Easter Message 2018
 
Dear brothers and sisters.
 
May God, the Father of Mercies, confer on you every Paschal blessing and grace through His Risen Son, Who holds out to our world the offer of untold new life and hope.
 
The message of the Easter is that, when we feel we can no longer reach God on our own strength, His grace opens up a way to us.  When they came to the tomb, Mary Magdalene and the Women were saying to one another:  Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?  They knew it was impossible for them to remove the obstacle in the way of the Event that would turn out to be the newest of all Creation.  But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back, even though it was very large.  It is the Lord Who rolls away any stones in the path of our Church that make it impossible for us to meet Him. 
 
The further message of Easter is that the Lord, Who began His call to the disciples in Galilee, goes ahead of them to create an entirely novel Life for them, yes, starting from that same, old Galilee that was now so ordinary and familiar to them.  The Lord promises to meet us today in all the normal, well-known places of our own lives, which His Easter blessings can transform into things never heard of or seen!
 
Finally, the challenge of Easter is not to confuse tomb places, where no life will again be found, with ordinary, even boring places, where surprising new things can begin again in Him.  This Easter let us resolve to move on from tomb places in our lives where He is no longer there and go ready to meet Him, even in those mundane places of our lives, amazed to find how He Who is Risen, makes all things new.