My dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
I send you my deepest hopes that Easter 2004 will be a wonderfully enriching time for you and those you hold dear, and that you will joyfully celebrate and savor the presence of the Risen Lord in your lives.
I know and have heard from many of you that your Lenten journey has been fruitful. I am thankful that you have experienced a time of peace and that you have grown in your faith. For many of you a fuller realization of God’s work in your life has refreshed you like the spring showers that miraculously turn winter’s brown into emerald green.
I also sense that many of you long deeply for happiness and tranquility in your lives. So many challenges come to us daily.
Some of you battle an illness or patiently tend to a loved one struggling with infirmity. Some of you are exhausted by long hours at work in this demanding time, even as you juggle the great responsibility of raising a family. Many of you have been thrust into seeking new work that will feed and clothe those you love. Still others anxiously wait for a son or daughter, brother or sister to return from Iraq, or grapple with conflict that has caused family strife. I know, too, that some of you have lost someone very precious to you.
For all of you, for all who stand before our God with outstretched hands, I pray that Easter’s powerful promise will bring you strength and hope.
Know that the Christ is among us.
He is among us in the best of times, when we feel at one with God; he is among us when we feel a sense of despair and loneliness, or when the hurdles seem too tall to leap. In those times especially, let us cherish the words of our Savior from Matthew’s Gospel: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Never lose faith, my dear friends, and never be afraid to seek the Lord’s embrace or bring your thirst for peace to the bottomless well of the hope he offers.
On this Easter, I pray you will be replenished from the message of new hope and new life that Jesus taught us through his own Passion and Resurrection.
The Christ is among us, for each and every one of us. “He has risen, just as he said,” the angel proclaimed in the tomb.
And Christ has risen for you.
A blessed Easter to all.
Matthew H. Clark
