A woman seen during the Cerca procession on Good Friday as part of the Easter celebration in Castello, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. — AFP photo
IN the utmost turmoil and unprecedented turbulent period of the entire human history, Easter is being celebrated by a huge population of Christians across Planet Earth.
To them, Easter is their most important festival. They celebrate the ‘Resurrection of their Saviour’, and the triumph of good over evil after the trials and tribulations and sufferings.
In Easter, there is always hope, and mankind should never ever give up hope even in the most difficult and challenging times – the extreme climate change, the unfinished war against Covid-19 and the near-recession global economy.
There is hope!
Many people believe that religious and spiritual beliefs – whatever all human creatures believe in and however we make sense of the world – are highly personal and incredibly emotional, and should always be respected by everyone.
It is, as many of us think, useful and important to learn about other people’s religions and beliefs so we can learn to live together in peace and harmony in this rather difficult, troublesome and complicated world.
For peace and harmony, we should continue to accept as we did before, not just to tolerate in a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious and multi-linguistic country.
Today, we have another highly significant world religion, Islam. It is now the Holy Month of Ramadan, a month of incredible personal discipline, prayers and reflection being observed by the Muslims.
People of other faiths and beliefs must show the fullest respect to them not only at this time, but at all times. It is the fundamental basic human right of all human beings.
It is very sad, and indeed enormously disturbing, to see unfolding before us across the world today absolutely unjustifiable and unconscionable atrocities, aggression, greed, cruelty, bullying, rudeness and inhuman treatment inflicted upon fellow human creatures, especially the young and the weak, the disabled, the vulnerable and the poor, women and the old folks, of all ethnic and religious groups, at all levels of human society, from the most basic unit to their nations.
This strikes every hour of the year, even in the holiest months of some major religions.
The horrors and atrocities of the last World Wars are being repeated. This is totally unacceptable in a civilised society.
This Easter, we pray and hope that the few multi-trillion arms industry nations would not supply and sell arms, but to give love instead, and supply relief funds, food, medical equipment and also medical personnel, and constructive help and assistance to the war-torn countries and their suffering peoples, so that they could rebuild their lives, and people in all corners of the world could continue to put food on the table, and provide basic shelters for the families.
Only love and sincerity, not war or hatred, can help the embattled global economy and the equally embattled people to slowly recover.
Give them HOPE this Easter.
Happy Easter!