Easter message from the President

Human nature vigorously resists grace,

because grace transforms us and change is always painful.

Flannery O’Connor                                                                                                                  

To celebrate Easter is to recognize that light inevitably breaks through the darkest night. It is letting the silent gesture of the stone removed from the tomb translate into concrete hope, capable of renewing the human heart, communities and the world.

At a time when humanity is still going through uncertainty and the wounds are deepening, Easter is an invitation to start again. Not from a place of suffering, but from the site of courage, embedded with gestures of reconciliation, with a will to listen and with active solidarity.

Inspired by these words of Flannery O'Connor, let us recognize that personal and community renewal requires the courage to welcome grace, even when it deconstructs our certainties. The courage, after all, to let God make all things new - also within us, and also within our universities.

At our campi, this renewal translates into a daily call to educate for the common good, to research ethically, to build bridges between knowledge and people. True Easter renewal involves the courage to imagine the world not as it is, but as it can and should become – a world that is more just, more humane, effectively united in a common purpose.

May this Easter renew in us the courage for transformation and may the year of the Jubilee foster in our communities a renewed hope in the future. And may we, as an academic community, become more and more a place of encounter, growth and service.

A happy and blessed Easter.

Isabel Capeloa Gil

President