APRIL 2026

Dear Rev. Fathers, Religious, and People of God,

I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Easter of the Risen Lord. May the Risen Christ bless you, your parishioners and the families in your parishes. On the eve of Easter vigil mass, I shall offer my Holy Eucharist for your intentions. I solicit your prayers for me and our diocese.

The feast of Easter is a unique event, unparallel in history. Nothing like this has ever happened or heard before or after Christ. This is the greatest miracle Jesus worked. Lazarus was dead and he was raised from the dead by Christ, but he died again. Jesus Christ rose from the dead to die no more. Thus, the principal feast of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ which is the foundation of our faith and the guarantee of our resurrection. In the words of St. Paul, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and our proclamation has been in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that He raised Christ. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says, “Since our message is that Christ has been raised from death, how can some of you say that the dead will not be raised to life? If that is true, it means Christ has not been raised and if Christ has not been raised from death, then we have nothing to preach, and you have nothing to believe…. (1Cor.15:12-14)” Therefore, the resurrection of Christ is the basis and foundation of our resurrection. If we faithfully follow in his footsteps, we, too, shall rise with Christ in glory. In fine, today we celebrate the triumph of life over death, hope over despair, light over darkness, goodness over evil.

Now we are called Easter people. We belong to the Risen Lord. It is not sufficient to confess that Jesus rose from the dead, but we must rise with Him from death in sin to a new life. Our encounter with the Risen Lord at the Eucharist should help all of us to get prepared for that final encounter which will take place at our death.

May the Risen Christ fill your hearts and homes with His peace and joy. May He shower His Graces upon all of us.

Yours devotedly in Risen Lord

+L. Thomas Aquinas

Bishop of Coimbatore