. I tell you how I understood the secret of Easter from the suffering of when I was a child. I realised this through frequent dialogues with an almond tree that filled my unconscious and providential thirst for love. I later discovered as an adult that the almond tree can be the secret to resurrection and hope for all. I discovered it in the Bible at the beginning of the book of the prophet Jeremiah (chap. 1:11-12). God asks Jeremiah: "What do you see?" And the prophet replies: 'I see an almond tree branch'. Almond tree in Hebrew is called shaqued, which means the vigilant. Thus God responds by playing on the ambivalence of the word: "You have said well: for I watch (shaqued) over my Word to fulfil it. And perhaps that is why the almond tree in blossom adorns so many images of the risen Christ.

Passover for all

When I hear or read the popular proverb: 'Christmas with your folks, Easter with whoever you want' I think back to my childhood years. I am reminded of the nostalgic sadness that the Feast of Passover aroused in me and even today as I ponder the passing of time. And I am well aware that we risk losing the essential if we allow ourselves to get caught up in the frenzy of the present with its thousand events and provocations. We must cherish the memory of the past to understand how to face today, moment by moment. Already as a child I wanted to understand the difference between Christmas and Easter because for me they were really two very different holidays. Why? Of course I am referring to my Christmas and Easter. Let me explain: my mother was in a sanatorium for many years, so my brother and I were placed in a huge boarding school with twenty-four large rooms where the individual classes slept: in all, we were 500 children, boys and girls. At school I had a desk-mate Loredana whom I called Lory, a little girl of the same age with whom I got on very well. Outside the classroom, however, we always lived separately, the boys from the girls, and you could not see or speak to each other for any reason. This rule was ironclad and also applied to Sundays and holidays, including Christmas and Easter. And that made Easter even more difficult for me. But why - you may ask - did it cost so much? Well, there was a difference between Christmas and Easter, and how! At Christmas, even if you couldn't go as a family, at least I would get the mythical 'liquorice goliaths', sent by my sick mother in the sanatorium, and it was enough for me to live Christmas serenely the thought that someone was thinking of me. In those few 'mints', which came to me sealed in an envelope and sent by post, there was her: a mother, mine. I had been looking forward to Christmas since October: with anxiety and hope, certain that I would be able to taste the candy that had each the warmth and love of a distant and, moreover, sick mother.

 Was this my Christmas, and Easter? Primarily, the miracle of the 'mints' was missing and the days passed all the same. In spite of everything I began to let myself be captured by an idea, a dream or perhaps a gift from heaven. In the vast garden on which the windows of the large bedroom where I slept opened, among the many trees, there was a beautiful almond tree which, coinciding with the spring holidays coinciding with the Easter season, was already in full blossom, even if it did not emanate a great perfume, or at least I did not smell it. In the imagination of a child who loved to read and tell fairy tales, that almond tree seemed alive to me and to hear it speak. In autumn and winter when it was bare and even seemed to die, he would tell me that death is part of life, but he added that when everything seems to die, it is not so because in spring everything starts to live again. Since Easter time coincides with spring between March and April, the almond tree, from bare and upright towards the sky in winter, opened its branches almost to embrace spring, and reached the peak of its beauty when it sported its five-petalled flowers in delicate shades of pink and snow-white. That almond tree seemed to tell me that when everything seems to be over, everything starts again and wakes up from its winter sleep. I followed the emergence of the new buds and the growth of the young shoots, observing that as the days passed, the flowers began to wither. It had become a daily necessity for me to explore, or, if you like, to consult the almond tree, and so I would notice that with the rapid passing of the months, green almonds would form, which would then become dry and palatable: many would fall to the ground. I would put some aside for Mum and then find a way to send them off. I don't know if they ever reached her, but to this memory I link the small joy of my Easter, which I knew very little about at the time, except for the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, very sorry that evil men had killed him on the cross, even though afterwards - the catechist nun assured us - he rose again. So Easter, without too much understanding, became in me the hope/dream of a better future, and my childlike mind immediately went to the winter of my almond tree friend and its springtime, which corresponded precisely with the time when Jesus was to rise again. And at Easter I would take courage. That almond tree, which I had chosen to call 'my joy', also taught me another lesson: it would give me almonds and then immediately begin to lose its leaves and prepare to die. You won't believe it, but it was he who made me realise that we are made to give others what we have most precious: our life and our love freely to all, especially to those who suffer as my mother was. And I used to tell myself that the almonds sent to my mother had been given to me free of charge by the almond tree itself. And I realised growing up that nature is a teacher of life if we respect and listen to it. 

"Christmas with your folks and Easter with whoever you want". And so many take the opportunity to escape to the mountains to ski or go and enjoy the first sun on the beaches while others travel the world to get to know it and have fun. Why not also take advantage of spending Easter to visit someone who lives far away and with whom you have not spoken for a long time? When you are a tourist, become a bit of a pilgrim: stop to discover what enriches you with hope. For example, if you go to the mountains, stop to admire the charm of silent, peaceful landscapes. Talk to the peaks, the trees, the birds and even the flowers. If you want to live these days in a spirit of recharging the batteries of your brain fatigued by the hectic pace of everyday life, nature with all its merits and appeals is at your service. Take some time, consecrate it to your heart and go out alone or solitary to walk on the beach along rivers, seas and oceans, or calmly climb up mountains through paths that are already experiencing the magical warmth of spring's prodigious awakening. Walk and reflect, think and pray in your own way: talk to plants and flowers, to fish or birds, to your weary spirit and to your God, because you certainly have one, even if you don't know him.  Make it a springtime Easter and an experience of confrontation with life that speaks to you through everything you admire and allow yourself to be surprised by the unseen and the unexpected. Stop and contemplate everything without rushing, because in the smallest mountain flower, as in the grains of sand that you tread by the sea, in the smallest moment of peace, your heart speaks to you of the Infinite, and only if you fall in love with the Infinite will you discover the meaning and value of love, which is free, just as those flowers and that sand that have lived for thousands of years for you, yet do not belong to you, are offered to you free of charge. Think and reflect: after all, life is yours too, but it does not belong to you. Let yourself fall in love with an Easter experience that passes through encounters with nature and history, art and geography in the tourist world and the poorer world where people have lived who have been exploited for centuries and perhaps still are. Learn to let the whole of creation speak to you with all its riches and poverty, its beauties and the abominations that man has often brought upon it, and I am certain, because I have experienced it, that you will end up being moved as you pick small flowers from the undergrowth of the mountains, or visit villages in the African forest where those who have lived there for centuries open their thatched houses to you and welcome you as a king. In short, do Easter, celebrating the beauty of nature that in Spring already speaks to you of infinity. Let it be Easter with whomever you wish, but when you return home take with you some exotic souvenir from countries of established tourism, or an object that speaks of lands where nature is still the teacher and mother of life, something that recalls the taste of the sea or the smell of the mountains. Above all, print in your heart the faces that have smiled at you and the people who have passed on to you all useful life lessons. The French writer Georges Bernanos notes, 'the little things have the air of nothing, but they give peace'. In short, Easter is above all about re-establishing relationships with those you have not seen for a long time and perhaps do not love; you decide to end the war between hearts: this is the true miracle of Easter, a gift and message of peace that teaches us to discover the value of every reality that happens to us, whether beautiful or sad and gloomy. If at Christmas it was my mother's few liquorice sweets that made me happy, at Easter it was the thought of almonds from the tree, which I called my friend, that taught me that everything passes and it is the little things that guide us towards the high ideals and great conquests of the heart or the fatal defeats of life. Fëdor Dostoevsky writes 'small things have their importance: it is always for small things that we lose'.

+Giovanni