From Father Cloherty

Brother Roger Shultz was the founder to the Ecumenical Community at Taizé, France. He was murdered in a prayer service in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris in 2005. Here is an Easter reflection from one of his books.
“Christ comes to Light Up Our Nights”
Let the Simple Heart Rejoice!
Three thousand years ago, Elijah, the believer, set out in search of a place where he could listen to God. He climbed a mountain in the wilderness. A hurricane arose, the earth began to shake, a conflagration broke out. Elijah knew that God was not in these outbursts of nature. God is never the author of earthquakes or natural disasters. Then everything became quiet and there was the murmur of a gentle breeze. Elijah covered his face. He had come to the realization that God’s voice also made itself understood in a breath of silence.
One day we visited the leper hospital with Mother Teresa. I saw a leper raise his emaciated arms and begin to sing these words:
“God has not inflicted a punishment on me; I praise him because my illness has turned into a visit from God.” In his affliction, that man also had the intuition that suffering does not come from God.
God is not the author of evil. But he has accepted a huge risk. He wanted us to be creators with him. He wanted human beings not to be like passive robots, but free to decide personally on the direction their lives will take, free to love or not to love.
And Christ never stands by passively while someone suffers. Risen from the dead, he accompanies each of us in our suffering to such an extent that there is a pain God suffers, a pain Christ suffers. And, in his name, he enables us to share the distress of those who are undergoing incomprehensible trials; he leads us to alleviate the misery of the innocent.
Although human distress does not come from God, afterward some people discover that they have been purified by their trials. To understand this, it is necessary to have gained maturity and also to have crossed inner deserts. Affected by the shock of some event, might you be undergoing the great trial, that of a broken relationship? Or again, despised and humiliated, have your purest intentions been distorted?
Humble prayer comes to heal the secret wound of the soul. And the mystery of human suffering is transfigured. The Spirit of the living God breathes upon what is destitute and fragile. In our wounds he causes living water to spring up. Through him the valley of tears becomes a place of living springs.
Let the simple heart rejoice! From peace of heart a Gospel joy can spring up, spontaneously.