Wrapped in Hope

I just read an e-mail from a friend whose wife was received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, and whose three boys were conditionally baptized at the same liturgy. Like our world, there was a mixture of sweet and sour. There was great joy over the reception into the Church, but resentment on the part of the wife's family who were against her move and left half-way through the Vigil. On one hand this year, Easter brings great rejoicing, but on the other, the attacks on the Church, particularly now the Pope, from without and within, are disheartening, to say the least. But, as St. Peter Chrysologus wrote centuries ago, "God cleanses human wounds; he does not despise them. He does not shrink from human sores, but heals them." Pope Benedict himself recently said something along the lines of our frustrations, our disappointments, our bitterness being wrapped in hope by the resurrection. There is no situation, no predicament, no apparently unresolvable problem that is not covered by "the victory of our God". "O death, where is thy victory, O death, where is thy sting?" (1Cor 15: 55).
Bro. Rene