Scottish Catholic Observer

“Faith can seem a fairly marginal place to be these days,” he said. “But we are very far from alone. We are with the early Christians. We are with believers throughout the centuries. We’re not alone. We are with believers throughout the world, especially today. We’re with our Holy Father, Pope Francis. With the saints in Heaven who see the risen Christ face to face. With Mary and the apostles. We’re with so many.”

“The Resurrection is not fake news!” the bishop added. “Something happened in Jerusalem some almost 2,000 years ago. That is fact.” He said that following Christ’s death, his friends ‘were shattered and were beginning to scatter.’

“But then something happened,” he said, speaking about the resurrection. “Something detonated. Something changed. They were galvanised, energised, reunited. Christianity, let’s call it, began, or better erupted. The rest, again, is history.”

Faith, he said, wasn’t ‘founded on an idea or a book or just another prophet.’ It was founded on the belief that ‘something unique and unprecedented had happened, something they knew sounded crazy, but couldn’t deny: he is risen, he is truly risen.’

The bishop said we live in a world of physical, emotional, and political noise.

“We might fail to hear this other explosion,” he said. “We need the ears of the heart. But it is the real ‘Big Bang.’ It is the victory of the love shown on the Cross. It opens a new world. It is the coming of the Kingdom of God. We’re small folk, but still precious. Perhaps we Christian believers, we the Church, might usefully think of ourselves as the fall-out of the Resurrection, or the shrapnel: not to contaminate or pollute, not to shatter or wound, but to give hope to a hurting world.”