The collect for Thursday in Easter Week – somewhere close to the time you’ll be receiving this – is quite a wonderful one, reminding us that God ‘in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation.’

You’ll perhaps recall that there are five features of the prayers we call collects: They begin with (1) an address – how we call God; they then describe (2) the quality or action of God on which we base our request; that’s followed by (3) the request itself and (4) the result we hope will come from granting this request; and they end with (5) an ascription, linking it all with the life and work of Christ Jesus our Lord.

For Thursday in Easter Week the request is that ‘all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.’ A noble prayer, no doubt, and we might well offer it at any time of the church year. But it’s the reference to the Paschal mystery – with Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection at its center – through which God ‘established the new covenant of reconciliation’ that gives the collect its Easter power.

We hear that word reconciliation at virtually every Eucharist. God the Father, the celebrant prays, sent Jesus ‘to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.’ We find it in the catechism as these teachings call us to be reconciled to God and to one another, and ‘to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.’ And, happily, it keeps popping up these days. Just last month, our House of Bishops spoke of our call to be ‘instruments of reconciliation’ and how a pastoral scheme advanced by the Anglican Communion’s primates would challenge that calling.

However you may view these Anglican developments, I welcomed that comment from our bishops because it drew our attention back to a theology of the ‘new covenant of reconciliation,’ emergent from that Paschal mystery of which Thursday’s collect speaks. What the bishops said reminded me of a comment I heard not long ago, to the effect that the word irreconcilable ought to be rare in Christian discourse, for it had no meaning in our theology. The potential for restoration of right relationship with God and our neighbor is, through Jesus, always present and possible. But it doesn’t happen if we have separated ourselves from one another – church, family, neighbor, world... it doesn’t happen if the will is not there.

The Holy Week by which we were so recently blessed proclaimed once again ‘the new covenant of reconciliation.’ May we ‘who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body… show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith.’

Yours faithfully,
Leon Spencer