08.04.2023
Easter Message From the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson
Finding your way, keeping to the straight and narrow – these are phrases frequently used in everyday conversation as we help one another to chart our course in and through life. Those of us who follow the route of Christianity have just come through The Season of Lent.
Travelling with Jesus Christ in both the Biblical and the contemporary wilderness has strengthened us. Our solidarity with humanity has deepened and radicalized through an enhanced understanding of temptation and of prayer, of forgiveness and of freedom. We have travelled with him in Holy Week in the city of Jerusalem. Now we find ourselves celebrating Christ Risen – a new and living way, a new and living hope in a world that is the same and yet utterly changed.
More and more people travel in different ways in today’s world. There are refugees and displaced persons who are doing their utmost to find a way to a place of safety, fleeing from war and exploitation, from horror and certain death. There are people struggling to make ends meet in economic circumstances they had never imagined for themselves and in a time of life they had never expected. The path to justice and to peace remains tortuous right across the world. It is small steps that make progress possible.
Let us never forget that it was when the Risen Jesus called Mary by name that she knew it was The Master utterly changed yet the same. We need to be alert to sameness and to change at the very same time in creative and constructive ways at Easter as we greet the Risen Lord with the cry: Alleluia! Alleluia!