“He who was pierced now shines in radiance, bearing wounds that heal, and love that conquers every grave.”
 
How else but through dying could God reveal his message that we, too, must die to self and to selfishness in order to truly rise to life? How else could He show suffering, mortal humanity that He understands our pain, and asks us nothing that He himself had not endured? And how better could He teach us that death need not be a final extinguishing, but in union with His death and Resurrection, a purification and beginning of a new resurrected life?