THE RISEN ONE, RISING FROM THE DEAD

It is not easy to describe what the passage of a hurricane meant in the life of a city, the city of Quelimane in Mozambique. It took almost three days to suffer the devastating effects of its destructive force. Intense rains as no one remembered to have lived and hurricane-force winds that reached a speed of over 200 km/h.

Every possible imagination, even the most productive, will be dwarfed by what was experienced. Some suspect that they were under the effects of the very “eye of the hurricane” to explain the intensity and ferocity they experienced. But it is even more difficult to describe the anguish, fear, anxiety, and restlessness that marked the background of each of the people, affecting them inside, destabilizing some and disturbing others, but marking them all for life.

Concretely, it is one of the most real and evident expressions of death, in its fullest expression, moral, social and even physical death. To let oneself be carried away by its negative and destructive force and by the tendency of one’s feelings hit with such force, would be the easiest thing to do.

But how to explain the reaction that took place in the families, in the neighborhoods, in the whole city, shortly after the awareness of the magnitude of the disaster? Where did the determination and the necessary strength come from to roll up their sleeves and take action? How did this attitude of personal and collective resilience emerge, making possible what seemed impossible? And how to explain the internal and external solidarity at all costs?

According to the liberating sense of our Charism, the evangelizing task… “is constituted in the mandate to live together, in a conscious way, the renewing power of the Resurrection that acts in everyone by the power of God” (n. 9).