Statement Released: Thursday, April 13, 2006

Easter is a season when we rejoice above all in the love of God manifest in and proved by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The great challenge of God’s love always is to believe in it, - to believe that we are loved into existence by God and exist only because we are loved. It is always very difficult to believe that as children of God we are loved equally and that because of our existence we have a unique role to play in God’s plan for the Kingdom of God established by Christ. So important is this love that Benedict XVI focussed his first encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” on this reality, because once we believe in this love our lives will change forever because God’s love guarantees our victory over sin and death. Nevertheless God realized we could never possibly understand the depth of God’s love unless we were shown that love in word and deed. The understanding of God’s love comes only through the presence of Jesus Christ, son of God and saviour, in our midst. Each Easter the Church enables us to revisit the events of Christ’s life liturgically during Easter week so that as St Paul says in the letter to the Ephesians we can grasp “with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

I pray this Easter for all of us that, through our participation in the Easter Liturgy, we may come to grow just a little closer to that “fullness of God” spoken of by St Paul. I wish each and every person a very happy and holy Easter.


Most Rev John Bathersby D.D.

Archbishop of Brisbane


Release by the Catholic Communications Office