Fr. Matthew's Easter Message

A Message of Hope

My fellow Easter People,

After 40 days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we come to celebrate the sacred feast of Easter - proclaiming the joy of the Risen Lord and sharing the peace that he offers to his disciples as we sing the Easter Alleluia. We proclaim Christ crucified; Christ risen from the dead to give us eternal life.

In order to celebrate the Risen Lord, we need to understand and embrace Holy Thursday. Holy Thursday is the celebration of the Passover and the sacrifice of the paschal lamb (Exodus 12). It is how God delivered the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt and from the hands of pharaoh. It is how Jesus, the new “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, as proclaimed by John the Baptist (John 1:29), broke himself for us on Holy Thursday that we may have life in him through our participation in his body and blood.

We also need to embrace Good Friday - the lifting up of the Son of God on the cross; that all of us who are smitten by the fruit of the tree through the disobedience of our first parents (Gen 3) may be saved. In the book of Numbers, a rebellious people are saved from their punishment of serpents when Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert (Num 21:8). Good Friday is the fulfillment of God's promise to the fallen humanity from the first fall through generations thereafter; the fulfillment of Christ’s words to Nicodemus in John 3:14-15 “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”. 

More than ever before, the world today needs God. We need His light in the darkness that surrounds us and to long for the new life in Christ amongst the sinfulness and death that we experience around us.

The prophet Isaiah proclaimed this message of hope when speaking of the "New Davidic King" and the salvation promised in him: “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, upon those who lived in the shadow of death a light has shown” (Isaiah 9:1). It is a message of hope; a hope proclaimed during the Christmas season and fulfilled at Easter.

May this Easter season help us proclaim the Risen Lord in our life and bring his message of Hope and Life to the world around us.

May this solemnity, fill us with the Joy and Peace of our Savior, making us “One family sharing the Love and Light of Christ’”. 

The Lord is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia! 

— Fr. Matthew Jacob, Pastor