The Bishop's Easter Message

An Easter Message from the Bishop of Niagara
The Right Reverend Susan Bell

Dear Friends,

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Not even the novel coronavirus can change that fact – nor can it take away our Easter joy.  

Earlier this month, in a rare message, Her Majesty The Queen uttered an important phrase as she comforted us throughout the Commonwealth with regard to our present crisis.   She said: “We will be with our families again.  We will be with our friends again.  We will meet again.”  As she and we know, this phrase has valency and weight for those who came through the war. She meant it both in the here and now – in time and at the passage of this terrible virus – we will meet again.  But she also meant that we who have lost loved ones will see each other again one day in the future – when we too will have the gift of eternal life that is promised by Jesus’ Resurrection.  And indeed that is exactly right. 

Because Christ the Morningstar has risen.  A couple of thousand years ago, in the dark chill of an early morning, Jesus, the Son of God loosed his grave wrappings and passed from the silence of the tomb back into the life of this world – free to communicate the miraculous truth that he had defeated death – that he had been raised to new and transformed life.

His message was that the name given at his birth:  Emmanuel – God with us – was also the definition of how he walked among us – with us – was the name he still bore at his Resurrection - and that even death couldn’t hold him from us.  Truly nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

The message he communicated is that his new life was the beginning of new life for the whole creation, and the job of all those who believed in him and followed him was to help bring that new world to birth through works of love.  The importance of the Resurrection is for here and now and for life eternal.

And that is the name we praise above all others:  Emmanuel, the Risen Christ who is with us today, right now in the midst of this present time -- and always.   

This comes with blessings for Easter hope and joy and trust in that same Jesus Christ, who is risen indeed. Alleluia!