Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! Christ is in our midst, both now and forever!
These are traditional Easter greetings, especially among Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and sum up well the meaning of today’s “Solemnity of Solemnities,” as it is often called.
With that in mind, as we celebrate this Easter Vigil Mass, let us not imagine the event of the Resurrection of our Lord as something simply from the past. True enough, the Resurrection of Christ occurred at one point in human history. This means that it was truly an event in time and space, and not a symbol. But it also occurred once and for all. What do we mean by that?
First, we can say that the events of our personal lives, in which we are involved over the course of our earthly existence, happen once, and belong to the past. For example, our birth into the family into which we were born, our education, our life experiences, etc. For sure, these things are for real and have shaped who we are in the present and who we might be in the future.
Regarding the Resurrection of Christ, though, Saint Paul reminds the Christians of Rome: “The death Christ died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” This is truly the Good News of the Gospel and of what we are celebrating now and over the next fifty days, what we call Paschaltide.
Our firm belief as Christians and Catholics is that Christ conquered death, put it to an end, including our own death, and invites us to resurrected life that will never end.
The Resurrection of Christ means that rising from the dead Christ can never die again. Jesus was not simply “brought back to life,” like the case of his friend Lazarus, whose earthly life was extended, but who still died sometime after. Think too of the daughter of Jairus whom Jesus raised, or the son of the widow of Nain. All of these had their lives prolonged, but faced the end of their life, and died, at some point in time.
In the case of Christ, though, he will never die again. Rising from the dead meant passing through death and passing with the whole of humanity, beyond death. And by that fact, we are capable of sharing risen life in Christ.
We can say that Jesus pierced the wall of death and therefore conquered the wall of mortal time. The Word of Life, our Lord Jesus Christ, came into our mortal flesh, and by his defeating death through his own death, life has sprung up in the place of death. The empty tomb is the sign that Christ is truly Risen!
Ever since that moment of the Resurrection, the communion of the Blessed Trinity has ceaselessly been spreading throughout the world, flooding humanity with the possibility of life without end. There could be no greater cause for rejoicing.
The Paschal mystery, that is, the suffering, death and resurrection of our Savior, causes us to proclaim without ceasing the Alleluia, which we chant without ceasing over the next many weeks. Why? Because we have been freed from sin, because the Risen Christ has filled all things and has unlocked the doors of death, opening to us the possibility of the fulness of life in God’s presence.
The heart of God and the heart of man are united in this great event of the rising of Christ in glory. Our response should be, above all, ceaseless thanks, and that is what we are celebrating now in this Mass, called the Holy Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving,” giving thanks for all that our God has done for us. In this celebration we receive the very Body and Blood, soul and divinity, of the Risen Christ, who died that we might have life. For this reason, our joy is unbounded, meaning it has no limits or end.
In his Letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul expresses very well what our attitude of joy in the Resurrection of Christ really means. Saint Paul says, “Now in Christ, you who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace.” In other words, in the Risen Christ we and all peoples have access to the fullness of life in the Blessed Trinity.
Our Easter joy should never leave us or be forgotten, throughout our entire life, in fact. Each year the Church has us set aside a specific period of time, after the forty days of Lent, for fifty days of pondering more intently on God’s love for us in the Risen Christ.
As baptized and committed followers of the Lamb of God, we are called to be “on fire” for the things of God. Our belief in the Resurrection of the body and life without end should shape how we pass through this earthly existence, confident that the Lord is at our side, nearer to us than we are to our very selves, as Saint Augustine of Hippo expressed the reality of our life in Christ.
An ancient Easter homily of an early Church Father sums up well what we are experiencing right now, in words of Christ to us:
“Arise from among the dead! Arise, and let us go from here, for you are in me and I in you; together we form a single indivisible being . . . Arise, and let us go from here, from death to life, from corruption to immortality, from darkness to everlasting life!” (Pseudo-Epiphanius).
A blessed, happy and holy Easter to all! Keep celebrating right to Pentecost Sunday on May 24th!
Abbot Christian Leisy, OSB