Director's Message (May 2017)

Many years ago the husband of an older friend died on the second Sunday of Easter. He and his wife had lived their married life as active members of the local parish - readers, counters, church cleaners, PPC members for over 30 years. As the trail of visitors came and went with their words of comfort and condolence one comment stayed with the grieving widow: one of the visitors said that it was a joyous death, occurring so close to Easter Sunday. These words burned in the heart of the widow and she would repeat them often as she tried to make sense of her life stopping grief. There was no joy for her in this death just the bleak knowledge that life would never be the same - her moon had been packed up along with the stars, every one.

I am reminded of this story as we journey through the Easter season. The readings from the Acts of the Apostles draw us into the world of the struggles of the earliest apostles. Their hearts burned with the message of a resurrected Jesus. They travelled and preached the news about a person who in transforming their lives had shown how to transform the world. And telling this story came at a cost! There were persecutions, internal quarrels and disagreements and yet the message continued to spread. Through dialogue, conversation and formidable energy this nascent group of believers worked to establish their communities. And occasionally, there was peace.

And I can’t help but be awed by the fruits of what has emerged from the first friends of Jesus. I wonder if this Easter season encourages us to enter into reflection about what makes our hearts burn. We have ancestors who modelled for us a way of negotiating the rough and tumble of community life while walking in Jesus’ name. Their hearts and imaginations were filled with urgency about spreading the news about Jesus. Because their lives had been transformed they were committed to drawing others into a world that reflected God’s hope for humanity.

Perhaps this is a little bit behind the idea of a joyous death on the second Sunday of Easter. We know, because the apostles have told us, that death is really the start of a new story. And we know, because we have centuries of stories and traditions upon which to build, that God as revealed in the person of Jesus is in the midst of it all, propelling us forward. And that is why we also know that ‘Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force.’ (Pope Francis from Evangelii Gaudium n. 276).