11.04.2017
Easter Message 2017 from the Archbishop of Dublin
Resurrection brings to life generous words like glory and gathering, like recognition and restoration. Individuals who have been shattered and scattered by the death of Jesus find a new fulcrum and focal point in their lives in the cry: He is risen! The church on earth, today as yesterday, lifts high the response: The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
We in our day need to do more than respond in words. This message of new life has been God’s gift to us within the church for almost two thousand years. We need to take up the living invitation to work as well as to worship; to do as well as to dance; to make reaching out our definitive and our sustained response. We for whom the resurrection is a time of faith and a place of hope need also to move this good news in action and in practice beyond our limitiations, beyond our fears, beyond our prejudices, beyond our sense of strangeness to others in a modern world.
Our greatest invitation is to interpretation. In every generation the good news of salvation needs a fresh voice to disclose the person of Jesus Christ in the world and for the world. Our sense of excitement needs to tune in to the incomprehension of others who have good reason not to see us as we see ourselves. We need to turn our hands and our feet to the service of others. However late in the day it may seem to us and to other people, we need to stand with Peter who says to Cornelius in Caesarea: I now understand how true it is that God has no favourites … (Acts 10.34)
I wish you joy and peace in the time of Easter and in the season of resurrection.
+Michael