President of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Archbishop Denis Hart, of Melbourne, last week delivered his 2016 Easter Message, encouraging all Catholics to heed the message of Pope Francis in the Jubilee Year of Mercy.
Dear Friends,
John, The gospel writer, recalls that the resurrection of Jesus provoked immense excitement in Mary Magdalene, Peter and the beloved disciple.
Mary runs to tell Peter, who with the other disciple also “run” to see for themselves. Seeing, breathless, they believe.
The implications of his rising are enormous: Not simply a rabbi, a healer, a reconciler, Jesus is God’s Son, who destroys death, liberates us from the slavery of sin and opens the door to eternal life. Death itself dies on the cross. There is only life for those who follow the risen Lord!
Am I slow to understand the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead? Hesitant to believe, will I now run in his ways, proclaiming his resurrection by a changed life? How can we, as Catholics, be Easter ‘life-givers’ to others in our daily lives?
This Easter, in the jubilee Year of Mercy, our Holy Father, provides us with a simple answer: Be Compassionate!
Pope Francis – in words but more in his powerful deeds – calls us to get out of our ‘ruts’ and to move on from our selfishness and an individualism where people just look after themselves.
Instead, he urges us to ‘run’ towards others in need and show them the practical mercy of God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead. Our Easter mission, then, is to be compassionate with others.
In this Holy Season, let us listen again to the angel at the empty tomb: ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee’.
The angel is telling us something beautiful about how we show people in Melbourne today that Jesus is indeed risen despite all the suffering we see around us.
He is telling us: ‘You will find him when you refuse to allow his death to be final; when you make his work live, he will live with you. You will find him when you go on to whatever is your Galilee.”
This is our ‘Galilee’ now, as we live in the present-day realities of Australian church and society. Our ‘Galilee’ in Melbourne of 2016 is to ‘run’ forward with open hands to alleviate the suffering and loneliness of refugees, of victims of violence, the abused, and of all those who feel themselves abandoned and lost.
The Easter invitation is clear. The appearances of the risen Christ also take place through us. When we reach out in mercy we are indeed witnesses to his resurrection.
The story of the Risen Jesus is incomplete until it is completed in us. For as St Teresa of Avila prayed: ‘Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
With compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
A blessed Easter to you all.