Many of you responded to my Easter message with gratitude for my honesty in sharing the fact that I had been going through some personal struggles during Lent, and many of you also expressed concern for me and assured me of your prayers. I have been deeply touched by your concern, prayers and gratitude. Thank you very much.
I believe I should explain the nature of the internal challenges I faced, partly to reassure you that I am fine and to say something more about the victory of Easter. Since February two close personal friends and our friend and colleague on the diocesan staff, Lois Murphey, have died. The friends were both people who have had a profound influence in my spiritual formation and my vocation as a spiritual director, member of a religious community and as a retreat leader. I would say that one of these friends taught me the nature of the forgiveness we know in Jesus Christ.
The death of someone close, as I am certain you have all experienced, often releases a flood of emotions and memories: gratitude, loss, regrets about things unsaid or undone and a sense sometimes of being off balance. Some of this was true for me as I grieved my friends.
For several years now, in my own life with Christ, his victory over sin and death has become a deeper and deeper reality in my prayer and the way I think about my ministry. I am especially grateful this year to celebrate the feast of Easter and for Christ's ministry through his resurrection in addressing the loss that I and that all of us experience in the death of someone we love.
Daily in this Easter season in the celebration of the Eucharist, the Gospel lessons, in my prayer and the gift of spring, I am reminded of the eternal life my friends and all who have gone before us now share with God. God in Eastertide in some way makes real for us the thinness of the veil that separates this life from the next through our Lord Jesus Christ.
May all of us continue to open ourselves to the unfolding mystery of the resurrection victory.
The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE