Excerpts from Archbishop’s Easter Message

(Excerpts from Archbishop’s Easter Message)

God Has the Last Word Over Evil

The Book of Psalms is a collection of books which fall in different categories. Chief among these are those expressing lament, those expressing trust and confidence in God, and those expressing anger and calling for God’s judgement on enemies. This last category is designated as imprecatory psalms; and of course, there are also the psalms of praise and thanksgiving.

Close examination reveals that, whatever the human condition and experience to which the psalmist sought to give expression, he ultimately came toward the end of the particular psalm with an affirmation of God and God’s goodness, and entrusted the situation into God’s hands, as the ultimate source of light and hope.

There is a sense in which the human condition and experience today are not different from those captured in the Psalms, so there is suffering, injustice, and the evil designs of people and institutions. Across our world, we see the horror and the suffering being inflicted on people in Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti and countless nations where wars are being fought. However, these are no longer being highlighted as they have ceased to be nine-day wonders, or of interest to international and national forces. Who can watch the suffering of children and women of Gaza who face an artificially-induced state of trauma, dislocation, starvation, and death from malnutrition and conditions now defined as famine, and not cringe that a world which claims to be civilized can still perpetuate and watch such inhumanity with dispassion?

++The Most Rev. Dr. The Hon. Howard Gregory, OJ
Archbishop of the West Indies, Primate and Metropolitan
Bishop of Jamaica & The Cayman Islands