PRAY IT AIN’T SO
Dolan: Easter joy tinged with Christians’ peril
Christians around the world “risked their lives” to pray this Easter, Timothy Cardinal Dolan said Sunday morning — a week after bombers in Egypt killed dozens of worshippers Palm Sunday.
“I prayed specifically for those who literally took their lives in their own hands, who risked their lives to worship this morning in certain parts of the world where there is persecution and attacks on our whole religion and people of all faiths,” Dolan (pictured Sunday) told reporters after Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We’re with them in prayer.” There was a heightened police presence for Sunday’s service at St. Patrick’s, but any fears of at- tacks did not dampen the turnout, with attendees packing the pews — among them former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Jets owner and potential UK ambassador Woody Johnson.
Many worshippers had waited on a block-long line.
“It’s great to see that every Easter, that the faith is still alive,’’ Dolan said.
“We’ve sensed it all during Lent, and it’s good to see that on Easter, there is something innate, there is something in our DNA — our Jewish neighbors who celebrate Passover, the Christians who celebrate Easter — there is something deep down,” he said.
The cardinal noted that extra security precautions around Easter are nothing new.
“Think of that first Easter Sunday. There were three soldiers guarding the tomb’’ of Jesus, Dolan said.
“Good Friday and Easter Sunday have always been a little risky.”
But the cardinal offered a hopeful message.
“We often think, ‘Is winter going to end?’ Then there is spring and new life and hope coming around, and it always does,’’ he said.
That was a positive theme, too, of Dolan’s sermon, in which he spoke of “second chances and hope and mercy and goodness.”
“It often seems that life is conflict. The word of Good Friday, that Friday afternoon, was of rejection, of darkness so thick that the sun hid itself in shame,’’ Dolan said.
“Words like ‘death,’ ‘violence,’ ‘evil,’ ‘tears.’ It seemed that those were going to be the last words.
“Fast-forward to this radiant Easter morning. What’s the word now? [Jesus] is risen from the dead,” he told parishioners.
A week ago, two bombings on Coptic Christian churches in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria killed 49 people and injured dozens more, state media reports.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.