‘Keep alive the hope’

This year the Easter Triduum will be very different for me. I am hoping it will be more reflective than usual – I will be recovering from some surgery and will have time to ponder. There will not be the necessity for me to prepare homilies, and to make sure that all is well and in order for the liturgies.

WelCom April 2023

John A Cardinal Dew
Archbishop of Wellington Archdiocese
Apostolic Administrator of Palmerston North Diocese

This year the Easter Triduum will be very different for me. I am hoping it will be more reflective than usual – I will be recovering from some surgery and will have time to ponder. There will not be the necessity for me to prepare homilies, and to make sure that all is well and in order for the liturgies.

We will hear in the reading of the Passion from St John on Good Friday: ‘Near the Cross of Jesus, stood his mother…’. I am wondering if this Good Friday, I will be able to be there with her. Maybe I will just ponder what thoughts were going through Mary’s mind. Perhaps I will see her grief in a different way because I will have more time to ponder. Maybe I could pray with the image of Michelangelo’s Pieta and see the tortured soul of Mary with new eyes.

We know there are a number of places in the Scriptures where we are told Mary pondered the mysteries of her Son’s life in her heart.

I often find Holy Saturday to be a very strange and quiet day. Tradition tells us that Mary kept vigil on Holy Saturday in prayerful anticipation of Jesus’ resurrection. She had hope beyond hope. Her faith was certain. We know there are a number of places in the Scriptures where we are told Mary pondered the mysteries of her Son’s life in her heart. I hope I can ponder in the same way she did, thinking of her standing by him in his agony and death, holding his dead body in her arms, and maybe thinking, wondering where his spirit had gone. 

I think Holy Saturday is an ideal day to ponder the pondering heart of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and to remember that from the cross, she was also given to me, to all of us: ‘This is your Mother’. This will be the opportunity for me to ponder her pondering heart, and to try to unite my heart with hers, to try to understand what she was thinking and hoping. I hope while this Easter will be different for me, that it may also be different for the many people in our world who walk in despair and confusion. I know many people have lost hope in the new life that awaits them; so many have their own kind of interior death, and they’re not open to allowing God to draw them into the new life of his resurrection. 

I think of all those people throughout the world who are crucified in different ways, in whose lives there have been many kinds of deaths. I think of people in Ukraine, people who have lost their lives trying to sail on flimsy boats to a new life, people who have lost everything through cyclone Gabrielle, people who suffer and die because of their belief or their ethnicity. I hope this Holy Saturday will be a holy day for me and that I and others will be able to keep alive the hope that was so vibrant in the heart of Mary on that first Holy Saturday.

May you all have a holy and a blessed Easter.

In a letter to staff and pastoral leaders, Cardinal John notes: ‘I have greatly missed my early morning walks and the beauty of the harbour in its many changing moods.’ Photo: Cardinal John Dew

Cardinal convalescing

Cardinal John Dew is convalescing following surgery to address spinal issues which caused him pain for many months and made walking difficult. The Cardinal had surgery on March 21 which went well and he is in recovery for 6–8 weeks. He has since thanked people for their many prayers. 

In Cardinal John’s absence Archbishop Paul Martin sm is in charge of the day-to-day running of the diocese with help from Vicar-General Mons Gerard Burns.

Cardinal John turns 75 on 5 May. Canon Law requires bishops to offer their resignations prior to their 75th birthdays. The Cardinal tended his resignation in January but is yet to receive a response from the Holy Father. Once his resignation is accepted, there will be a formal installation of Archbishop Paul Martin as the 8th Archbishop of Wellington.