By Chikezie Ogbonna
Christians have been called to place their hope in God and never weaver on it. In his 2021 Easter message, the Catholic Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Most Rev. Callistus Onaga urged Christians to trust in God and live by the trueness and hope that Christ’s death and resurrection comes with. His Lordship in explaining the very essence of Easter and it being the crux of the Christian faith urged Christians to trust totally in God as he has the only panacea to placate the many challenges bedeviling the country.
His message reads;
“I wish everybody a very happy Easter, we have for over 40 days we have been fasting and praying, and giving thanks in preparation for the feast of the celebration of the resurrection of our lord Jesus Christ that is actually the center of our Christianity and the whole doctrine of our Christendom.
“We thank God that despite all the inhibitions and all the huddles that the present pandemic presented, we were able to go through most of the Lenten exercises. We are happy that the faithful fully participated in the main message of Christianity, the message of resurrection.
“With that very act of rising from the death, he conquered death himself and then restored life as St. Paul will tell us.
“We have hope with this very gesture.
“Without resurrection, there may not be any need for Christianity. There may not be any need for us to be worshiping because there is nothing that is extraordinary.
“It is the fact of the resurrection our lord Jesus Christ that confirmed the trueness of eternity, that life does not end here. There is another life elsewhere.
“If the son of God who is man had to die, eventually resurrected, then it is possible for every mortal to pass through the experience of death in other to enter into eternity.
“It kind of douses the whole fear we have about death, because, death becomes now a gateway , it becomes an avenue through which we enter eternity.
“The issue of judgment, and the issue of our being responsible for our actions is again brought forward and brought up by the very fact of resurrection because we cannot enter eternity if we didn’t live well.
“My good works will strengthen my faith. if I did good work, the whole and mission of preaching love has been done. Therefore, resurrection is so important.
“This year, we have to raise up our hope, inspite of everything, God is with us. God is there.
“Every year, we have always had one problem or the other that is disturbing the nation. Yes, this time around, it looks like everything is going down, then the pandemic itself is making the whole problem more complicated.
“I wrote in my pastoral letter that we should have hope, that is why the title of our pastoral letter is Spero in Deo which means Hope In God, in everything we do, we should always hope in God.
“So, we are wishing everybody this very hope that Easter brings.”
Bishop Onaga further encouraged Nigerians to take the rolled out Coronavirus vaccine. According to his Lordship, people should disregard the conspiracy theory surrounding it and urged everyone to join hands to do everything that should be done to mitigate its spread.
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