Array
I am writing this during the last hours of Good Friday. The crude, empty cross of my parish has been changed this afternoon for one with Christ crucified, presiding over the temple. However, when you read this, it will be only a few hours before the celebration of the Easter Vigil, the grand Christian festival, the celebration of the Resurrection. Then we will intone a magnificent Gloria in excelsis deo and the light of the candles will put an end to the darkness of this day of restlessness and gloom.
During the past year, misfortunes have brought me closer to the cross than to Easter. Fortunately, this has not caused me to lose my sense of humor even in the most difficult circumstances, which is a disease I have not yet managed to cure. It seems to me that there is nothing more Christian than laughter in the midst of heartache. We are not crazy, we simply have a magical element, a kind of drug that many are unaware of, which is called hope. In hope, humor can emerge. Not in despair.
On November 28, 1936, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, the anarcho-syndicalist militias shot the playwright and comedian Pedro Muñoz Seca, one of the funniest authors of the last century. He was killed for being right-wing, Catholic, and monarchist. At the moment of his execution, in front of the mob of enraged and hateful men, seconds before his death, he raised his voice to leave us another pearl of humor and hope that disconcerted his murderers: “You can take away my properties, my country, my fortune and even — as you are about to do — my life.
