Easter Message from Bishop Rob — April 2026
Every year, a close reading of the same gospel, even if we’ve read it over a life-time, brings something fresh, something green, and new—something surprising. It may be very familiar and obvious, but the Holy Spirit wants us to notice it as though for the first time because we need to hear it for the first time. This year what springs up as though a new sunrise is the verse in John’s gospel, at the end of the Good Friday reading, when we hear these words:
Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
To this day, in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also known as the site of Calvary, Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion, where tradition tells us that a relic of the cross was uncovered AND it is also the place where Jesus was laid in an unused tomb. It’s from the tomb, of course, where God raised him from the dead. Execution and resurrection happen in the same small piece of real estate: the place of unimaginable suffering by human hands and hearts AND the site of the world changing triumph of life over death, love over fear, forgiveness over hatred. It is the place our savior expresses humankind’s deepest abandonment by God and humankind. And it is the site of recognition: of us recognizing Jesus and then the risen Jesus seeing us as a friend. It is the site of the most holy “both/and” which is our life in the Risen Christ.
Our Calvaries are legions. There are so many, too many, and too heartbreaking to list. We all know what they are. The effects of human sin and cruelty, done by us and to us, are all around. We see them. They burden and grieve us. Those crucifixions lead us to times of both despair and hope. They are the reason for our prayers, our seeking help from God and each other. They are the cause of our thirst for righteousness, our struggles to forgive, and our cries to be forgiven. The desolate Place of the Scull and the Garden of Resurrection are layered on top of each other. The suffering and death of bodies, of communities, of hope itself, occur in the same place, and with even more power where we meet Jesus’ Rising. From out of the depth of the Sepulchre, Jesus calls us each by name just as he called to Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning.
May your Good Fridays, your scenes of deep loss and sorrow be converted into a glorious resurrection, a rising to life, to a love and a life that is stronger than death. What courageous joy that gives us, to know in our bones that nothing, not even death, or the fear of death, will separate us from the love of God in Jesus. May that love and life rise in our hearts this Easter, and may every day be Easter. Jesus Christ is Risen. Alleluia.
Bishop Rob and Bishop Angel, of Cuba, spend time together.
Report from Bishop Rob - House of Bishops Spring Meeting - March 17-25, 2026
It was a privilege for me to attend the spring gathering of the House of Bishops at Camp Allen in the Diocese of Texas. Though I always hate to leave my beloved Diocese of New Hampshire, I find the time enriching to be with my colleague bishops from the whole Episcopal Church, including from the dioceses in Latin America, Europe, and Taiwan.
By now a Word to the Church has been issued. Its intent is to offer a message of hope, unfailing in the Good News of Jesus Christ, even in times of crisis and discouragement. The new war in Iran—extending to the whole Middle East—the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, and other parts of the world weigh heavily on all of our hearts. Such suffering is a call for us all to pray, fervently, for efforts for a just and lasting peace. I am humbled by the work of my fellow bishops and their churches as they strain to hold together community in Christian fellowship even as forces of inhumanity toward immigrants are rampant and political rages foam.
We always come together in prayer. I have been part of a small but growing number of bishops who devote daily time on contemplation. We do this because as our world experiences such chaos, disorientation, and division, and even war, it is essential that Christians, especially Christian leaders, stay rooted in the awareness of God’s enduring, loving, and life-giving presence in the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen Jesus. Any word or action that is not rooted in prayer is, as Paul says, like a noisy gong to a clanging cymbal. I believe that the tenor of our discussions during the more business-oriented sessions of the House has been more open to deep listening and respect because of the critical mass of bishops who practice contemplative prayer, even those who consider themselves more activist on certain issues.
We spent much of our time discussing the state of theological education, particularly for the raising up of priests in our Church. The landscape of traditional seminary training has shifted significantly in the past 15-20 years. Our denomination has gone from relying on eleven 3-year residential and very expensive seminaries to something like seven, and each of those offering paths that are more accessible to postulants for Holy Orders in local settings, such as rural New England. Much of the changes in education have been driven by economic and demographic forces. The bishops’ discussion of these trends was much overdue. It was so confirming to me to see how our establishment of the School for Ministry, for laity, deacons and priests is something that is becoming more and more accepted and even normative in the wider church. As I spoke with bishops from Ecuador, Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Massachusetts and Pittsburgh, I was heartened to learn how we are all facing similar challenges in the urgent need to raise up new ministers of the gospel. New Hampshire’s hybrid model is something looked to and admired by such different settings in the Episcopal Church.
We also heard of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s diligent efforts to reform and reshape the organizational structure of the Episcopal Church in a way that supports evangelism, church planting, and redevelopment. There are significant and overdue changes being contemplated, about which we will hear in the coming months. This support for church renewal is of keen interest to us in New Hampshire as we initiate new missions in Manchester, Claremont, Portsmouth, and more in the coming years. This is so important to consider and welcome as demographic models predict a movement northward of the U.S. population in the coming decades. We have been praying for young adults and families for years. I pray that the spiritual and organization work we have done in our Diocese in recent years has helped us prepare for the growth that, God willing, is coming our way.
We discussed proposals in the wider Anglican communion that seek to deepen and further relationships with other provinces of the Church where relationships have been strained and in disrepair for a variety of reasons. The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals are fascinating to read because they imagine a church that is seeking ways to be in communion, and defining what communion means, in an era when the long-term trend for churches, religions, indeed almost every institution in society is toward greater splintering. Though the bishops are, in my view, rightly cautious about the proposals, it is encouraging to think of the many who continue to do the hard and sacred work of true reconciliation across serious differences of practice.
I was so grateful to hear a fulsome presentation from Bishop Ann Ritonia, Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Forces and Federal Ministries. Our church’s work to provide pastoral care and accompaniment to chaplains in the military, federal prisons and hospitals is truly essential, especially when so many of these chaplains encounter tremendous moral, spiritual, and physical trauma. I am grateful for Bishop Ann’s witness to both the gospel of Jesus Christ AND the U.S Constitution’s protection against the incursion of governmental establishment of religion of any kind.
Finally, the return home through a Houston airport stressed with dramatically fewer TSA agents and many more ICE agents felt like being in a country that has changed. As I walked through the labyrinth paths to the security check points, along with thousands of others, I thought of the many pilgrims throughout millennia who have walked the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem, recalling the path the Jesus took from his entry into that City, to his actions in the Temple, to his Trial, his Crucifixion, his burial and his Rising.
I hope that wherever your journey and observances this coming Holy Week takes you, you may know how Jesus Christ walks alongside you, sharing your hopes, your joys, and the depths of your sorrows.
He will raise us all in peace and glory.
Yours in the Risen Christ,
+Rob
Make Your Giving a Joyful Act
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
About this matter of aid for God’s people, it is superfluous for me to write to you. I know how eager you are to help and I speak of it with pride to the other dioceses and bishops when I visit them. I know that when you hear of appeals to give, you do so out of a sense of bounty and not because you feel spiritually blackmailed.
‘Remember: sow sparingly, and you will reap sparingly; sow bountifully, and you will reap bountifully. Each person should give as each has decided for oneself. Not out of a sense of reluctance, guilt, or compulsion. We are not about arm-twisting or feeling like we are squeezing blood from a rock, right? God loves a cheerful giver… Our giving is not merely a contribution to the needs of God’s people. Much more than that, God can multiply whatever we give in a flood of thanksgiving to God…Thanks be to God for God’s gift which is beyond all praise!’
Do these words sound at all familiar? I hope you’ve heard a version of them before. They come from Chapter 9 of St. Paul’s Second Letter to the church in Corinth. I confess I’ve done a little paraphrasing and editing to underscore his enthusiasm for the opportunity we have to give.
You read that correctly…Paul’s enthusiasm for the opportunity we have to give. In churches that are thriving and growing and full of the Spirit, people love to give. Anybody who has travelled and worshipped in churches of economically stressed or undeveloped communities will tell you how much the Offertory is the most fun part of the service. In these churches it’s not enough to pass the basket around once during the service. Sometimes it comes around several times, sometimes each time to address a different need within or outside of the community. Often it comes because the people just want the chance to give more. In fact, any eucharistic service, including our tiny mid-week services, that doesn’t invite at least a modest opportunity to give- even just a plate at the back of the church that comes up at the Offertory—doesn’t really make sense in the spirit of the hospitality of God’s Table. Do we come empty-handed when invited to a meal at our neighbors? Money is not the only thing you can bring to the Altar. I remember the exuberance of a predominantly Polish congregation in Brooklyn where I served as a seminarian when links of freshly made sausages came up in the brass plates. (I think they went to the local soup kitchen, but I remember some pretty good pancake breakfasts!) Children in another parish I served brought up crayon drawings in the plate with the same glee as any child might present a work of art and saying, “Look, Ma! Look, Dad, what I made!” Those children knew God delighted in the cheerfulness of their giving.
What would it mean if that same kind of joy of giving was widespread in the Church in New Hampshire. What’s preventing that from happening? I suspect it’s partly because we are infected by the contagion of consumerism. We are more focused on what we are getting from Church rather than what we share. We expect to get value from our dollar, goods or services in return for our investment. Or we give whatever is left in our wallets to the church as opposed to the first fruits, the first that comes in the best we have, the cream of the crop, to our community. Where’s the joy in that? Where is the love?
A member of our family tells the story of overhearing a couple walking down a sidewalk in Manhattan. The woman is animated, clearly frustrated as her companion appears somewhat preoccupied, perhaps sullen and annoyed. She turns to him and says in a loud voice, “I am not talking about the pizza! I’m talking about our RELATIONSHIP!”
I think that’s kind of what Paul is saying to the church in Corinth and to us in New Hampshire when it comes to our giving. We are not talking about money or the budget. We are not talking about the bricks and mortar or the cost of clergy or candles. (Though, like pizza, these things are good and necessary!) We are talking about our relationship… the bonds and links that hold us together. Benevolence, kindness, generosity, prayer, justice, mercy, love. These things are in poor supply in our society, a culture that seems to be disintegrating into coarseness, disparity, and violence before our eyes. It’s not a feeling of blind obligation to give to the church that will renew us, either our church or our society. Rather renewal of our Church will come from the sense that we get to give. We get to share in the same flood of thanksgiving that God releases in our hearts. We get to go ever deeper into our relationship with God and each other in Christ when we give from the top, over the top. “Thanks be to God for God’s gift which is beyond all praise!”
Your brother in Christ, +Rob
Open Letter to the Manchester Community on Child Refugees
The following letter, facilitated by partner organization Granite State Organizing Project, was sent to the Union Leader:
An Open Letter on Child Refugees
We, the undersigned clergy, from diverse faiths working in Manchester, offer this open letter to our community in response to the flood of child refugees coming to the United States from Central America.
We have been watching as the number of unaccompanied children entering the United States has grown to more than 57,000 so far in 2014, up from 27,884 in 2013. These children and families are fleeing horrific and worsening violence (worse in some cases than in open war zones), extreme poverty, gang-related dangers, and their governments’ inability or unwillingness to protect them.
These refugee children are risking life and limb to flee violence and poverty in their homeland, hoping to find safety in America. The story of this land being a safe refuge and a place of possibility is heard by children and adults all across the globe. It is the same story that we heard with pride when we were children. It is the same promise proclaimed on the Statue of Liberty, and it beckons to them with the promise of safety and stirs hope in them.
To its credit, this country has taken in refugees before (and to its shame, it has also turned them away, sending them back to danger and death; something we believed we would never see or do again). It is fast becoming apparent, however, that the collective will to care for these children is below their expectations and need. For them, the story that fostered such hope is met with profound disappointment as once in the US they are being detained, disgraced, and deported – treated more like criminals, terrorists, and threats than children, refugees, and victims of unspeakable horror.
As leaders in the faith community, we stand in solidarity and love with the children who seek refuge in our land. Deeply aware not just of our own immigrant stories and roots, clear biblical imperative to care for the stranger in our midst, to offer food, shelter, and care to those in need, and that there is no religious tradition which justifies sending children and refugees to their deaths, we invite our community to join us in prayerful study and active consideration of how we can best respond to this crisis and address the needs of those seeking our aid.
Bishop Robert Hirschfeld
Bishop Libasci
Father Joseph Gurdak, Ofm Cap.
Sister Felicia McKone
Sister Dorothy Cormier
Father John Buchino
Rev. William Exner
Rev. Kathleen Cullen
Sister Carol Descoteaux
Sister Jacqueline Verville
Rev. Patrick McLaughlin
Rabbi Beth Davidson
Bishop’s Statement on NH State Senate Vote to Table the Repeal of the Death Penalty in New Hampshire
The Rt. Reverend A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, has issued the following statement on the New Hampshire State Senate vote on HB 1170:
“My heart grieves that the Senate has voted for the time being to perpetuate the escalating thirst for revenge in our culture. Today’s vote feels a bit like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the situation. This will be an especially painful Good Friday. As we recount the unspeakable brutality visited on Jesus, we will be reminded how much we are all complicit in the violence that infects our hearts. We will continue to work and pray for a less violent society.”