Archbishop: Easter reminds us there is hope

THE Holy Week and Easter was the second consecutive year Papua New Guineans found themselves in a coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown with strict new public health protocols.
East New Britain (ENB) Archbishop of Catholic diocese of Rabaul and head of Catholic health services in ENB Rochus Josef Tatamai said who would ever had imagined five years ago that the Covid-19 would drastically change our lives, lifestyle and behaviour.
Archbishop Tatamai said the landscape of our social interpersonal relationships to what we now refer to as “the new normal” with its lists of protocols to observe public health measures such as regular washing of hands, mandatory wearing of face masks, use of sanitisers and social distancing.
“The Holy Week and Easter celebrations had always been the spring time of the year to witness and celebrate life, new life when sin and death are being defeated profoundly by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” he said.
“The stark tension between goodness and evil battles on as the final showdown in our lives and in the world, and to see that at the end, the final word is that goodness and all the positiveness turn out victorious on Easter Sunday which is the first day of the week through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“Holy Week and Easter are two faces of the same coin of the human life that we all enjoy, as we live, share, appreciate and acknowledge as a precious gift from God to our human family.
“Christians regard Holy Week and Easter as a sacred time and space or period that reminds us in a very concrete sense of our being as human beings.”
Archbishop Tatamai said amid all the fear and threats that the coronavirus posed: “Easter is the guarantee that life will be victorious in the end.”