NZ bishops emphasise joy and hope in Easter messages

In a video message on April 13, Auckland Bishop Steve Lowe said that “Holy Week is not a holiday week”.

“It is a week that invites us ever deeper into the mystery of Christ,” he said.

“We are not called to be spectators, we are called to be people who embrace Christ in our heart so that we might truly be his body, the Church, for the life of the world.”

Bishop Lowe said that Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead is the greatest moment in human history.

Hamilton Bishop Richard Laurenson emphasised that Catholics are an “Easter people”.

“The Lord is truly risen from the dead. It is the power of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus that ‘dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy’,” he wrote.

“This same power, extending throughout the ages, is given us by the sacraments, and allows us to enter into the joy of the Father’s Kingdom. Even if we are sad and sinful, angry and dejected, the Lord will make us one in him. This is our story, this is our song: Alleluia! Praise the Lord from the heavens.”

In a video message, Palmerston North Bishop John Adams shared that his enduring love for the Crusaders rugby team meant that he records their games. He only watches the recording if his team had won, though.

“In my consciousness is the fact that the game has been won already,” he said. “That is what it is, I think, for a Christian to live knowing that the Resurrection is true.

“And that is what it is to be an Easter person – to live with this beautiful joy and expectation of the fact, the reality, the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus.”

Dunedin Bishop Michael Dooley said in his message that, “as we have journeyed with Jesus through his suffering and death and felt something of the pain of that, we need to remember to be open to experiencing the joy of the Resurrection in the Easter season”.

The Resurrection “is something that is beyond our experience, but as St Paul reminds us, is at the heart of our Christian faith.  It is the Resurrection that changes everything,” Bishop Dooley said.

In a video message to be published on Easter Sunday, Wellington Archbishop Paul Martin SM says there can be a temptation to experience the events of Holy Week as simply a remembrance of something from the past. But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins is something for the present and the future, he said.

The life that is made available to humanity through Jesus’ Resurrection is a life that promises God’s blessings now, and in the life to come for each one of us, Archbishop Martin said.

In Christchurch Bishop Michael Gielen’s Easter video message, to be posted on Easter Sunday, the bishop takes people back to the Old Testament understanding of Jubilee and connects it to the hope Mary Magdalene experienced in the Resurrection story – the “spark of hope that was lit in her heart”.

“Many of us may feel a sense of hopelessness, trapped by the challenges of our world. But Jesus offers us freedom from that despair. Especially in this Jubilee year and this Easter season, we are reminded that we are a people of hope. We can be set free from all forms of captivity.

“May this Jubilee year and this Easter season fill you with that same hope and joy felt by Mary Magdalene and the first disciples,” Bishop Gielen stated.

FULL STORY

Facebook (Facebook/Bishop Steve Lowe)

Easter Message from Hamilton diocese (Bishop Richard Laurenson)

Living in the Joy of the Resurrection | Tūmanako (Bishop John Adams)

Facebook/Archdiocese of Wellington

Dunedin and Christchurch diocese message excerpts – supplied