Dear Dames and Knights in Saint John, 

During this sacred season of Lent, as every year, we have prepared our hearts to receive the joyful message of Easter through the Word of God, fasting, prayer, and acts of kindness. As we reflect on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord, we must recognize that the true miracle is not simply that the Father raised Jesus from the dead - after all, it is only natural that God is more powerful than death. The deeper mystery lies in the unfathomable love of the Son of God, who humbled Himself to the point of becoming human and shared in our suffering so completely that, out of total obedience to the Heavenly Father, He accepted even death - our death - as His own.

Today, not everyone is aware that Easter is the most important feast of the Christian faith, and that the night of Easter is the pinnacle of our liturgical celebration. On this night, we proclaim the greatest truth: Jesus Christ, who died for us on the Cross, has risen - not as Lazarus did, returning to earthly life only to die again, but as the first to truly cross over into eternal life. His Resurrection was not a return to this world, but a glorious passage beyond the realm of death.

After His Resurrection, Jesus did not appear to His disciples in the same body that had been crucified and buried. He came to them in His glorified body - so transformed that even those closest to Him recognized Him only after their hearts were touched again by His presence. 

At Easter, we do not merely commemorate a historical event; we proclaim a living and eternal truth that continues to shape our lives and the destiny of all humanity. We believe, with unwavering faith, that Christ’s Resurrection is the guarantee of our own resurrection. In the light of this truth, the Bible does not speak of some vague concept of the soul's immortality, or of a fusion with the cosmos or the void. Rather, the New Testament echoes one resounding message of hope, as expressed by Saint Paul: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Here in our part of the world, Easter coincides with the coming of spring, and as the great Hungarian poet, Endre Ady once wrote, we call it beautiful and embrace it with joy: 

On Good Friday, let us cry out as Jesus did: 

“Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit” - entrusting our weary and burdened souls into the hands of God. And on Easter morning, may we boldly ask the Lord for renewed and purified bodies and hearts, that we might live more fully, and love more like Jesus - especially those in need.

Let us open our hearts to the joy of the Resurrection, that Christ may enter our lives once more from across the shores of eternity and transform what is broken into wholeness, what is fading into flourishing, what is dark into light. May He grant us the grace to rise again - into the life that God has always dreamed for us. 

Let us wish each other, with the words of Saint Paul: 

“May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith” (cf. Ephesians 3:17), and may He awaken us from indifference and despair, rekindle our hopes and dreams, and - through the power of the Risen One - may even the shadow of death be embraced by the radiance of Life. 

17 April 2025