Sri Lanka

As we gathered for the dawn service at the cathedral on Easter morning, news was coming in of the dreadful and heinous attacks in Sri Lanka, targeting tourists and worshippers who, themselves, were gathering to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. At the time of writing (Easter Monday morning), 290 fatalities have been confirmed, the worst such atrocity since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war ten years ago. We express our numbness and shock at such a terrible event, and our thoughts and prayers go to those immediately caught up in the horror of it all. The only consolation we can take from this, though, is the most important one; in targeting (in part) Christians celebrating Easter, the attackers only highlighted the central tenet of the Christian faith, which is that, in the Resurrection, Jesus overcame the old order of violence, persecution, injustice, murder, and everything that denotes evil, and inaugurated his kingdom based on the values of God: love, compassion, mutual respect, justice, forgiveness, everything, in fact, that cancels out the distortions that violence brings. And we know in our hearts that these values, because of the Resurrection, will never be overcome. It is hard, sometimes, to place this in perspective; in the aftermath of a terrible outrage all we are conscious of is the death and the devastation. But the light of hope will never be extinguished because Jesus has shown us, and continues to show us, the way. In him we place our trust. In him is the hope for all humanity.

The Very Rev'd Roger Bush,  Dean of Truro