The glorious message of Easter is “The Lord is risen!’ In the present crisis, it is a message of hope we all need to hear. Jesus died and rose again and promised, “Because I live you also will live.” In the past few weeks, more than 10,000 people in Britain have died of the coronavirus and more than 100,000 around the world. Wonderful medical teams are working long hours, with great skill and dedication, to try to save lives, but every day they and their patients are facing the reality of death.

Last week a Covid-19 patient was interviewed on the BBC’s World at One programme and described what is was like to be in intensive care on a pressurised oxygen mask: “It would push oxygen down into my throat and down into my chest. I was completely alone. All these wires around me and sometimes I kept coming to terms with my own death and that was really frightening.”

In an interview in The Sunday Times Dr David Nott, a world-renowned trauma surgeon who has worked in some of the most dangerous war zones on earth, spoke about working in an ICU at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. He said the experience of working there has left him in awe of colleagues, particularly the nurses. “I’m a tiny, tiny cog in this most amazing machine. The real heroes are the nurses who are with patients so seriously sick for 13 hours a day, wearing masks on their face which cause so much discomfort. I have never seen people work so hard, so desperate for each individual patient to get through their sickness. But sometimes the disease wins. It’s the hardest, most dangerous enemy I have ever faced.”

On Good Friday, Hylton Murray-Philipson was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Mr Murray-Philipson, who is 61, had just been clapped out of the ward in Leicester Royal Infirmary having recovered, after six days in intensive care, from Covid-19. His mother and sister had also been ill with the virus and, because he was himself on the verge of death, he had not been able to attend his own father’s funeral. When he was asked about his time in intensive care, Mr Murray-Philipson said: “One of the powerful images I had was the image of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee and that just came to me. I like to think that it was Jesus Christ coming to me and helping me in my time of need.”