Hello friends, Greetings to you all, in the Risen Lord!
The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and our Lord and Brother, is the greatest story of human history. It is the story of the journey of one man, for the sake of all women and men.
Jesus made this journey so that his story might become ours. He did this that we might choose to walk with him. At his crucifixion, Jesus’ mortal body stopped in death. But this was not his end. He conquered death and walked out of the tomb, the First Born from the dead.
The Risen Lord then entered into his resurrected life at quite a pace. He walked up to Mary Magdalene and called her by name. He walked into the upper room where the disciples were and show them his glorified wounds.
He walked with his two downcast friends on the road to Emmaus, teaching them hope. And he walked along the shore of Lake Galilee one last time, to forgive Peter of his betrayal and to give Peter his apostolic mission.
There was no stopping the resurrected Jesus; and at each footstep along the way, he invited others to walk with him. Each one of us has been created to make a journey of our lives. The question is: Who will we choose as our companion along the way? And toward whom do we walk? In his death and resurrection, Jesus created a way for us to walk with him and towards him. Shall we take the journey with him?
Perhaps you would agree with me that there are aspects of our beloved Church in Australia today that have stopped us dead in our tracks; it can feel like we are not walking with Jesus.
Yet, as the great Apologist G.K. Chesterton once put it, "Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave."
At a time when the Church seems veiled in the darkness of the tomb, the light of Easter opens for us the discovery of a renewed path along which Jesus walks, and wants us to take. May we find the courage to walk into this future with healing grace, truthful hope and humble love, energised and guided by the presence of the crucified and risen Lord.
In the year ahead, I want to invite you to join with me on this journey with the Lord, one that might reveal to us where and how our local Church of Broken Bay is to walk with him. This local journey is being initiated this year as our local part of a shared journey for the entire Church in Australia, leading to a national assembly in 2020 – called a Plenary Council. By the grace of God, and through our listening to God and one another, we might come to see the path ahead, a way into our future that follows the Lord’s desire for his people.
Friends, walk with Christ! Walk in his presence, and by his guiding light. He is our path from death to life, from the darkness of our tombs to a new light of grace. Walk with Christ! Happy Easter to you all!
Most Rev Peter A Comensoli
Bishop of Broken Bay
Bishop Peter A Commensoli's Easter Message (PDF) (PDF 629.9KB)