I arose and am still with you, alleluia.
You have laid your hand upon me, alleluia.
How wonderful is now your knowledge, alleluia, alleluia.
Lord, you have probed me and known me:
You know when I sit and when I stand.
(From the Introit, Mass on Easter Sunday morning)
On this is day you celebrate my triumph over death. During the past week you have retold aloud the story of how my friends deserted me, how no one lifted their voice to protest that I was innocent. You have seen me scourged. You have walked the stations of the cross with me. You were there when they laid me in the tomb.
On this day you celebrate the return of the Light, my return to life. But I am still in the dungeon, still subjected to scourgings. Thanks to your modern scientia, electric probes now know me. My captors decide when I sit and for how long I stand.
Again and again I am laid unconscious and bleeding in the prison-tomb. You still do not lift up your voice to save me. Today, as then, my ordeal is authorized by governments. Their officials deny my presence or my torments, even as they invent new laws to keep me here. Free me now. Make me rise triumphant from this grave. I too want to sing alleluia.
–Easter 2006
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The scourgings have at last stopped…along with the probings, the stress positions, the sexual abuse.
But the victims have not yet been restored to life. And many of those who have been released from Guantánamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib still carry the imprint of their sufferings.
The tomb is not yet empty.
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