Easter 2020
To our beloved friends and companions in the Lord:
A truly blessed and hope-full Easter to you and all the people you love and care for!
Amidst humanity’s experience of pain, suffering, and death caused by the pandemic, we unite ourselves in love with Jesus, the Crucified One and now the Risen Lord. This is the Risen Jesus who accompanied the disciples on the road to Emmaus who were downcast, despondent, and disoriented after witnessing his suffering and death. The Risen Jesus journeys with them—listening to their fears and confusion, opening the scriptures, and breaking bread with them—making their hearts burn with renewed hope and courage.
The same Crucified and Risen Lord continues to journey with us these days accompanying us in our fears and enkindling within us those burning desires to act in faith and love towards those most impacted by COVID-19. As Pope Francis says, the pandemic is a place of our metanoia (conversion) where the opportunities abound for bringing out the best of our humanity.
We are already witnesses to many heroic acts of kindness, generosity, and self-giving that provide a glimpse of a new way of life that is emerging from this crisis. To the many women and men who render authentic service—janitors, food delivery providers, garbage collectors, workers in food production and medical outlets, security, police and military personnel, nurses, doctors, caregivers, and medical personnel, government officials, business people, fundraisers, religious sisters and brothers, priests and laity, and many more unnamed—we express our deepest gratitude for your love and dedication. These are truly signs of the presence of the Risen Lord in our midst.
Thus, we pray and beg from you, the Crucified and Risen Jesus, to continue to accompany us in the trying days ahead, to renew our hope in You, and to move our hearts to act in solidarity for the sake of those most vulnerable and poor impacted by the corona virus. Amen.
May the peace, hope, and joy that only the Risen Lord can give be with all of you!
PRIMITIVO E. VIRAY JR., S.J.
Provincial Superior