2026 marks Bishop Coll’s first Easter in his post, being appointed to the role in November of last year.
He says that the message of Easter “speaks with quiet but enduring force” in the face of “violent rhetoric and devastating wars.”
“At a moment when overreach of power and bitter invective seem to dominate public life, and when violent rhetoric and devastating wars scar so many parts of our world, the message of Easter speaks with quiet but enduring force. The Risen Lord did not overwhelm his first disciples or compel their belief through spectacle. There was no display of ‘shock and awe,’ no coercion of the heart,” Bishop Coll wrote.
“Instead, the Gospel accounts reveal something more subtle and more profound. Mary Magdalene, we are told (John 20:15), mistook him for a gardener. The disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:18) took him for a stranger. Only later, at table, in the breaking of the bread, were their eyes opened and they recognised him as the Lord. In that moment, fear gave way to hope. Their hearts, once heavy with grief and confusion, were set ablaze. Though it was night, they rose at once and returned to Jerusalem to proclaim the astonishing truth: Christ is risen.”
“Their experience speaks powerfully to our own. Beneath the ashes of discouragement and weariness, there often lies a living ember of hope, waiting only to be rekindled. Easter reminds us that even in the darkest moments, grace is quietly at work, drawing life out of what seems lifeless.”
“As Pope Leo XIV expresses it so beautifully: ‘Christ’s resurrection teaches us that no history is so marked by disappointment or sin that it cannot be visited by hope. No fall is definitive, no night is eternal, no wound is destined to remain open forever. However distant, lost or unworthy we may feel, there is no distance that can extinguish the unfailing power of God’s love.'”
Bishop Coll also wrote that the Easter message is to keep hope alive “in the face of unspeakable human suffering.”
“In the face of unspeakable human suffering – in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in so many other troubled places – our ears have grown accustomed to a chilling new vocabulary: drone warfare, hypersonic missiles, autonomous weapons. It is easy to feel overwhelmed, to the point of paralysis, and to surrender to despair.”
“Yet Easter calls us to resist that temptation. To keep hope alive is not naïve; it is an act of faith. It means praying earnestly for peace, encouraging and supporting those -politicians, diplomats and all who wield influence – who strive for justice and reconciliation. It means refusing to let darkness have the final word.”
“For hope is at the very heart of the Easter mystery. It is the quiet, persistent light that no darkness can overcome.”