Bishop Alain Harel’s Easter message |06 April 2023

‘With and through the risen Jesus, let us come out of our tombs’

On Good Friday, many of us were at the foot of the Cross, contemplating, with emotion, Jesus crucified, Jesus disfigured, Jesus drawn and quartered. We were also tempted to look away. This mutilated man, hanging on a cross, calls out to us, because it brings us back to a burning issue. Indeed, the crucifixion of Jesus reminds us of the suffering of so many Seychellois brothers and sisters alienated from their humanity by destructive forces.

Yes, the crucifixion of Jesus continues through these 10,000 Seychellois enslaved to cocaine, crack and synthetic drugs. We were shocked, and rightly so, when we watched a BBC programme about the scourge of drugs in Seychelles. This dramatic documentary is playing out live in so many families, cantons, and even schools in Seychelles. Thus paradise turns into hell for so many of our brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, like bugs drinking the blood of their victims, the big drug dealers, these merchants of death, are getting richer in a brazen manner and are draining themselves of their humanity.

The crucifixion of Jesus also continues when so many of our compatriots — as early as primary school — have become ‘addicted’ to pornography. Many psychiatrists are sounding the alarm about this addiction, which has disastrous consequences for psychological health and contributes greatly to fuelling violence in male-female relationships by reducing the human person to an object of pleasure. Moreover, our young people, through all kinds of ideologies, in a total break from our great cultural traditions and our Christian roots, are often confused and no longer know which way to go. Moral standards are totally blurred. Many citizens move forward as if in a thick fog and find it difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, between what is permitted and what is forbidden, but even more so to give themselves a goal, an ideal in life. Doesn't this existential crisis explain, in part, the sad world record we hold for drug and alcohol consumption?

All the people who witnessed the scene (the killing of Jesus) and saw what happened went away beating their chests‘ (Luke 23 vs 48). Will we also be content to watch, as passive witnesses, what is happening in our society, even if it means beating our chests afterwards! In conscience, we cannot live in denial because it is the Seychellois society a whole that is pierced, just like Jesus on the Cross. Let us think again of the devaluation of the meaning

of work in our society, the decline in marriages and birth rate, the loss of awareness of our Creole identity, the numerous violent crimes. This moral, health and demographic crisis should challenge us, disturb us and make us react.

On the evening of Easter, the Risen Jesus is recognised by his friends by showing them his hands pierced by nails and his side pierced by a lance. It is indeed Jesus – the body of Jesus, this mangled body, that has risen and not his soul that would have survived!

St Augustine liked to say: ‘God created us without us, but he does not want to save us without us.’ We are not robots. God elicits our cooperation to free us from what shackles us, from what hurts us deeply – body and soul. But how?

First of all, by allowing ourselves to be accompanied and guided by the risen Jesus, let us look reality in the face with courage. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that the truth sets us free.

Furthermore, the entire nation, through its institutions, i.e. the Presidency and the executive, the legislature – both the majority and the opposition, the judiciary and the forces of law and order, the administration and the various state bodies, the religions and the NGOs, has a duty to do everything possible to protect families and particularly children, young people and the most vulnerable. All should have as their sole objective the common

good of our society. Thus, we are all called upon to pool our energies and our will to protect society from the scourges that affect us. For example, just as it is urgent to strengthen legislation concerning drug barons, including their suspicious riches, it is important to have adequate legislation and measures to ensure that children and young people do not have access to pornographic sites. Furthermore, society as a whole must rally and find the

human and financial resources to provide the necessary care to all those who are in the grip of addictions. They are sick people who need medical, psychological and spiritual assistance.

Families and all of us must better shoulder their responsibilities. To educate means to grow. How can we stimulate in ourselves and around us a moral awakening in all sectors of our shared existence? How can we help children and young people to acquire good habits: respect for others and for oneself, a sense of the common good, a civic spirit, a sexuality animated by a love of the other in his or her difference – his or her otherness, self-fulfilment through work, training in the proper use of social networks. This education is first and foremost of adults leading by example, being role models. How else can we be credible?

As we go through the desert following Jesus, let us go up to Golgotha. With and following Jesus, let us come out of our graves so that we may be freer, more united, and more fraternal. With and through the life-giving power of God, let us become what we are called to be, from before the foundation of the world, that is, sons and daughters of God through Jesus the Christ.

On this feast of Easter, let us pray to the Lord for the resurrection of the social body of Seychelles. This is our Hope.

+ Alain Harel

Bishop of Port Victoria