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"Christ is risen. He is risen indeed." The joy of Easter is an expression of the yearning and hope that the chains of sin and death will be broken for all human beings and all creation, an affirmation that the transformative power of resurrection is at work in the world.
The churches are called to give common witness to this hope. But Eastern and Western churches celebrate Easter on different dates: churches in the Western tradition will be celebrating Easter this week, while those in the Eastern tradition celebrate Easter next week. Efforts to consider and achieve the practice of a common date for Easter have thus been on the WCC agenda since the 1960s.
Most recently, the WCC's 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in February 2006, recommended that by the time of the 10th Assembly, seven years hence, the WCC should have made substantial progress towards agreement among all of the Christian churches for a common date for Easter.
See: "Towards a common date for Easter", report of a 1997 WCC/Middle East Council of Churches consultation in Aleppo, Syria