01.04.2020
‘Stay in; stay safe; stay with God’ – Easter Message from Archbishop Michael Jackson
This is an Easter like no other Easter in the lifetime of most of us here on earth in 2020. The hour has changed. The mornings and the evenings are lengthening. We move from month to month. And yet the coronavirus Covid–19 is ahead of us wherever we turn our gaze. It is as if we are involved in a race against time within time itself.
I wish you Happy Easter in all sincerity and in all hopefulness. There is a reason that the church calls Good Friday good. It is because, through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, new life and fresh energy came into the world and comes into the world repeatedly every year of our remembering both Good Friday and Easter Day. Clergy and people together now have kept alive the flame of faith in ways and by means that none of us ever needed before. The digital has made possible access to the real presence of Jesus Christ in our hearts and minds, in our families and in our loved ones at home and abroad from whom we are separated, precisely because we are self–isolating as part of the national effort of good compliance and good citizenship.
My advice is simple and it is threefold: stay in; stay safe; stay with God.
St John 20.19, 20: The risen Christ came and stood among his disciples and said, Peace be with you. Then were they glad when they saw the Lord.
Let us share safely the peace of Christ with those who suffer from the coronavirus, with their loved ones, with those who are front line carers, with those who continue to provide us with essential services and with scientists and researchers.
Yours sincerely
+Michael