The Bishop of Ebbsfleet's Pastoral Letter - Easter 2005

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

THIS YEAR I am baptising and confirming at the Easter Vigil: three young adults - all Americans. This reminds me, and I hope all of us, that the Easter Faith is attractive, relevant and vibrant to each new generation. It is an international faith and a faith that links us with fellow believers not only throughout the world but throughout history. The Communion of Saints is quite simply the fellowship of all those who have ever shared - and ever will share - the Easter Faith. Past and Future are caught up into God's Eternal Presence, the Eternal Present. Now is Eternal Life!

The place where this 'Present' is caught for us is at Mass. 'When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory'. The 'when' is the Present, the death of the Lord is the Past and the coming of Jesus in glory is the Future. No wonder the fathers tell us that the Mass is the 'eighth day of Creation'. God creates the world in six 'days', rests on the seventh and rises from the dead on the eighth. This eighth 'day' - Sunday, the Day of Resurrection - is the day of the Eucharist, the day in which we are caught up into Past and Future as we share the meal of God's Presence. None of God's days are 24 hour periods: 'a thousand ages in (God's) sight are like an evening gone,' said Isaac Watts, paraphrasing Psalm 90. The 'eighth day', the Day of Resurrection, the Day of the Eucharist and the Marriage feast of the Lamb, is Eternity itself.

The newly-baptised and the newly-confirmed feel that they are coming new to Eternal Life but, once they are immersed in the Church's sacraments, they know that they have been part of God's everlasting purposes, that he has been part of their lives all along. So it is for all of us as we come to the Paschal Feast. In the Lord's House at the Lord's Table we are most truly ourselves. We begin to know ourselves as God knows us and, through his forgiving acceptance of us, love ourselves as God loves us. So we are freed and energised for living as God's Easter People.

May God, in this Year of the Eucharist, fill all our alleluias with his praise and grant us a share in his Eternal Presence, the Eternal Present.

+ Andrew Ebbsfleet

www.ebbsfleet.org.uk

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