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The Episcopal Free Communion “The Episcopal Free Church”
The Free Protestant Episcopal Church
Primus: Easter Message
London, England, UK. April, 2021
The times we live through could never have been imagined by former generations. The global pandemic has certainly gone beyond the trials and tribulations of our forebears. The many deaths and beds of sickness surpass the experiences of many caught up in wars and plagues of history. And before we start attributing much of this to punishment or prophecy, we are far off the mark if we try to do so. As Christians we confess a incarnate God who does not dismiss suffering, but endures it in all its futility and heinous barbarity. He took upon Himself flesh in the Incarnation, and in the Passion saw and experienced what flesh has to suffer. And the suffering within the World becomes His pain as He became like us in all things, except sin. He doesn’t rest above the pandemic or will it upon Creation, He enters into it with the devastation and heroism it has produced. And the evidence? Calvary. As the hymn writer was to write, ‘In the Cross of Christ I glory towering o’er the wrecks of Time. Our wrecked World is still the World He loves; and in the Eucharist we experience with Him the brokenness, the fragmentation, seemingly, of all that is good but also the remembering, the drawing together, of all that speaks of healing and resurrection. He gathers up all the fragments so that all may fall within His embrace. May I say a very big thank you to all our bishops, priests and deacons, catechists, teachers, laity across the World and in the many provinces of The Episcopal Free Communion, keeping actively alive their forms of a inclusive and independent sacramentalism, open and available to all regardless of any type of orientation, welcoming to all ecclesiastical inheritances and treasures. Let the Incarnation light continue to blaze in your hearts so that each may be a paschal candle of hope shining in the World that is still loved by the Lord who declared Himself as the Resurrection and the Life. Easter joy to all,
With every blessing, + Richard The Most Rev’d. Dr. Richard Palmer Primus : United Kingdom.
+Richard Archbishop Primus