26.03.2015
Easter Message from the Archbishop of Dublin
Throughout the Season of Lent, we ourselves, as individuals and as communities, have carried the cross with Jesus Christ and we have also been carried forward by the same cross throughout those Forty Days. We have taken the opportunity given us to overlap and to identify our priorities with those of the child of Bethlehem, baptized in the River Jordan and emboldened by the Holy Spirit. We have also moved from the wilderness back into the streets of Jerusalem. We are soon to move from Jerusalem out into Galilee, at all points following this same divine and human person Jesus Christ who, as we are assured in Scripture, has gone before us. There will be new points of knowing and new points of meeting and new revelations of God with us.
On Easter Day we are held in the moment of resurrection. We are invited to let ourselves be carried forward by God in God’s fullness through that fragile, yet essential, link between loss and hope, death and life, today and tomorrow. The God of compassion, the God of transformation and the God of time meets us on Easter Day itself when a time of faithfulness becomes a time of glory.
Across the heartlands of Christianity, followers of Jesus Christ endure and sustain unspeakable human suffering and degradation, intimidation and displacement. They carry the cross of Jesus Christ in tangible and tactile ways that are unimaginable to us. They continue to witness in suffering on the Day of Resurrection by their presence. On their witness in life and martyrdom in death we are reliant for the faith that is ours to enjoy and in which we delight. As we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we pray for the life of all peoples of the Middle East and the Near East, foe and friend alike. We pray for resurrection, for recognition, for healing and for humanity.
+Michael