OAPCE
2025 Easter message from the Liaison Bishop
✠ Yvan Mathieu, SM
Dear members of the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education (OAPCE),
As we enter Holy Week, there are many events in our world that could invite us to despair. At the level of the global economy, the war on trades has many of us anxious and worried. Many run the risk of losing their jobs or their long-term investments. I hope and pray that your personal lives are doing better. But I know by experience that, as the school year’s end is drawing near, we are all very busy and we run the risk of not having quality time to celebrate the events that are at the center of our faith life as Catholics: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ our Lord. In all of this, we can find reassurance in the experience of the disciples on Easter morning.
First Mary Magdalene. Her encounter with Jesus had changed her life. From that time on, she followed him. Together with the Beloved disciple and Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene stood at the foot of the Cross (see John 19:25). She saw Jesus die on that Cross. Together with the other women who had come with him from Galilee, she “saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments” (Luke 23:55-56). “Early on the first day of the week [that is on Easter morning], while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him’.” (John 20:1-2) Impossible for her to see in the empty tomb a sign of the Resurrection.
Her report put the two apostles in movement. “Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” (John 20:3-7) Like Mary Magdalene, Peter was unable to see in the empty tomb a sign of the Resurrection. However, the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.” (John 20:8)
Just like Mary Magdalene and the two disciples, we are among those who follow Jesus in our daily lives. Just like those three, we are running Catholics, busy with the preoccupations and duties of our lives. We have our share of suffering and mourning. Because of that, we “run” the risk of arriving in church out of breath on Easter morning. Will we be able to see the signs of the Resurrection of Christ? will we be looking “for the living among the dead”? (Luke 24:5) The beloved disciple went into the empty tomb, “he saw and believed.” (John 20:8) Not because he ran faster than Peter, but because he was guided by Christ’s love.
My prayer for you and your families this Easter is that we may stop running. If we want to encounter the risen Lord in our life, it is important to find some time to give to God. This will allow him to rekindle the light of Christ in our heart. Guided by the light of the Resurrection we will be able to contemplate how much God loves us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Because we are loved, we will see God’s presence in our lives and believe in the Resurrection. May the love we receive and the love we give, most especially to our children, become signs of the Resurrection of our Lord. For us but also for those who seek the light of Christ in our world. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) Let us be once again “pilgrims of Hope.”
A happy and holy Easter.
✠ Yvan Mathieu, SM
