By Bishop Christopher Saunders
It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was at St Mary’s College in Broome on Ash Wednesday morning and distributing the ashes.
I signed the cross on people’s foreheads: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”.
The penitential season of Lent thus began and we spoke of the three important elements of Lent – fasting, prayer and charity.
These Lenten practises brought into focus our task in the lead up to Easter – to restore our rightful relationship with God through penance and to restore our rightful relationship with humanity though love.
So now it is Easter and we are an Easter people. We glory in the goodness of God and we marvel at his love for us. A love so boundless, a love so selfless, made abundantly evident in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Christian peoples everywhere rejoice in the remembering of God’s love for the world. We find in the mystery that is Easter a source of great hope that death has been conquered by the promise of new life, life eternal.
We strive as Christians to achieve magnificent things not for ourselves alone but for the world we love.
Thankfully, it is a happy fact that this call to greatness sometimes inspires us to celebrate Easter not just now but in every moment of our lives. We have to preach Christ, and him crucified and risen from the dead, for this is the holy mystery which forges our identity.
In this sacred and festive time that promises hope for our world, I wish you and your family and community an abundance of Easter blessings.