My dear Friends

A blessed Easter to you, your families and friends! If you are a visitor to our website Faith Family, you are MOST welcome – Should you ever be in Southampton, the door is always open to you in welcome!

The Easter Triduum, from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, is a Life Journey many of us here, and in multiple countries around the world, amid the challenges of this pandemic, are living out on a daily basis. The pain, suffering, and loneliness of Christ’s Passion are replicated in so many of our lives, in so many different ways, by multitudes of people.

This pandemic has certainly rocked our ‘stable’ and ‘routine’ worlds to their foundations. However, there is now light at the end of the tunnel as we begin our cautious exit from lockdown! There is, indeed, a LIGHT, a vibrant, radiant beacon of HOPE, dispelling that darkness, and leading us into a renewed awareness and understanding of our lives, our relationships and our world. If anything, many of the experiences of this pandemic have rolled back the stones which have sometimes entombed us within a privatised, taken-for-grated routine, personal freedom and world.

These experiences of this challenging year have also opened our eyes to how the global family is dependent on, and needs, one another. We have witnessed, in our country and communities, myriad acts of selfless heroism, boundless generosity, fathomless compassion and great love.

In the Easter liturgy, we hear that just as we entered into the tomb with Jesus, so, too, we will rise with him. As I said in our talks during the Triduum, this is a time for growth, change and transformation - a kind of surreal resurrection before the real thing! How many times have I heard “life isn’t fair”! It’s true. It isn’t! BUT...filled with the Spirit of the Risen Lord, His radiant Light will pierce the darkest of nights; His Love will heal the most broken of hearts; His Hope and Joy will quell any wave of turmoil of despair. It is then, in the words of Gibran, that the human heart becomes, “a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest”.

May the Risen Lord be with you, within you and fill you with his Love, Hope and Joy.

Remember me as loving you,

Fr. Antony