Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing wishes you and all your loved ones a very blessed Easter. In his message to all those who live within the Diocese of Lansing, Bishop Boyea said the following:
My dear friends,
A Blessed Easter to you and your loved ones! Even though today the Church proclaims Christ risen from the dead, it probably feels for many of us like we are still in the tomb on Holy Saturday, still waiting for something, for someone. This is a very strange year and I am as sad as I know all our priests and you, my sisters and brothers, are, not being able to celebrate this great feast of Easter together in our Churches. How then can we grow closer the Risen Lord during these uncertain and unusual times?
Let me give two suggestions both drawn from Matthew’s gospel account of that first Easter morning: First, as the angel tells Mary Magdalene and the other Mary: “Do not be afraid.” Fear prevents us from moving out of ourselves and being about the work of the Lord.
Second: Christ instructs the apostles to go to Galilee where he will see them and they will see him. As with the apostles, so with us. It is not enough to give our fears to the Lord, we must also must be willing to move, to go to Galilee, back to where it all began. Our union with Christ, after all, is not just a union with his suffering and death; it is also a union with his life, eternal life, a torrent of life welling up from him in each of us.
Freed of fear and filled with courage, let us go forth and proclaim that now, Jesus is Lord of everything in us and in our world and that now everything is changed. God bless you all.