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CHRIST IS
RISEN!
Saint Paul in one of his Epistles says
that if Christ is not risen we are the most miserable of all men... And,
indeed, if He was not risen, we would be, because then all our faith,
all that we call our spiritual experience, all the life we build on it
would have been nothing but a delusion or a lie, a hallucination. But we
are the most happy of all men because Christ is risen. This not only
hundreds and thousands, but millions know from a direct, personal
experience. Many could say: God exists because I have met him, Christ is
risen because I have met the risen Christ. And not only in spirit but
also in the flesh; because we have the witness of the Apostles, simple
men who had run away from Calvary, knowing — as they thought — that
Christ was defeated when He was taken down from the Cross and buried,
knowing that everything they hoped for had come to an end.
And yet, they are the witnesses of the
Resurrection, unprepared, hesitant, and then exulting in the joy of the
truth which was revealed to them; exulting because the women came in the
morning to anoint Christ, and they saw that His body was no longer
there. John and Peter came after them, and the tomb was empty. And when
they came to the other disciples, asking themselves questions, doubting,
hesitating — Christ came to them, and He himself said to them: Fear not!
I am not a ghost, I am not a disincarnate vision; a ghost has no flesh
and no bones as you can see that I have! And He ate with them, He spoke
to them, they touched Him! And indeed, St John says in his Epistle that
what the Apostles proclaim is what their eyes have seen, their ears
heard, their hands touched, and that they are speaking the truth.
Yes, Christ is risen, risen not as a
ghost, not as a spiritual presence but as a living God with His body,
the body of the Incarnation. And indeed, if we truly believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ was God himself become man for the salvation of the
world, then, what is beyond our imagination is that He, who is life
itself, could die; and the thing which is obvious and simple is that
Life Eternal should break the fetters of death, conquer death, and that
He should rise, in the body, in the flesh, as a promise to us. Because
uniting himself to human flesh He has shown us that man is so vast and
so deep that he can be at one with God, united with God; that, indeed, a
human being is complete only if he is in oneness with God, when he is a
partaker of the divine nature, to use the words of St Peter's Epistle.
The Resurrection is a revelation of the
mercy of God, of the power of God, of the love of God — but also of the
greatness of man. Death has no fear for us; it has become a gate into
eternity, and we know that the day will come when the voice of Him who
has brought into being all things, the voice of Him who is our Saviour
will resound, and we will all stand before God, clothed with eternity,
but in a flesh that has become part of this eternity. Let us believe the
word of God, let us conquer our doubts and hesitations by listening to
God himself speaking to us, and let us respond to the word of God and to
the event of the Resurrection with faith and gratitude!
Christ is Risen!!
He is Risen Indeed!
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