Brothers and Sisters, last year, Christians in living history did not have the joy of celebrating Easter, the height of the Catholic liturgy. The scourge of COVID-19 prompted the Holy Father, working through our Episcopal heads, to put on hold, gatherings of the holy week celebration worldwide. We were directed to unite in prayer for this deadly contagion to vanish from our midst.
This year, we are on the countdown to yet another Easter celebration and the dangers of the pandemic are still with us. One can only say it has seemingly abated in its fury for the small number of the world population who have access to the vaccines available and the very few nations that have achieved herd immunity. The Lenten period is far advanced and the Passion Week is nigh.
In our Easter message to you last year in the face of the upsurge of the pandemic, we encouraged you to look up to the suffering of Christ who died and resurrected and to believe in overcoming the fear of COVID-19 with its attendant loss of lives and livelihoods. We therefore need to ask ourselves the following:
Were we persistent with our prayer for the intervention of the Almighty? Did we simply resign ourselves to our fate, counting on the mediation of others? Did we simply check out, counting the dead and our losses and hoping for the best?
Our sensitivity to our environment and our faith have been tested and many of us simply may not have measured up and therefore conspiracy theorists have had a field day with us. We, like our forebears the Israelites, forget the mighty hand that saves us from extinction, from sin and destruction though we are reminded in every liturgical cycle we complete.
During Lent, the Church offers us a spiritual opportunity to examine ourselves, correct the ills, and grow in good works and holiness to live as Christ guided us to. More than ever before, this Lent, we ought to reexamine the faithlessness in which we resigned ourselves waiting to be consumed by the ravaging pandemic when He was only a prayer away, but we fell guilty to laziness and the lack of persistence when we have been admonished to pray “unceasingly” 1 Thess 5:16-18.
My dear Brothers and Sisters, let us use our retreats this year towards towards improving our personal prayer lives and strengthening our relationship with our Lord. We may have thus far become too comfortable with the “free will” the Lord has made available to us and tended to depend so much on ourselves than on Him in our sojourn here on earth and it is a timely warning for us to “come to ourselves” and return to our father cf. Lk 15:17-20.
Our reflection for this month admonishes us to learn to forgive like our Father forgives. Easter is an opportunity to cleanse ourselves and an appropriate period to purge ourselves of the weight of anger and grudge. We should all pray for the souls of our Brothers, Sisters and family members who succumbed to the pandemic, so that they may rise with Christ into the bosom of the Lord. Those still indisposed through the mercies of the season shall recover for us all having gone through this crucible of fire shall become more responsive to our Christian Calling.
Our prayer is still as was in last year’s message “…our confession of faith assures us that life will be restored; that because Jesus lives, we can face tomorrow and life will be worth living. Even though the pandemic brought about social distancing and a tendency to feel isolated and quarantined, as Marshallans who believe in unity, charity, fraternity and service, we are confident that the spread of COVID-19 will be contained through divine intervention ensuring that medical as well as scientific antidotes to curb its spread become successful. We will surely return to our good old days of feeling the warmth of each other as we chant our popular song “MARSHALLAN KNIGHTS (LADIES) HERE WE STAND….”
Though the spread of the coronavirus has not abated, we are optimistic that by dint of the progress so far realized by the grace of God, we should enjoy the solemnity of the celebration of the Passion Week and Easter in church, closer to what we have been accustomed to.
On behalf of the entire leadership of the Supreme Council and the Grand Court, we wish you a blessed Easter! Jesus Christ is risen Alleluia! He is risen indeed Alleluia!
Sir Kt. Bro. Charles L. L. Cobb MRL Sis. Dame Dr. Agatha Akua Bonney
Supreme Knight Grand Lady