Let us make the Easter story our own – Bishop’s message

GUYANA

Bishop Francis Alleyne OSB of Georgetown has issued the following Easter message. The full text was published in the diocesan weekly Catholic Standard.

The vaccines are being rolled out. With it comes a sense that an end is near, there is light at the end of the tunnel, there are expressions of relief, freedom, restoration, and anticipation.

For some who are perhaps less trusting, there is hesitation, denial, wait-and-see. As we will listen to and hopefully enter into the Resurrection accounts from scripture offered to us during the days of Easter, we will hear similar responses to the Resurrection in the early Church —the women hurrying to the tomb at dawn, Thomas at first refusing to believe, great numbers coming on board to commit their lives afresh.

The COVID threat has hung over the world for just about a year and, in some way or other, has touched the life of every child of God. Many have been infected and have died, many more have been diagnosed positive and battled with the virus and survived severe infection. Others have sustained losses—income, employment, education.

Everyone has had to make adjustments even if it was only the basics: the distancing, masks, and sanitising. No one escaped. A majority, or at least enough to make a difference, turned to face this threat with a resolve and confidence that it could be and had to be brought to a halt.

The frontliners, the medical people who put themselves at risk and went beyond the call to attend to the sick and dying. The few who had the scientific knowledge and access to laboratory facilities that also put in the extra hours to race against time and mutation to come up with vaccines and the means to mass produce and distribute them.

Those who have been vigilant with wearing masks, observing distances and sanitising. If today we are turning a corner, it is because there was conviction, resolve, collaboration, trust, and commitment. This hopeful outcome is an Easter story, or it may be more accurate to say that it was the coming together of many Easter stories.

If in the not-too-distant future we are able to look at the corona pandemic as something of the past, it will be testimony of humanity’s capacity to be Easter people, to believe in and work for good over evil, life greater than death. It will also be testimony of humanity’s capacity to confront many other global threats – climate change, war and violence, inequalities in gender and ethnicity and distribution of goods.

My Easter wish to all is that we make the Easter mysteries and the Easter story our own. Here, in our everyday lives, in our dear land, we need to be troubled by the level of violence, ethnic and political divisions, children exposed to neglect and abuse, to mention a few of our grave concerns.

These too can be confronted, corrected, reversed if we draw on our capacity to work together with resolve and conviction and work towards relegating these harsh elements to history.

Those of us who profess to be disciples that we can as Easter people adopt and make our own the words of the Servant of God in Isaiah: “The Lord has given me a disciples tongue. So that I may know how to reply to the wearied, he provides me with speech. Each morning, he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear and I have not resisted, I have not turned away”

(Is 50:4–5).