Easter Sunday
Rome, 5 April 2026
Prot. 50/26/160 Letters to the Order
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Lord is risen, alleluia! “We are an Easter people,” as Augustine of Hippo reminds us, and “alleluia is our song.” Yet the most profound greeting of this holy season is the one that comes from the Risen Christ Himself: “Peace be with you!”
The Paschal Mystery, the death and resurrection of the Lord, restores our communion with God and with one another, a communion wounded and fractured by sin. The Risen Lord stands in our midst and bestows upon us His gift of peace. In the Gospel of John, we are told that the mission of Jesus is to gather into one the scattered children of God (John 11:52). In His great priestly prayer, He lifts His eyes to the Father and intercedes for us: “that they may all be one, as you and I are one” (John 17:21). Indeed, God wills that all humanity abide in harmony and unity. Division, discord, conflict, and war obscure this divine purpose and estrange us from God and from one another.
During the first week of Lent, we visited our brothers at the Convent of Saint-Étienne and the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. Paradoxically, the city whose name means “peace” has so often been marked by conflict, division, and suffering. Providentially, we were able to return to Rome just eighteen hours before the bombings began.
When we turn to our brother Thomas Aquinas, we encounter a profoundly Christian vision of peace, one that speaks with particular urgency to our own time. He teaches that peace is, in a certain sense, the work of justice, insofar as justice removes the obstacles that hinder it; yet more deeply, peace is the work of charity, for charity by its very nature brings about unity (Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3).
When charity, God’s own love, takes root within us, it gives rise to true communion. It heals what is divided and restores what has been broken. It enables us to behold one another no longer as strangers or adversaries, but as brothers and sisters. Where charity flourishes, we do not merely refrain from harming one another; we begin to will the good of the other. And this willing of the other’s good is the true foundation of peace. For this reason, the Church never ceases to call us back to charity, knowing that wherever authentic love abides, peace begins to take root and grow.
As Pope Leo reminds us, we may at times feel powerless before the many wars and divisions that afflict our world. Yet we are not without a response: “Believers can, first and foremost, give voice to prayer. Prayer is an ‘unarmed’ force that seeks only the common good, without exclusion. By praying, we disarm our ego and become capable of gratuitousness and sincerity.” Let us persevere in earnest prayer for peace in our world, especially for our brothers and sisters who endure the trials of war and conflict, that the Lord may comfort them in their affliction and grant them His peace; and that we, being made true peacemakers, may be called children of God
Peace is both a grace bestowed and a mission entrusted to us. The Risen Lord greets His disciples with peace, and then entrusts them with a mission: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” On that first Easter day, disciples became apostles; those who followed are now sent forth. So too for us: having received the peace of Christ, we are sent to bear it into the world, to preach, in word and in life, the Good News of the Resurrection.
May the joy of the Risen Lord fill your hearts. A blessed and grace-filled Easter to you all! Peace be with you!
Your brother in St. Dominic,
Fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner III, OP
Master of the Order
