The Catholic Church is celebrating its biggest feast, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, three days after He was killed. What seemed to be the end of what we today know as Christianity – His Death – turned out to be just the beginning – His Resurrection.

Apart from being a question of faith – Catholics believe that death is not the end of life, but the transfer to another life – Easter is also a matter of hope. It is the chance to realise that from each end, there could be a beginning.

In more ways than one, we have all experienced death, and not only in the physical sense. We have all lost relatives and friends, and it is always hard to understand why people die, especially if this death is sudden, or involves a young person with a bright future ahead, a future that is cut short abruptly.

But there are other forms of death – and it is these experiences that can either make us or break us. It is these small deaths, if one can describe them in this way, that mould us into the individuals we are today. An experience that has come to an end is, in a way, a death that leads us to the next experience. And, frankly, it is how we react to the end of the first experience that opens the way as to how we will react when the experience after it comes along.

These small deaths could be the end of a relationship, a move from one house to another, a change of job, or even a return home from an evening of fun. All leave their mark on us; and it is up to us to absorb each and every experience we go through, and use it to grow and mature.

Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of doing so. There are people who find it impossible to move on, and never recover from a small death they go through, be it the end of something positive or the end of something negative.

There are people who have a positive experience they would like to cling to and, by doing so, continue to live in the past, thinking that somehow it could come back. It never will. Then there are others who go through a negative patch, and think that it will come back to haunt them for the rest of their lives, and never get on with it.

Living in the past means that we are unable to learn from what we have been through. It means that the small deaths we experience do not serve to take us to the next step. It means that we are unable to live day by day, building on what we have achieved to construct, or attempt to, a better future.

Take the end of a relationship, as an example. There are some people who never recover, who are too hurt to trust again, who do not want to enter into another relationship because they think they will suffer the same consequences. Yet, a bad experience does not necessarily mean that the next one will be like it.

Ultimately, these small deaths do not come by for nothing, or at least they should not. Experience is there to teach us to become better people.

A young boy who burns his finger by lighting a match learns that fire can hurt, and that he needs to be more careful the next time he lights up another one.

Life is a risk. We have many matches in our hands. We can decide not to light them up; or else we can choose to do so. If we burn our hands, it would teach us to be careful the next time. But it does not mean that we cannot try again.