easter 2005 “You bent over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our sores, a mercy greater than our fault. Thus, in virtue of Your invincible love, even sin served to raise us up to divine life” Preface from the Ambrosian Liturgy Jesus addresses us, becomes “encounter” for us, asking us only one thing; not “What have you done?”, but “Do you love me?”. It takes an infinite power to be this mercy, an infinite power from which–in this earthly world, in the time and space we are given to live, whether for a few or for many years–we receive, we draw happiness. Because a man, in the awareness of all his lowliness, is happy at the announcement of this mercy: Jesus is mercy. He is sent by the Father to make us know that for man the supreme characteristic of the essence of God is mercy. Luigi Giussani Pietro Lorenzetti, Deposition (detail), 14th century. Lower Basilica of San Francis, Assisi. (Elio Ciol)