“Good Friday teaches us that we must not be just passive onlookers in the continuing process of history but its committed shapers,” Bishop of Poona, Rt Rev Thomas Dabre, said on the occasion of Good Friday. Advertising “Just like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy, and other martyrs like them who won and not their misguided and ambitious attackers,” he said, adding that people like “Narendra Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh will live in our hearts, inspiring us to live free, rational and enlightened human lives in society”. The Bishop said the course of human history was directed by visionaries who were sought to be finished by obstinate and blinded mercenaries of death. He added that “there is so much to be purified and changed in religious, political and civil society”. “Let us not just admire the crucified Jesus Christ but also imitate him, carrying the cross of life,” he said. The crucifixion was the most shameful and degrading punishment the Romans inflicted on slaves, the lower strata of society, and foreigners. “That rational human beings can descend to such levels of dehumanising cruelty and heartlessness sends a chill through one’s spine,” the Bishop said, adding that deep down and in the ultimate analysis, however, it was the act of supreme freedom on the part of Jesus. “He continued to be himself, without being pessimistic. Such is the stuff and character of which authentic human beings are made of. They do not allow others to dictate term to themselves. They live their own enlightened lives,” the Bishop said.

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