T.S. Eliot began his great poem “The Waste Land” with the line, “April is the cruelest month….” This April of 2003 is certainly for us a month of contrasts, a month perhaps of confusions, a month when we are brought face to face with the cruelest aspects of human nature, and at the same time celebrate the depth and breadth and height of divine love.

This April we will celebrate Holy Week and Easter. We will remember together how the powers-that-were in Jesus’ time conspired together to silence his voice and to bring an end to his ministry. We will remember how the imperial power of Rome was so afraid

of Jesus’ message of compassion and community that they executed him under the guise of the charge of being a messianic pretender, a political insurgent, a terrorist. We will remember how Roman soldiers used their superiority of weapons and power to strip Jesus, beat him, mock him, and finally to crucify him. We will remember Maundy Thursday and Good Friday—and, remembering them, we will be brought face to face with the terrible cruelty with which we humans so often reject and deny God’s invitation to surrender ourselves to love. Holy Week this April will remind us of the sin of power abused.

But Holy Week leads to Easter; and this April, as we remember cruelty, we will also contrast that with the good News of redemption, resurrection, and new life. Easter is a never-failing sign to us that God’s love is always bigger than our sin, God’s love is able to absorb the worst we can do, and God’s love can transform our worst into the possibility of new good. The cross that was the sign of Roman domination and despair, was transformed into the sign of Christ’s victory over death and promise of eternal life for all people. As we re-experience for ourselves at the Great vigil on the night before Easter, out of darkness and confusion and question of our night, our sin, our death, God brings the new day of risen life in Christ.

As we walk through Holy Week and Easter this April, we will know again the terrible contrast of the best and worst of human life—and we will know Christ’s promise to take that contrast into himself and raise it to new life.

This April also includes the feast of George, our patron Saint. St. George’s day is April 23; and even though his feast is overshadowed by Easter this year, we can still think of George and remember him in our prayers. George is also a bit of a contrast. According to the legend, George was a soldier—a soldier like the very soldiers who tortured Jesus—but he left the army and he left fighting to travel and find ways to serve Christ. When he came to the town terrorized by a dragon, it was his fighting skills that saved them all. George didn’t want to fight; but when fighting was necessary, he was able to do it, and God took up George’s soldiering and made it an instrument of blessing. The cruelty of the sword and the compassion of the heart came together in George, to serve the real needs of others.

As we are living through our own time of fighting and cruelty and confusion this April. As the war with Iraq continues, we pray that God will be at work in us, in our nation, in our soldiers, to bring good out of this situation too. We pray that God will enlighten hearts, so that those who fight may fight without cruelty or dehumanization or despair. We pray that God will open eyes, so that those who oppose the fighting may not demonize those who are carrying out their just duty. We pray that God will guide the powers-that-be, so that they may seek the truly greatest good for all. And we pray above all that God will take up all our actions, that God will lift up our good and absorb our evil, and that God will open up possibilities for new life out of this cross too.

This April we confront life and death, in the Gospel story and in our global reality. May God grant us the blessing to choose life, and to work for new life, in justice and in peace.