My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Lord is Risen! He is truly Risen! Alleluia! This is my first Easter as your Bishop, and it is with Paschal joy, I take the opportunity to wish you and your families a blessed and joy-filled Easter.
The Easter Vigil Liturgy begins with the singing of the Exsultet, which contains these words: Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her, ablaze with light from her eternal King, let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness. The contrast of Easter joy with what the whole world has been experiencing these past years with the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the economic crisis could not be greater, and yet amid the darkness, we are reminded that “Christ is the one Morning Star, who never sets … who, coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity …”
Quite often we are closed in our certainties, whether theological, scientific and technological certainties. Collectively, we build an illusory world in which we, like our first parents, want to be like gods, fashioning ourselves to be the masters of this world. We are in shock at a more realistic scenario: Man is weak, fragile, and can discover his greatness and strength only in love.
This love, however, first came from Him. The Father sent His only Son into the world to save man, who was too weak, too powerless to save himself. The damage done by our first parents would be undone by the One who was true God and true man. As the Exsultet says: “O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son! O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great a Redeemer!”
The sin of Adam prompted an act of mercy by the Father in sending the Son to be our Redeemer. This Son loved perfectly, even to the point of death, and His love was stronger than death. Through the power of his love, Christian believers are set apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of death. … This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.
If our pride led to the spread of sin, so too through His humility, Christ offered us the medicine of mercy as a remedy. The outpouring of His precious Blood and His three days in the tomb are a supreme act of humility, for which the Father raised Him from the grave! His victory over the powers of death dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen and joy to mourners.
He brings joy to mourners! This year, with its many blessings as Bishop, also brought sadness with the loss of my mother, yet the Mystery of the Resurrection also gives me hope that I shall see my parents again in the Resurrection of the Flesh. Although we mourn our dead, in Him, we have hope for something better. His victory helps us look forward in hope to our destiny – sharing in the life of the Trinity eternally.
Christ comes to save us from sin and death and offers us life! This is the Good News that we must share. God does not abandon us. Christ’s earthly life, His perfect example, and His passage from death to life remind us that we can be saved in union with Him and through imitation of Him, and so recover our status as children of God by adoption. The necessary sin of Adam was destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! Yes, our God is the God of Life. He is Risen! He is truly Risen! Alleluia!
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Earl K. Fernandes
Bishop of Columbus
