Bishop of Manchester shares Easter message weeks after revealing cancer diagnosis

'I hope this doesn’t sound too bleak a message for Easter. For me it is source of great hope.

The Bishop of Manchester has shared an Easter message, just weeks after revealing he has been diagnosed with cancer.

The Right Reverend David Walker revealed last month that an 'abnormal result' from a blood test last summer led doctors to discover that he has prostate cancer. He has recently completed his treatment and said that the prognosis is 'pretty good'.

However, he said it will be a while before he is fully back to health. In a video posted online on March 31, he asked people to 'excuse' him if he's 'not always quite as sharp' as he explained that the side effects of his treatment can make him more tired.

Brought up in Mossley, Tameside, the 67-year-old who went to Manchester Grammar School was ordained in 1983.

The married father-of-two, who became the Bishop of Manchester in 2013, has asked people to hold him in their prayers.

Speaking ahead of Easter, the Bishop of Manchester issued a message referencing his 'wounds' and 'adverse life experiences'.

He said: "That very first Easter, one of the key factors that convinced a bunch of frightened and despairing disciples that it really was the risen Jesus appearing among them, was that they could see the marks of the nails that his crucifiers had driven into his hands and feet, and examine the scar in his side.

"But I’m beginning to think Christ’s abiding wounds serve more than simply as proof of ID.

"Jesus did not just give up his life in order to receive it back unchanged. He went to the cross, knowing that he would bear the scars of his suffering for the rest of eternity.

"The risen Christ you and I meet today, still carries those marks, just as you and I are marked by the injuries we have sustained.

"Moreover, his wounds, like ours, are not confined to the physical. When he cries out from the cross, we hear the clear mental anguish of his sense of desertion.

"I hope this doesn’t sound too bleak a message for Easter. For me it is source of great hope.

"The Jesus I meet today in my prayers, is not destroyed by his wounds, but carries them as part of his continued offering of himself both to us and to his Father.

"And so too, my hope is not that I shall enter eternity with all my adverse life experiences expunged, as that would be a denial of the identity I have forged through them.

"My Christian hope is, that those wounds which have become part of who I am, will not destroy me, but become, both here and in the hereafter, enfolded in my own self offering to my risen Lord and my God.

"Happy Easter."