What an amazing man Archbishop Desmond Tutu is! I was delighted to read the front-page article and the Opinion column last week about him, following the announcement that he will be coming to the Hay Festival in May.

What struck me in the Opinion comment was the lovely statement that he is “a man who seems to have a joyful cloud around him”. That is brilliant and I would say, as one who has met him, true. But why and how?

Archbishop Tutu has known the suffering of apartheid. He has lived the pains and anguish of his people.

His feet are firmly rooted in their needs. You cannot be in a truly “joyful cloud” as an escape from the realities and pains and struggles of everyday life. True joy only comes through those, by facing them with love and openness and hope.

This is the meaning of Good Friday and Easter. We do not enter Easter joy without first experiencing something of the cross. Archbishop Tutu knows that profoundly. He also knows that love, God’s kind of self-giving, reconciling love, ultimately wins: it is stronger than everything else. Jesus’ body could be killed on the cross but not his love. That kind of love, Jesus’ love, lives on in Archbishop Tutu, and in everyone who asks God for it. It is a love which gives a “joyful cloud”, despite apartheid, but also despite unemployment and hurts and pains of other kinds that we might be facing. It is the joy of God’s loving. May it be in you this Easter.

– The Right Rev Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Hereford