Fortunately,
we will not have to know what our life would be like if Christ had not died for
us—because in fact he did die for us, and lives fully in the reality we call
God. But If we do not entrust ourselves
lovingly to the crucified-Resurrected Christ, then the effects of his death for
us are greatly diminished. To the extent
that we surrender to Christ and live his love faithfully, then his death for us
has great effects. What would our life
be, if we did not live and die with Christ?
We would live empty lives, and perish into nothingness. That unfortunately appears to be the fate of
many in our society today; many have lost living faith in Christ. “They are in love with the world,” and with
themselves.
“In the world you have tribulation,
but take heart, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16). All of the suffering, sin, evil that one
experiences in life in the world cannot undo the victory that Christ gained for
each and for all. “Sin has no more
dominion over us” (Rom 8). “Death is
swallowed up in life” (I Cor 15). The
reign of evil is intensely portrayed in the narratives of Jesus’ passion;
Christ suffers horrible ravishes of evil done by his fellow human beings. To those who seize Jesus to deliver him over
to Pilate for death, he declares, “This is your hour, and the power of
darkness” (Lk 22). To us still
undergoing the trials of life, Christ says, “Take heart, for I have overcome
the world,” and all means everything that evil can do to destroy you
eternally. We die in the body, we live
in the Spirit.
The Resurrection of Christ is not
some external event that happened in time.
Jesus’ suffering and death were indeed in time. What we know of the Resurrection is not some
temporal or external event at all, but what was experienced out of time by
certain chosen men and women. On this
point, the Apostle Paul is clear and concise:
“God revealed His Son in me.”
This experience, and others like it in Peter, John, Mary Magdalen, is
short-handedly called “the Resurrection of Christ.” How it happened, or even what happened, or
when in measured time, no one knows. What we believe and know is grounded firmly on the apostolic witness of
those who experienced Christ alive and as fully one with God after he had been
tortured to death. “Christ is truly
arisen, and has appeared to Simon” (Lk 24)
That is what makes an apostle:
one who experienced the Risen Christ in his psyche (consciousness) and
who was then sent out to proclaim the Risen One from his or her own
experience. And that is why we call the
Church “apostolic.” Our faith in Christ
alive and as fully one with God is grounded firmly and until death on the
experience of the Resurrected which the apostles were privileged to have. “As of one untimely born, Christ appeared
also to me,” the Apostle Paul insists to the wavering Christians in Corinth
(I Cor 15).
“Because I live, you also live,”
declares Jesus in St. John’s Gospel. The
living Christ inbreathes his life, power, divinity into the heart, mind, soul
of the believer. To have faith in Christ
is to open oneself up to the presence of the same God, the unknown One whom
Jesus called “the Father,” and to carry that presence into the world through
one’s prayer, thoughts, actions, self-giving love unto death. And then one is sure of this: “Death is swallowed up in life.”
Blessed Easter to each and to all,
for “Now is Christ Risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who
have fallen asleep.” Christ is the
revelation of the unknown God.
