Our editorial of the week

First, there is night. In the Easter chronology, the silence of Good Friday unfolds its veil of sadness until the first light of Sunday morning. Without this assumed journey through suffering, the dazzling news of the Resurrection would undoubtedly not have had the same meaning or the same brilliance.

The world today gives us endless hours of darkness. In the Middle East, and in so many other dying countries, the planet is being rebuilt before our eyes so quickly that our analytical criteria are no longer keeping pace. “When I was 20, after two world wars, we said: ‘Never again’,” recalls our guest, the writer Erik Orsenna. Who would now dare to bet on the wisdom of the people, when, according to Unicef, 19,000 children are displaced every day in Lebanon, or when millions of Americans discover, frightened, the fragility of their democracy?

And then, sometimes completely unexpectedly, the day comes. Our investigation into the unprecedented rise in baptism requests in France highlights this astonishing paradox: it was in 2021, at the height of the abuse scandal documented by the Ciase report, that thousands of young adults began to knock on church doors. To the point, in many parishes, of shaking up well-established routines. Because it is not enough to see the horizon open up, it takes time to imagine the new.

Time, too, to get back up, as evidenced by Laurent or Jean-Marie, whom we met at length in a care center dedicated to spinal cord injuries. Time, finally, to start hoping again: run and see Compostela, this film which depicts the path of reconstruction of a young delinquent walking towards the thousand-year-old sanctuary, and towards another face of himself.

As a watchman watches for the dawn, our soul waits for the Lord, sings the psalmist. Attentive caregivers, parish volunteers, artists, famous or not, are the guardians of hope of our time. “The worse it gets, the more I need to play,” confides pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay. Both Passions composed by Jean-Sébastien Bach, continues the concert artist, did not prevent the immense musician from daring to joy: “His music was born to do good: let’s play and listen! Peace is here, let’s go. »