Easter - and the sense of anticipation

I’m looking out of my window into the garden - and the sun is shining! There were some lovely sunny spring days last week. The daffodils and primulas are out. I’ve cleared away quite a bit of the debris of winter, and I would have cut the grass yesterday if it hadn’t rained. But it did. And this morning there’s been some fog. Tomorrow and the day after there’s the prospect of sleet and snow. It’s just that time of year!

If the weather can be unpredictable, so can life. We feel that especially with all that’s going on around us. All the hopes of a pandemic ending, restrictions being relaxed but then the Omicron variant comes along, and even if we haven’t been infected ourselves we know lots of people who have. We say we have to learn to live with it. Still worse we look at the world and see violence and injustice, the invasion of one sovereign nation by another, the duplicity and lies of people who hold power over others, and the repression of voices which call for truth, justice and peace.

There are no easy answers in this. We are right to pray for the people of Ukraine and Russia. I find it hard though, that President Putin can launch an attack on his neighbour while continuing to wear the cross he was given at Baptism and that the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill can appear to condone a murderous onslaught justified as a military operation.

Sadly as well, our attention to Ukraine masks what continues to go on in so many other countries where injustice, violence and oppression have been a fact of daily life for all too long. The lives of millions devastated in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Ethiopia - with many other nations gripped by terror and fear.

Now we look to Easter. It holds the hope and promise of new life won by the Resurrection of Christ. But first there is the Cross. A Holy Week in which Jesus is hailed as a King, celebrates Passover with his disciples and is betrayed by a friend before his condemnation to death. Light and darkness, hope and despair all mixed together - but Jesus must enter into death so that we can be brought from its grip. Let’s celebrate that hope - not lightly but recognising its call to us once more.         

Martin Jackson

from the April issue of our Parish Magazine

Find the Magazine online via the Homilies & Magazine page on this site