Posted Friday 15 April 2011
In a reflection for Holy Week and Easter the Most Rev David Chillingworth, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church says:
“During Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Day our congregations throughout Scotland will be following again the story of the last days of Jesus’ life. We face the desolation of his death. We experience hope rekindled in his resurrection from the dead. This is the story on which our Christian faith is built.
“Our thinking is sometimes unconnected. So much comes towards us that it’s hard to absorb it and to grasp its greater meaning.
“Holy Week is a story which moves strongly towards its inevitable end. As Jesus faces arrest, trial, mocking and betrayal, the story reveals the fickleness of human nature, our lack of moral courage and our readiness to deny the very thing which we know to be most important. But the story also reveals the inexhaustible self-giving love of Jesus. And the two meet when Jesus on the Cross says, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’ Those words stand in the blitzed ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral - ruins from which arose the magnificent new Cathedral fifty years ago this year.
“We say that we are an Easter people. We mean that we recognise how limited are our efforts to right the world’s wrongs. But we also recognise the power of God to raise up life from the dead and to bring new hope.
“Our prayer is that that new hope may be planted in the hearts of suffering people everywhere - in the people of Japan as they stand in the ruins of their towns and cities, in the people of New Zealand and Australia as they rebuild, in the people of the Arab and other nations who are trying to shape a new future, among the hungry and homeless of the world, among all who risk their lives in the cause of peace.”
-ends-
Category:
