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With Holy Week and our celebration of the Day of Resurrection still so fresh in my mind, I had difficulty deciding how to address you. I thought of borrowing from the bidding at the Maundy Thursday foot washing: "Fellow Servants of our Lord Jesus Christ." But then the simple phrasing of the Solemn Collects of Good Friday seemed more direct: "Dear People of God." Reference to the faithful as "dear friends," in the call to renew the baptismal vows at the Great Vigil is even simpler. But I wanted a slightly different focus than any of these provide.

That you are "beloved" of God is abundantly obvious. The Agony in the Garden, the bearing of the Cross, the suffering of the Passion, and the Silence of the Tomb all declare the costliness of God's love toward us, demonstrated in the Sacrifice of Christ, the very Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But the tiny little word in my greeting, "in," also conveys profound significance in my mind.

Shortly after our newest member of the parish, Carrie Adams, received Holy Baptism at the Easter Vigil, we heard the reading of a passage from the sixth chapter or St. Paul's letter to the Romans. In this text is expressed our understanding of the reality of our baptism being that we have entered into the death and resurrected life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sacramentally, we are "in Christ." All of life for the baptized is lived in intimate union with him who died for us and rose again victoriously over death, Hell, and the grave.

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism in to death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." It is this "newness of life," declared by the Apostle in the fourth verse of Romans 6, that is the source of our Easter joy. During the Great Fifty Days of this season, I pray we will rejoice constantly and faithfully, giving thanks to Almighty God in regular attendance at worship and constant daily prayer for the gift of new and eternal life won for us by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

Fr. Timothy P. Perkins , SSC
V^th Rector