WITH Easter Sunday today, and as we Filipinos move toward the conclusion of the six-year Aquino regime, we see the enlightening contrast between victory and vengeance.

Rising from the dead as He foretold, Christ in that first Easter Sunday shone as the triumph of light over darkness, of truth over lies, of love over loathing. But it was victory without vengeance.

We hear that point echoing in the Good Friday homily in St. Peter’s Basilica by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household. He said:

“It is time for us to realize that the opposite of mercy is not justice but vengeance. Jesus did not oppose mercy to justice but to the law of retaliation: ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth’. In forgiving sinners, God is renouncing not justice but vengeance; he does not desire the death of a sinner but wants the sinner to convert and live.

“On the cross Jesus did not ask his Father for vengeance: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Lk 23:24). No matter how far the hate of human beings can go, the love of God always has been, and will be, greater.”

We cannot help looking at our own country kneeling at the foot of the cross and lamenting the disunity, moral decay and partisan conflict that an apparent policy of political retribution has brought us.

We note the selective prosecution that has targeted foes but exempted allies. Five years devoted to hunting down political enemies in the guise of justice has only fractured the nation at a time when it needs rebuilding based on national unity.

■ Francis: Build bridges instead of walls

WE RECALL Pope Francis saying, referring then to US presidential aspirant Donald Trump’s plan to build a 2,500-kilometer wall at the US-Mexico border to block illegal crossings: “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

In our Postscript at the time (Feb. 21, 2016) we said that that reproach to build bridges instead of erecting walls applies especially to those who presume to wield power and control people’s lives. We added:

“To localize this point, we reiterate the admonition that a national leader’s first task after winning a bruising election is to set aside animosities, embrace everybody, bind the nation’s wounds and unite the people. A one-term President should drop party labels and color-coding.

“Building social bridges, not partisan walls, is crucial to a unifying President’s political infrastructure.” See: http://tinyurl.com/h47g8bm

Even with just three months left of his term, it is not too late for President Noynoy Aquino to have a change of heart, a conversion of sorts. We pray that high pride does not get in the way.

The negative elements in his leadership style are public knowledge — especially as they pull down his candidates in the May 9 elections. To correct these negatives, there should be an effort to winnow them from the campaign chaff whirling in the heat of politics.

One element that sticks out is venganza, the selective persecution of perceived enemies. Although disguised as prosecutory justice under Daang Matuwid, it is one of the problems standing in the way of national unification and real progress.

Mr. Aquino must be aware of the problem that could arise if his camp loses Malacañang and the victors from the other side embark on their own version of venganza.

Even now speculations are rife that Mr. Aquino et al. will get a bigger dose of their own medicine as they are lined up for similar selective prosecution.

■ Families ruined by desire to get even

GOING back to the Good Friday homily of Father Cantalamessa, we hear him pursuing the same theme as applied on other aspects of life:

“We need to demythologize vengeance! It has become a pervasive mythic theme that infects everything and everybody, starting with children. A large number of the stories we see on the screen and in video games are stories of revenge, passed off at times as the victory of a good hero.

“Half, if not more, of the suffering in the world (apart from natural disasters and illnesses) come from the desire for revenge, whether in personal relationships or between states and nations.

“It has been said that ‘Beauty will save the world.’ But beauty, as we know very well, can also lead to ruin. There is only one thing that can truly save the world, mercy! The mercy of God for human beings and the mercy of human beings for each other.

“In particular, it can save the most precious and fragile thing in the world at this time, marriage and the family.

“Something similar happens in marriage to what happened in God’s relationship with humanity that the Bible in fact describes with the image of a wedding. In the very beginning, there was love, not mercy. Mercy comes in only after humanity’s sin.

“So too in marriage, in the beginning there is not mercy but love. People do not get married because of mercy but because of love. But then after years or even months of life together, the limitations of each spouse emerge, and problems with health, finance, and the children arise. A routine sets in that quenches all joy.

“What can save a marriage from going downhill without any hope of coming back up again is mercy, understood in the biblical sense, that is, not just reciprocal forgiveness but spouses acting with ‘compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience’ Mercy adds agape to eros, it adds the love that gives of oneself and has compassion to the love of need and desire.

“God ‘takes pity’ on human beings. Should not a husband and wife, then, take pity on each other? And those of us who live in community, should not we take pity on one another instead of judging one another?”