Bishop Kieran Conry's Pastoral Letter for Low Sunday, found here in its entirety, is a message of hope for all. A selection follows:
John also has Mary coming to the tomb. This is Mary Magdalene, and she finds the tomb empty and tells the others. In this account Peter is beaten in the race to the tomb, but when the two disciples find it empty they understand what the cloths lying there mean, and go back home. Mary stays outside the tomb weeping, and Jesus approaches her, but she doesn’t recognise him until he calls her by name. She goes back and tells them what she saw, and then that evening Jesus appears in their midst and speaks to them. His first words are, “Peace be with you.” In some ways this might be a simply reassurance for them, because John says the doors were closed “for fear of the Jews.” The disciples are now filled with joy, but again he says, “Peace be with you.” Curiously, it is also the greeting Jesus uses in Luke’s account when he appears to them all.
This greeting is more than just an attempt to calm or reassure a group of frightened people. It is a message that is profoundly associated with the events we have just celebrated. It is a reassurance for us in our anxieties and fears. It is a promise that, as the other John says in the second reading, we need not fear, “because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world.” It is a way of pointing us to the consequences of the death and resurrection of Christ, that our sins have been forgiven and that salvation has been won for us all. We have been brought back into that relationship with God that we lost in sin; God the Father has shown us just how much he loves us, by sending his only Son to die that we might live. Here is the cause of our peace. This is why at this time we can feel reassured, despite all our own secret anxieties and fears.
