Bishop Bambera’s 2025 Easter Message
Dear Friends,
“Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.”
These words from Saint Luke proclaimed this year during the great Vigil of Easter, point to the foundation of our hope as Christians. They are words that beckon us forth – just as they did for the first followers of Jesus – to confront the reality of His resurrection and the miracle of Easter.
They are also words that have endured for two millennia and have provided consolation and peace for all who have turned to the Church to encounter God’s mercy and to find a way forward amid a broken, suffering world.
Sadly, however, not unlike the experience of the early Church, for all that we affirm as Christians, life continues to confront us with suffering and death. We have only to look to the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, to lands around the globe that are enveloped by political unrest and disrespect for human life, to our own country fraught with division, fear and hatred, not to mention to the grief and pain that we so often experience in our families and personal lives. The scope of suffering that is present throughout our world is incomprehensible.
Yet, despite the burdens that are borne by so many, if we are humble and wise enough to open our lives to the power of God, every one of us can point to the life-giving presence of the Risen One in our midst.
Indeed, in announcing the Jubilee Year of Hope that we’re blessed to experience this year, Pope Francis invited us to focus on the miracle of Easter.
“The death and resurrection of Jesus,” he proclaimed, “is the heart of our faith and the very basis of our hope” as Christians.
As such, in as much as we are the blessed recipients of this hope, Jesus’ gift of Himself on the cross also becomes a pattern for our lives as His disciples.
“During this Holy Year,” the Holy Father has reminded us, “we are also called to be signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind.” … Don’t underestimate “the value of a smile, a gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed, in the knowledge that, in the Spirit of the risen Jesus, these can become, for those who receive them, rich seeds of hope” – signs of the resurrection!
God’s power to transform our lives abounds. The sublime gift of God’s love, manifested through the Paschal Mystery, turns the logic of our world upside down. And the Church, the body of believers in and through which the risen Christ is present in our world, continues to be our greatest hope – not because of our righteousness but because of the wideness of God’s mercy.
One of the greatest signs of the Church’s credibility is the presence of those who have responded to the Lord’s call and opened their hearts to the life-giving waters of Baptism and a renewed sense of determination to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
On Holy Saturday night, 215 catechumens and candidates from throughout the Diocese of Scranton will be baptized into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and present themselves for full communion in the Catholic Church. These catechumens and candidates – our relatives, neighbors and friends – will join with tens of thousands of catechumens and candidates from around the world to publicly profess their faith in Jesus Christ and to assume their place in his body, the Church. Their very presence in our midst affirms the reality of the living God continually at work in and through his daughters and sons who proclaim his word, experience his life in the sacraments and live his gospel in humble service.
Sisters and brothers, we are blessed beyond measure by the merciful presence of God alive in our midst. Thank you for your dedicated service to the Gospel and for all that you do to build up the local Church of Scranton and to care for one another in the spirit of the Risen Christ. Your faithful and selfless ways, your prayers and your service of the least among us are visible signs to our world that Christ’s presence has indeed been made manifest through the communion of love, which is our Church.
As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus – the great feast of our redemption and our reason for hope – may we give thanks, rejoice and be glad!
Faithfully yours in the Risen Christ,
Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L.
Bishop of Scranton