Author: admin

#YHMD2023

April 19th 2023 is Youth Homelessness Matters Day, held on the third Wednesday of April each year. Since 1990, it is the annual national awareness day for youth homelessness in Australia. It is staggering that such a day even needs to exist in a developed country like Australia, and that young people find themselves in such a vulnerable situation.

Many church agencies work to alleviate youth homelessness – both to address immediate needs and advocacy for systemic change.

The 2021 Census showed 122,494 people in Australia were estimated to be experiencing homelessness on Census night in 2021. Recent statistics indicate that 42% of the homelessness population in Victoria is under 25 years old. Over the past few years, support workers have noticed an increase in the number of clients presenting with mental health and drug and alcohol issues.

It is estimated only 7% of homeless people are sleeping rough on the streets and in parks. Other young people may be couchsurfing (sleeping on borrowed beds and couches), in their cars, in overcrowded housing, in youth shelters and emergency short term housing.

Reasons young people are forced into homelessness include:

• Family violence, sexual, physical and emotional abuse in the home
• Insufficient income to pay rent and living costs
• Rising costs of housing with and everyday living necessities
• Under-employment
• Lack of support when in, or moving from, state care
• Mental health, drug and alcohol issues
• Overcrowded living conditions
• The traumatic experience that follows the death of a parent.

It is sobering that more than a million children and young people are living below the poverty line in Australia.

A home isn’t just four walls and a roof. It’s a foundation for safety and security. Access to safe and secure housing is one of the most basic human rights.

Housing is not a valueless system but a core part of what it means to live a dignified human life. Having adequate shelter is a basic human right; a right that the Church affirms as a key part of respecting and recognising our personhood. Ensuring everyone is able to access a safe, stable and adequate home is one part of working for the common good. This means that social, economic and political structures must be ordered towards making home ownership or rental equitable for all, rather than being structured in restrictive unjust ways. 

Catholic Social Teaching and Housing and Homelessness

Housing has become a commodity, rather than a basic human right for everyone. Many young people are disadvantaged in the private rental market, even when they have secure work, traineeships/ apprenticeships and casual/full-time work or study. Preference is being given to higher income earning families and individuals.

Social and affordable housing that relies on housing agencies, developers and investors is a part of the answer, but clearly there needs to be more public and government owned housing to ensure everyone has access to safe housing.

Young people leaving state care make up two thirds of the youth homeless population, but only a tiny portion of social housing is given to people under 25.

This Youth Homelessness Matters Day we are standing with organisations across the country to call on the Federal Government to develop a standalone National Child and Youth Homelessness and Housing Strategy.
For too long, the specific and complex needs of children and young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness have been assumed to be the same as those of adults and have not been explicitly addressed in government plans to address homelessness.
As the Federal Government commits to developing a National Housing and Homelessness Plan, we are calling for a commitment to develop a strategy specifically for children and young people.
Have your voice heard – sign the petition – https://bit.ly/41hnt35

Uniting Vic/Tas YHMD#2023 statement

Once the anchor of communities, increasing numbers of Christian churches are closing across the state. This is why suburban and regional Victoria is losing traditional religion.

An article by Mandy Squires in the Herald Sun, April 18, 2023

In Victoria’s suburban, regional and rural communities, churches were once the heartbeats, as parishioners delivered casseroles and cakes to the sick, and company and comfort to those in crisis or need. On Sunday mornings, the faithful gathered to both worship, and catch up with friends and neighbours.

But “the faithful” are ever fewer in Victoria, and Christian churches are closing their doors across the state at an alarming rate – a process some research suggests was hastened by harsh Covid lockdowns and restrictions.

Dwindling congregation sizes have combined with rising insurance fees, maintenance costs and increasingly onerous building safety compliance expectations, to make the price of keeping ageing churches operational simply too high for many denominations.

The burden of upkeep has also largely fallen to an ever smaller group of, also ageing, parishioners.

It comes as younger Christians are drawn to a new wave of evangelical churches, with contemporary Christian music, performed in contemporary buildings. 

Younger Christians are drawn to a new wave of evangelical churches, with contemporary Christian music, performed in contemporary buildings. Picture: Supplied

But mostly, younger Victorians say in surveys, they are drawn to no faith at all — with a growing number preferring a general spiritualism based on psychics, tarot cards, crystals, astrology, numerology, Reiki healing and messages in nature, “from the universe”. 

Executive Officer or the Victorian Council of Churches, Reverend Sandy Boyce, said “the grim reality is less than half the population now identify as Christian”, and more traditional churches were being forced to close.

In country Victoria, the loss was especially keenly felt.

“For rural people it’s a bit different to (churches closing) in the suburbs in that they don’t have a lot of choice and even elsewhere to go … the grief, disappointment, shock and loss is very real for rural people when their (local) church closes,” she said.

That was not to say great pain wasn’t also experienced when churches closed in the suburbs or regional towns, Rev Boyce said, as many people felt deeply connected to the building they had become accustomed to worshipping in.

In February this year, the 162-year-old Neil Street Uniting Church in Ballarat closed its doors.

Located in the historic precinct of Soldiers Hill, the church was first built in 1861 and in 1867 replaced with a more substantial building.

It was improved again before the turn of the century.

Ballarat’s Neil St church was forced to close its doors in February. Picture: Supplied

The magnificent stained glass windows of Neil St church.

“The present beautiful church with its many stained glass windows and magnificent pipe organ was erected in 1892 – an impressive statement of the faith of our forebears,” the church’s website notes.

Now, with the church closed, it’s accomplished choir has moved to YouTube to be heard, with co-ordinator Andrew Parker encouraging its performances to be shared on social media.

He describes the final Neil Street church service as “funeral-like”, as “a place of memories and fellowship for generations of families” was farewelled.

“Every pew was packed as hundreds of people who each had a connection to the congregation” came to pray for the last time within the church’s historic wall, he said.

“The sermon for the final service focused on letting go and moving forward with faith in new ways and places of worship, but this did not stop the tears of many as the final, stirring hymns sounded out,” Mr Parker wrote on the Neil Street Choir Facebook page. 

The Neil St closure follows a failed 2021 community campaign to save a historic Rokewood church from sale — with some calling for the Andrews government to compulsorily reacquire the building and gift it back to its original denomination.

The 155-year-old Rokewood Uniting Church, located about 40 kilometres south of Ballarat, was originally Presbyterian, but the congregation chose to align with the Uniting Church of Australia when it formed in 1977.

In June last year, the Manningham Uniting Church’s historic Woodhouse Grove chapel in Box Hill North – that started life as a Wesleyan chapel in 1856 – held its last service.

While the heritage protected chapel building will be preserved, in a sign of the times, the large site gained planning approval for eight double story townhouses. 

“Around 60 people including friends and family and ex-members of ‘The Grove’ and members of wider MUC gathered on 26 June to celebrate the 166 years of worship at The Grove and to mark the closure of worship at this site,” the church’s website states.

The Uniting Church’s Reverend Duncan Macleod, executive officer of the ELM Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, said church closures and the threat of more was “very distressing” for local communities. 

The final Neil St service was ‘funeral-like’, as the church was farewelled.

“There are some country churches that would like to say, ‘well, if our building burned down or had a truck drive through it, we could have just have it demolished’. But the insurance companies require full replacement value … and the actual maintenance costs of those buildings start to become a burden on the five to 10 people who are left willing to care for them,” he said.

It comes as Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data reveals 43.9 per cent of Australians now identify as Christian, down from 52.1 per cent in 2016.

Nearly 39 per cent say they have no religion, up from 30.1 per cent in 2016, representing an increase of more than 2.8 million people.

The decrease in Christianity occurred across most age groups, with the sharpest decline among young adults aged 18 to 25 years, the latest Census date shows.

Millennials had the highest proportion of ‘no religion’, at 46.5 per cent.

In mid-last year a research paper on Factors Affecting Australian Catholics’ Return to Mass After COVID-19 Church Closures found mandated church shutdowns were expected to have a significant, negative impact, because the nature of Catholic worship involved in-person, ritual contact, such as confession and communion.

“With already falling rates of Mass attendance, the longer-term impact of COVID-19 church closures is likely to be significant in determining the future size and distribution of the Catholic Church in Australia,” the July 2022 research paper notes. 

While undeniably sad, Rev Boyce said when churches were faced with dwindling congregations and closure, opportunities arose for them to join with other denominations to strengthen their numbers.

The former Rokewood Uniting (and before that Presbyterian) was sold-off in 2021, 155 years after it was built.

The historic Woodhouse Grove church in Boxhill held its last service in late-June last year.

“It is actually is an invitation I think, for churches of different denominations — instead of maintaining their own separate identities of ‘we’ll do our Uniting Church and you do your Anglican’ — to actually work together, and there are many examples of that happening in the rural areas. So that’s the positive,” she said.

Rev Macleod said it was also an opportunity for the historic buildings to be used in new and creative ways, and there were increasing examples of churches being repurposed into galleries and cafes, that continued to give them a life in local communities, “and sometimes even used more as a result”.

(original post on Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia)

With ecclesiastical grandeur and splendour the “feast of feasts and festival of festivals” was celebrated in the Greek Orthodox churches of Victoria. Thousands of Greek Orthodox in the centre and suburbs of Melbourne, undaunted by the continuous and heavy rain, reverently flocked to the Holy Church of the Holy Archdiocese of Australia for the “Come and receive light” and the joyous message of “Christ is Risen”.

In the Archdiocesan District of Northcote, the centre of the resurrection services was at the Holy Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, in the suburb of Thomastown, where the Resurrection Service was presided over by His Grace Bishop Evmenios of Kerasounta, Archiepiscopal Vicar of Northcote. As it is the most populous Greek Orthodox Parish in the north-west of Melbourne, thousands of believers flocked to the Holy Church to receive the eternal light.

At midnight on Great and Holy Saturday, despite the continuous rain, His Grace Bishop Evmenios, joined by the Holy Clergy, went out to the church forecourt, from where he announced “Christ is Risen”. Addressing the faithful, with obvious emotion, he emphasised: “All of you were not afraid of the rain, you came without hesitation to celebrate the glorious Resurrection. You have moved me and reminded me of the Myrrh-bearing women who, early in the morning, in the dark, went to Christ’s tomb to anoint His body with myrrh.”

Afterwards, Bishop Evmenios conveyed the wishes of His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia and, instead of a sermon, he read the Archbishop’s Paschal Message.

After the proclamation of the Holy Resurrection, the Paschal Divine Liturgy was celebrated, also in the presence of a large congregation, while at the dismissal, His Grace Bishop Evmenios blessed the red eggs and distributed them to the faithful.

On Easter Sunday morning, Bishop Evmenios officiated at the Vespers of Love held at the Archdiocesan Church of Axion Esti in Northcote. All the clergy of the Archdiocesan District of Northcote participated in the service, while the passage from the Gospel of John was read in eight languages, where the appearance of Christ after his Resurrection to his disciples is described.

In his short sermon, His Grace Bishop Evmenios of Kerasounta, after conveying to the faithful the love and wishes of their Shepherd, His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia, emphasised the message of hope brought by the Resurrection of the Lord, pointing out that “Christ is the victor and the One who has the final word for everything, even for things we cannot even imagine”.

Australia’s Romanian Bishop has issued an Easter Encyclical – ‘We are called to respond to God’s love by following Christ’.

Bishop Mihail, who heads the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Australia and New Zealand, noted in his Easter encyclical that “we are called to respond to God’s love by following His Son Jesus Christ. Just as Christ’s humility was complete, so too the discipleship we humans must go through must be to the end, calling at all times for his help in our lives, in our spiritual work.”

Bishop Mihail urged that when we try to do God’s will, “we should put aside selfishness or vain glory, and leave the worldly cares that separate man from God, in order to give our lives to God, concentrating on the spiritual work to walk in faith on the path shown to us by Christ, so that we may acquire the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“Let us stand aright, let us attend how we spend our lives, following Christ who rose from the dead. Let us not worry about passing things: food, drink, expensive clothes, and riches. Neither be partakers of feasts and parties in drunkenness and sinful revelry.”

“Let no one boast, despising the poor and needy, and let him who is tempted subdue the lust of vain glory by humility and Christian mercy.”

In his pastoral letter, Bishop Mihail stressed the need to support the elderly who “need help from those close to them, the young, children and grandchildren. With the elderly, we must be patient and understanding; for them, we must pray and protect them, showing them understanding and Christian love.”

The Romanian Bishop of Australia and New Zealand concluded his pastoral letter for Holy Pascha by urging the faithful “to offer prayers of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord God and to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead for our salvation.”

Photography courtesy of the Basilica.ro Files
Source: basilica.ro

ACNC Guidelines on Advocacy and the Referendum 
(see https://www.acnc.gov.au/tools/guides/charities-campaigning-and-advocacy)

A summary of advice from the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission which provides clarification on charity activities in the lead-up to the planned Referendum in 2023. 

Introduction

Charities may want to contribute to conversations taking place about the Australian Government’s planned referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. They can make a valuable contribution. It is important to remember that a charity may only conduct activities that further its charitable purposes according to its Constitution. 

‘Advocacy’ and ‘campaigning’ are terms that in everyday use can have very broad meanings. For the purposes of this guidance these terms have particular meanings.

When the ACNC talks about ‘advocacy‘ and ‘campaigning‘ it means activities which are aimed at securing or opposing any change to a law, policy or practice in the Commonwealth, a state or territory, or another country. Such activities can include:

• involvement in the development of public policy
• promotion of, or opposition to, particular laws, policies, practices or decisions of governments, and
• awareness-raising.

In the minds of the public, ‘advocacy’ can sometimes include political party activity. This is not included in the ACNC’s use of this phrase, as registered charities cannot have a purpose of promoting or opposing a particular political party or candidate.

‘Campaigning’ in this guidance is used by the ACNC to mean activities undertaken to educate the public, raise public awareness, change public behaviour and/or mobilise public support. It can include ensuring that existing laws, policies or decisions are either maintained or changed.

What is okay

Advocacy and campaigning can be a legitimate and effective way of furthering the charitable purposes of a charity. However, it is important that charities do not cross the line into having a disqualifying political purpose and that they maintain independence from party politics.

A charity’s policy position on a matter of concern may be similar to, or align with that of, a particular political party. In such a situation it is okay for the charity to continue to campaign on that issue, provided that this does not amount to the charity having a purpose of promoting or opposing a particular political party or candidate.

It would also be prudent for members of a charity’s governing body to consider the independence of their charity and any potential effects of particular campaigning activities on the charity’s reputation, including online activities through social media. Public perception is important and members of a charity’s governing body should be aware of the perception of any advocacy or campaigning.

In the lead-up to an election (or, in this case, the Referendum) there are increased risks that, in the minds of the public, charity advocacy or campaigning can be associated with a particular political party.

• Charities can, and often do, engage in advocacy activities and some charities might want to advocate for a particular outcome on the referendum.
• If a charity plans to undertake advocacy activities, it must be able to demonstrate why it considers its advocacy furthers its charitable purposes. 
• In the case of the planned referendum, some charities may just want to make a statement of support for the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ case. An example of this would be a message of support in the charity’s email signature block. This statement would not jeopardise their registration with the ACNC.

It’s okay for a charity to:

• have a purpose of advancing public debate – including promoting or opposing a change in law – where this furthers or aids another charitable purpose
• have a purpose to promote or oppose a change to a law, policy or practice in the Commonwealth, a state or territory or another country where this furthers or aids another charitable purpose.

How the advocacy is conducted

• The charities’ Responsible People and senior workers (paid or volunteer) should be clear about how their charity will advocate; the type of thing that can be said and done in the name of their charity, and set boundaries. 
• It’s important that advocacy is lawful, respectful, and fair as this helps ensure the charity (and its Responsible People) meet their obligations under the ACNC’s Governance Standards. 
• The ACNC encourages charities to support workers (paid or volunteer) who want to express their views on the referendum, to make it clear they are sharing their personal views and not those of the charity.
• The ACNC has more detailed information on advocacy by registered charities and charities, campaigning and advocacy which can help charities make decisions about their contributions to the conversation on the referendum.

Summary
A charity can campaign if it is satisfied that:

• what it is doing is advancing its charitable purpose
• its governing document (its constitution or rules) does not prevent the activity
• it does not have a purpose of advancing a particular political party or candidate or campaigning against a particular party or candidate

This summary is not legal advice and if you have doubts about any particular situation involving your charity, you can seek specific advice from the ACNC or seek independent legal advice. 

This year, the holy festivals of Passover (Pesach), Ramadan and Easter overlap. The Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths are regarded as Abrahamic religions due to their shared worship of God (referred to as Yahweh in Hebrew and as Allah in Arabic) as revealed to Abraham.

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is celebrated from the evening of Wednesday April 5th until the evening of Wednesday April 12th.
Passover commemorates the ancient Biblical story of the Israelites fleeing the wicked Pharaoh of Egypt, who had kept them in bondage and misery and only agreed to free them after God sent ten plagues to the land. Passover derives its name from what happened in the tenth of the plagues God sent to Egypt. It involved the killing of the firstborn son in every home – including the Pharoah’s own child.  God told the Israelites that each family should sacrifice a lamb and with its blood, mark their front door with its blood.  As a result, God ‘passed over’ the homes of the Jews and they were spared. The most famous tradition at Passover is not to eat leavened bread (‘chametz’) for eight days, recalling the fact that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste that their bread had no time to rise.

Ramadan continues for a month, from the evening of Wednesday Mar 22nd to the evening of Friday April 21st (dates relate to sighting of the moon). Ramadan is believed to be the month that the Holy Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed and, as such, it is a sacred time. During this time, observant Muslims will abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset. It is a period of great introspection, spiritual discipline and communal prayer. The fast each day is broken in the evening with Iftar meals.
In recent years, many Muslim communities have been reaching out to non-muslims offering invitations to join these celebratory communal meals.

Easter begins with Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) on April 2nd, followed by the events leading up to the Last Supper, the crucifixion of Jesus (‘Good Friday’) and the resurrection of Jesus (Easter Sunday). The Easter celebrations happen on Sunday April 9th, and Sunday April 16th for Orthodox churches.

There have been wonderful gestures of goodwill shared between Jewish, Christian and Muslim people this week, recognising the significance of the three holy festivals being celebrated at this time.

At the same time it is heartbreaking to see the news from Israel and the occupied territories, and the violence relating to the raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound (also known as the Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem that has been venerated as a holy site in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for thousands of years.

It is a significant site for Muslims who believe the al-Aqsa mosque compound is the location where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. Jews also revere it as the site of two Biblical temples, the second of which was destroyed in Roman times. It is also a significant site for Christians who trace their sacred story through both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

Israeli police forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan evening prayers on two consecutive nights this week, firing rubber bullets and stun grenades at hundreds of Palestinian worshippers. [Note: The interweaving of politics, nationalism and religion in Israel/Palestine is of course complex, and contested].

The two raids have drawn heavy criticism from various leaders and organisations across the world with the United Nations Security Council set to meet for a closed-door session to discuss the raids on Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Fears of further confrontations in the coming days are now heightened, particularly if Israeli officials make a visit, or if Israeli police allow Jewish activists to pray at the sensitive site, breaking fragile, decades-old rules which apply there. The important last 10 days of Ramadan begin on Tuesday and leads into Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power. It is the Islamic calendar’s holiest eve which recalls that during the night Angel Jibril revealed the Holy Qur’an’s first verses to the Prophet Muhammad. Historically, Israel as an occupying force prevented Jewish extremists from entering during these 10 days. But with the current government there are concerns that they will allow it.

In this time of Holy Festivals, and unrest and uncertainty, we pray for peace and an end to conflict.

“Then justice will dwell in the land
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”
– Isaiah 32:16-17

O God of life and love and peace,
We witness the violence and injustice in your Holy Land
And our hearts break.

Our hearts break for all Palestinians –
For the victims of violent attacks from Israelis
For those who have endured decades of occupation and oppression
For those whose homes and olive orchards have been demolished
For those who languish in Israeli prisons and in the “open air prison” of Gaza
For those without nearly enough water and electricity and medical care
For those who are refugees, long displaced from their homes.

Our hearts break for the Jewish people of Israel –
For the victims of violent attacks from Palestinians
For those who live with fear and insecurity
For those who re-live the trauma of the Holocaust over and over.

Our hearts break for the wider world –
For those who are indifferent to the pain and suffering in your Holy Land
For those who distort or turn their eyes from truth
For those who fail to see the humanity of all your children.

Heal us all, O God.
Heal the broken and comfort the sorrowful.
Give hope to the hopeless and courage to the fearful.
Strengthen the peacemakers and reconcilers.
Confront those who practice injustice and commit violence.

We especially pray –
That weapons of war be laid down
That walls of separation and the machinery of occupation be dismantled

That prisoners be released
That demonizing of “the other” cease
That political leaders seek the good of all people in Palestine and Israel.

We pray also for ourselves –
That our eyes will be opened to the ways in which our beliefs and actions have contributed to injustice and to violence.

O God, whose heart breaks for the world,
May your justice dwell in the land
May your righteousness abide in fruitful fields
May the effect of righteousness be quietness and trust forever
May the effect of justice be peace – enduring peace. Amen

Source of prayer: Mennonite Central Committee

Transcript

Three years ago, many of us were in lockdown for Easter. Many churches were closed. In a mirror of the Gospel stories, if two women had gone to the church early in the morning, around sunrise, they would have found it empty.

Perhaps they would have seen a bright white page of paper beside the door, bearing the message: “He is not here: for he has been raised. Go! He goes ahead of you …”

Being unable to access Church buildings that Easter was hard and yet we get more perspective when we consider the 500 churches and religious sites that have been destroyed in Ukraine over the last year. We grieve.

The gospel story of Easter is hard. Jesus died, and neither God nor humans stopped it. We grieve.

We grieve the day of Jesus’ agony and death, to which he went with steadfast faith and integrity, never bowing to retribution or violence; trusting God.

We grieve the silence that meets us after death; the silence of the Saturday. The time when the bombs have stopped and the floods have abated is, firstly, an awful time of silence.

Sunday does not take that all away. And yet, there is a sunrise which alerts us to new presence, a new hope, for all who follow the faithfulness of Jesus.

Unconfined to a tomb or a building, he is raised, and goes ahead of us.

In Matthew’s gospel, we hear of Jesus going ahead to Galilee, where he commissions the disciples to keep on going with mission and ministry in his name. He repeats the promise which is woven through all of Matthew’s gospel: I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Through it all, you are loved; through it all, you are accompanied; through it all, you are invited to follow the way of Jesus as agents of hope and light and faith in the world; and whenever two or three are gathered in my name, Jesus says, I am there.

There is a certain clarity about Easter, notwithstanding some of the mystery. There is clarity about sin and violence and death, but through Easter we bear witness that God brings something new. The women are invited to “come and see” that he’s not in the tomb, and to bear witness to his life-made-new. We are called to bear witness to his hope and life, beyond the pain of Good Friday, and to receive and respond to his hope of life-made-new.

May that hope and life flow through us all, to the glory to God.

The risen Christ be with you.

Rev David Fotheringham

Moderator

In his Easter message this year, Archbishop Peter A Comensoli draws our attention to three important things that flow from the resurrection. Like Mary in the garden, we are recognised by the risen Christ, who knows us intimately; we are invited to share in his healing peace; and we are sent out in his name, so that we might share these gifts with others, living ‘each day illumined by his resurrection, as the reason for our hope’.

Transcript:

Easter 2023: ‘Recognised, healed and sent’

Friends,

Three things flow from the resurrection of Jesus Christ; three things that matter. In his resurrection, Jesus recognises us personally; he invites us to peace; and he sends us out.

The very first word Jesus spoke following his resurrection was a name: Mary. He saw his friend, and although she could not yet recognise him, he called her by name.

Similarly, Jesus personally recognised his friends, to whom he appeared. There was something intimate, and tender, and hospitable about the risen Lord. He draws us into his own resurrected life.

Jesus, in his resurrection, also offered an invitation to peace. ‘Peace be with you’ was his first—and repeated—declaration. It was an invitation to a share in his forgiveness, and to be healed. Jesus reconciled all creation to himself on the cross; now, he offers us a share in his healing peace.

Finally, through his resurrection, Jesus sends forth his friends. Jesus charged his followers to share the Good News of redemption, and our life in his.

Mary: Go and tell the others.

Peter: Go and feed my sheep.

Friends: Go and make disciples.

Jesus gave out this task so that the gift of his death and resurrection would not be only for the few.

These same three things from Jesus’ resurrection—his recognising, his inviting, his sending—all belong to us now; they are ours to share in.

The risen Jesus recognises each of us personally by name.

The risen Jesus invites each of us to share in his healing gift of peace.

The risen Jesus sends each of us out in his name, with the gift of life.

He says to us, ‘Follow me,’ that we might live each day illumined by his resurrection, as the reason for our hope.

So, may our lives be filled with the energy, joy and youthfulness of the risen Jesus, knowing that, in him, I am recognised, I am healed, and I am sent.

Happy Easter to you.

Archbishop Peter A Comensoli

Archbishop Philip Freier (Archdiocese of Melbourne) 2023 Easter message is online.

Easter celebrates the most profound event in human history, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It tells the story of salvation and how the death of the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, is of immediate and lasting significance to all humankind. Its meaning not only transforms history but transcends it. Those who love Jesus live in both the now and the not yet. The now has been transformed into one of love, joy and hope, while the not yet is the perfect fulfilment of God’s promises and of fellowship with him which awaits us. That is why the Easter message is as relevant today as ever.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

We need Easter more than ever by Dr Rob Nyhuis
National Chair, Churches of Christ Council in Australia

The Gospel has taken a pounding in recent years from those rightly indignant at the excesses and abuses of some Christian leaders over past decades. Decline, though, just means a bigger mission field and a larger target to hit with a message needed more than ever before.

We can remind ourselves this Easter, too, that flawed messengers don’t invalidate the message.

Faith is attested by archaeological proof of the Bible, by prophecies fulfilled in Christ hundreds of years after being written and circulated, by the positive observations of hostile witnesses in the first century, by the willing deaths of early Christians, and by the transformed lives of many today. Christianity cannot be verified beyond all doubt, but it can be verified beyond reasonable doubt.

This Easter, Christians Australia-wide have an opportunity to live out their faith with pride. Maybe fewer people are Christians today than ever before, but a great many are Christians still. This Winter, the number of monthly churchgoers will still well exceed the attendances at AFL, NRL, A League, and Super Rugby games combined. This reminds us we can still confidently honour Jesus. 

After all, people are still coming to faith, worshipping weekly, and proving themselves inquisitive. Recent research shows that four in ten are open to spiritual conversations, a number rising to 50% for younger Australians, and 38% of Aussies are open to being invited to church, 73% by a close contact!

When society rejects religion in the workplace, Christians still connect outside of hours and continue to pray for their colleagues more fervently. When sceptics laugh at the notion of a miraculous Creator, Christians offer a living God more plausible than a causeless universe. When people intimidate with caustic questions or disparaging remarks, Christians respond with dignity and love.

This Easter, we once again proclaim Jesus who is alive. He died to repair our broken relationship with God by taking the punishment for sin (no matter how small) upon himself. His resurrection broke sin’s hold and triumphed over death. Through this, we come back to God, and he grants us access to eternal life. That brings hope, healing, restoration, and grace. More people need him than ever before, so the messsage is therefore also needed more than ever before. Jesus has not been tried and found wanting, even if forms of religion or some of its representatives have been. 

Surely, the Good News about Christ is worth celebrating this Easter, but it is also worth proclaiming with conviction and passion by those who have already embraced it and therefore know of its transforming power.