This is Easter Sunday. This is the high point of our Holy Week celebrations. Christ has died! Christ is risen!
In Western Christianity (that is European, North and South American) we need to work had to keep the balance in our spirituality and our focus on the great act of salvation. Jesus truly gave his life as a sacrifice of service and love (bring all humanity to God) and the divine has broken through in the resurrection of Jesus. We must always have both together.
Through the past one thousand years the focus has been very strong on the humanity of Jesus. We can imagine his face, his body, his sufferings but we have serious difficulties imaging his resurrection.
The devotion “the Way of the Cross” was always incomplete. We come to the end of the fourteenth station and the dead body of Jesus is placed in the tomb – and we are finished. We walk away. But half the mystery has been neglected! Our salvation is lived and manifested in the events of the resurrection of Jesus. We have always had difficulty getting handles on that one!
The resurrection of Jesus is always the revelation of the Son of God to the disciples. Each appearance is a theophany (to use the proper Biblical description). A theophany is a direct experience of the living God. Each appearance is a revelation, a showing, a showing forth of the very Son of God. Jesus is the second person within the Trinity. The people of the Church must devote as much time and energy to the resurrection as they do to the moments of Jesus’ sufferings.
The resurrection of Jesus is the divine action manifested among the disciples. Now they can see that everything that Jesus said and did was a manifestation of the very person and nature of God. The human Jesus is God in the flesh. What he taught and the miracles he worked are God’s actions and teachings. Jesus, in all he did and said, is God’s revelation to the human race.
But our celebration of Easter must never be a one day event. It happened on a definite night. It would be a deficit if we marked the Easter event and now lets go on with life. The opposite must now happen within our lives. Now, the resurrection of Jesus must happen in each believer. Each one of us must become the resurrection of Jesus. This happens through our life of prayer; our connection with the living God. This happens through our service to the poor with their many faces. It happens when we take time to walk with the friend who is undergoing cancer treatment. We walk beside them in support, friendship and encouragement. The resurrection must happen in our lifestyle.
Have a very happy Easter with your family and friends. But may Easter always be a door opening to a greater life in and with the risen Christ. May our lives be a manifestation of the Risen Christ, moving and active among us.
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