Tagle: Christ’s resurrection will vindicate victims of injustice

MANILA, Philippines - “Those who lie, those who sell and betray friends, you think you have succeeded but God will reverse what you have done.”

Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle made this warning in his homily during the Easter Vigil celebration at the Manila Cathedral Saturday night.

He reminded the victims of injustice that they would have their vindication as Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead, and that the Lord would “reverse their suffering to joy.”

“The resurrection is a warning to the unjust, to those who trample on the rights of the innocent,” Tagle said.

“You may be weeping now, you may be suffering now. Have no fear for God will raise you up. God will vindicate you.

“God is alive and if He raised Jesus from the dead, he continues to raise us from the dead. This is pure grace. We thank God, and we rely on God,” he added.

Despite the challenges and imperfections being experienced by God’s people, Tagle said that the Lord continues to renew and raise them from suffering so they may experience great things in their earthly journey.

The cardinal also reminded that the death of Christ was the “work of human beings and institutions that failed to see the action of God,” and that those who plotted his death “wanted to make sure that His words, His visions, His actions, and His inspirations, would all die with Him.”

But he said the resurrection of Christ was “purely the work of God, that’s why the gospel could talk of the resurrection of God only symbolically – through earthquake and angels dazzlingly white in appearance – to tell us that this event is not the work of human hands.”