And he said to
them, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has
risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him.[1]
Easter. Many look at Easter as just a religious
holiday, celebrating something historical: Jesus, our Lord, rising from the
dead and with the realization that, after the end of time, our bodies will be
resurrected also. Many say during the
Easter season, “Christ is risen,” receiving the reply, “Christ is risen
indeed.” Is that all there is to
Easter? Is it just a holiday,
celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord?
Christians do not doubt that Jesus rose from the dead, that he died and
is now alive, so is it just a celebration of the historical event? Although that is of utmost importance, there
must be something that goes beyond celebrating a holiday.
Archbishop John MacEvilly, in his
commentary, writes: “The resurrection of our Blessed Lord is suggestive of the
most consoling thoughts, and is pregnant with matter for the most serious
reflection. First, it contains the most
convincing proof of our Lord’s Divinity. It conveys the most solid proof of His
omnipotence, when He raised from the dead, not anyone else, but Himself, after
having been consigned to the tomb for three days, and after the reality of His
death had been placed beyond all dispute, being testified to by His very
executioners, when questioned by Pilate; and not only did He raise Himself, but
He did so, after having repeatedly predicted beforehand all its circumstances
in detail, in consequence of which prediction, universally known at the time,
His enemies set a guard to watch His body till after the expiration of the
time. This resurrection, then, is the
most solid ground-work of our faith. Without
it, ‘our faith would be vain’ (1 Cor.
15:14). Therefore, it is, the Apostle
says, ‘having died for our sins, He rose
again for our justification’ (Rom. 4:25).
Secondly, the resurrection of our Lord, ‘the first-fruits of them that sleep’ (1 Cor. 15:20), is a sure
pledge, and earnest, that we shall all rise again with the same bodies we had
in this life. ‘For by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:21).”[2] This is absolutely correct. Nonetheless, once again, the Christian is not
doubting our Lord’s divinity, nor the fact that our bodies are going to be
resurrected. We need to understand how
it is practical for us presently.
I think we treat the liturgical
seasons just as we do the annual seasons: They just come and go. We take each Sunday just as it comes. We listen to the readings, the homily,
receive communion, and leave. The
liturgical seasons are given by our Lord to the Church for a purpose, and we
need to, often, be looking at the totality of the seasons to see what is
occurring in us. We are now in the
Easter season; therefore, let’s look at what is transpiring in us.
Now, during the Easter Vigil, the
catechumens—those desiring to be in full communion with the Church, having not
been baptized—are baptized. Why is it
done during the Easter Vigil and not on Easter day or, perhaps, during Advent,
to celebrating God becoming man? Jesus,
through the Church, gives us a hint.
During the Easter Vigil, he has the Church read the Creation account. We are becoming a new creation upon the
Resurrection—Easter.
Some priests, during the Vigil, ask
the parishioners to recall their Baptism.
Many Catholics are baptized as infants; therefore, they cannot recall
their actual Baptism. This is not what
we are being asked to do. What we are
being asked: Recall what occurred to us in Baptism, and recall what is
transpiring in us as a result of Baptism.
When a seed is planted, it must die
in order to produce life. Not every seed
will produce fruit, bring forth life.
After Baptism, being born again in Jesus’ divinity, our sins—by our
cooperation with God’s grace—begin to die.
What occurs immediately in eternity plays out in slow motion in
time. Just as by our Savior’s
willingness to die for us out of love, out of love for him we are willing to
“die” for him, desiring to be rid of our sins and repenting of them. Our mortality, in the end, will die and be
raised immortal. This has happened in
Baptism and is playing out after Baptism.
If we stop desiring that sin be separated from us, we become bad seed,
not bearing fruit, and perish.
After Baptism, we continue to sin,
although we should not be sinning to the degree we did before Baptism. Sin causes, and is, death; however, there is
also another type of death: dying to sin.
St. Augustine teaches us: “…As there is a kind of death of the soul,
which consists in the putting away of former habits and former ways of life,
and which comes through repentance, so also the death of the body consists in
the dissolution of the former principle of life. And just as the soul, after it has put away
and destroyed by repentance its former habits, is created anew after a better
pattern, so we must hope and believe that the body, after that death which we
all owe as a debt contracted through sin, shall at the resurrection be changed
into a better form—not that flesh and blood shall inherit the kingdom of God (for
that is impossible), but that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and
this mortal shall put on immortality (1 Cor 15:50-53). And, thus, the body, being the source of no
uneasiness because it can feel no want, shall be animated by a spirit perfectly
pure and happy, and shall enjoy unbroken peace.”[4] This is what is transpiring in us presently
and what will be fulfilled as a result of Jesus’ Resurrection.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we state
that we believe Jesus “was crucified, died, and was buried” and that “he
descended into hell.” Now, “hell” is the
place of the dead (1 Pe 3:19). He went
there in order to proclaim what he had done and to deliver them, through his
divinity. Pope Benedict XVI stated in his
2006 homily on the Easter Vigil: “The crucial point is that this man Jesus was
not alone; he was not an ‘I’ closed in upon itself. He was one single reality with the living God,
so closely united with him as to form one person with him. He found himself, so to speak, in an embrace
with him who is life itself, an embrace not just on the emotional level, but
one which included and permeated his being. His own life was not just his own; it was an
existential communion with God, a ‘being taken up’ into God, and hence it could
not in reality be taken away from him.”[5] He could have spoken that the souls be
delivered; however, he did not. He went
to the place of the dead to prove he had died but still lived. This Life enclosed those souls and delivered
them through His Resurrection. Pope
Benedict continues: “The Resurrection was like an explosion of light, an
explosion of love which dissolved the hitherto indissoluble compenetration of ‘dying
and becoming’. It ushered in a new
dimension of being, a new dimension of life in which, in a transformed way,
matter too was integrated and through which a new world emerges.”[6] What occurred to the souls in the “place of
the dead” is what is occurring in us today and what will occur to us in the
future. As a result, Easter keeps Lent
occurring in us continuously. Easter
keeps reminding us of why God was becoming Incarnate and why he did become
Incarnate. Easter keeps reminding us of
the reason for the seasons. Pope
Benedict states that the Resurrection “is a qualitative leap in the history of ‘evolution’
and of life in general towards a new future life, towards a new world which,
starting from Christ, already continuously permeates this world of ours,
transforms it and draws it to itself.”[7] This is the explosion of new life which has
occurred, and is growing, in us. We are
being “evolved” into something new, something perfect. This event comes to us through faith and
Baptism.[8] This is, perhaps, one reason why Baptism
occurs on the Easter Vigil, between Good Friday and the Resurrection. Pope Benedict goes on to explain: “Baptism
means precisely this, that we are not dealing with an event in the past, but
that a qualitative leap in world history comes to me, seizing hold of me in
order to draw me on… Baptism is
something quite different from an act of ecclesial socialization, from a
slightly old-fashioned and complicated rite for receiving people into the
Church. It is also more than a simple
washing, more than a kind of purification and beautification of the soul. It is truly death and resurrection, rebirth,
transformation to a new life… ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me’ (Gal 2:20). I live, but
I am no longer I. The ‘I’, the essential
identity of man—of this man, Paul—has been changed. He still exists, and he no longer exists. He has passed through a ‘not’ and he now finds
himself continually in this ‘not’: I, but
no longer I… [This] phrase is an
expression of what happened at Baptism. My
‘I’ is taken away from me and is incorporated into a new and greater subject… But
what then happens with us? Paul answers:
You have become one in Christ (cf. Gal 3:28). Not just one thing, but one, one only, one
single new subject. This liberation of
our ‘I’ from its isolation, this finding oneself in a new subject means finding
oneself within the vastness of God and being drawn into a life which has now
moved out of the context of ‘dying and becoming’… The Resurrection is not a
thing of the past, the Resurrection has reached us and seized us.”[9] Realizing this, it should trigger our minds
to desire to not live for ourselves but live the life God is transforming us to
live. It is for this reason our Lord
went to the place of the dead to deliver the souls there: to transform them and
deliver them in his divinity and that that process will occur in us presently
and in the future.
Sin must be eradicated from us,
beginning at the time of Baptism, and that eradication must continue. Even nature teaches us this. As St. Athenagoras teaches: “…In the nourishment
of every animal, there is a threefold cleansing and separation. It follows that whatever is alien from the
nourishment of the animal must be wholly destroyed and carried off to its
natural place, or change into something else, since it cannot coalesce with it;
that the power of the nourishing body must be suitable to the nature of the
animal to be nourished and accordant with its powers; and that this, when it
has passed through the strainers
appointed for the purpose and been thoroughly purified by the natural means of
purification, must become a most genuine addition to the substance … because it
rejects everything that is foreign and hurtful to the constitution of the
animal nourished and that mass of superfluous food introduced merely for filling
the stomach and gratifying the appetite.”[10] Everything that is extraneous to Life must be
eliminated. It contradicts even nature
to suppose that we can live a life pleasing to ourselves, with no thought of
God, and then think that God will get rid of those things at the end to perfect
us. Sin is poison. Nature tells us that poison will destroy our
lives; nourishment gives us longer life.
Our nourishment consists of the Word and the Church and its
Sacraments. They destroy the poison that
is in us.
In conclusion, the Resurrection
becomes efficacious to us in our daily routines when we contemplate upon what
Christ is doing, in time, in his Resurrection.
The Resurrection is not distinct from the Incarnation nor our Lord’s
Passion and death. The Resurrection
proves that there was a death because you cannot have a Resurrection without
death. Also, you cannot have a
Resurrection unless there was a person. In
his entire life on earth, our Lord did everything in order that they would be
efficacious to us, for our sanctification.
Therefore, his Resurrection is also efficacious to us. What he did for those in the “place of the
dead,” he is doing for us now, in time, and also for those in Purgatory. We were dead in our transgressions and sins.[11] “All of
us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh,
following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature
children of wrath, like the rest. But
God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when
we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace
you have been saved), raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the
heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the
immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”[12] This brought
us to life with Christ is the resurrection of our souls, which is brought
to us through Baptism. Now, we need to make
our souls rule over our flesh, no longer living in the desires of our flesh, following the wishes of the flesh and the
impulses. We must “die” to those
desires and impulses. The more we “die,”
the more the “resurrection” is exhibited.
It so difficult to resist these desires and impulses, so difficult, in
fact, that we are not able to do it on our own.
Not only do we pray about it, the Lord, through his Church, also prays
for us.
In the Sprinkling Rite, the priest
prays, “Lord our God, in your mercy, be present to your people’s prayers and
for us who recall the wondrous work of our creation and the still greater work
of our redemption…” The wondrous work of our creation is what he
created, and is creating, in us as a result of the Resurrection. “Redemption” is what our Lord did upon the
Cross. Therefore, because we are in
Christ, resurrection and redemption is a constant for us in this lifetime. If we are recalling this, then we should be
desirous of walking in those ways, which we can only do by cooperating with his
grace. We can only do it in him.
Too often, our wills become more important than his will. As a result, we
need to emphasize the petition, thy will
be done, when praying the Lord’s prayer—not that the other petitions are
less important. However, for a few days,
it helps to focus upon a particular petition.
In the Sprinkling Rite, the priest
continues: “For you created water to make the fields fruitful and refresh and
cleanse our bodies…” The waters of
Baptism are to make us fruitful, more Christlike, cleansing our flesh from
sin. Therefore, although we sin, we should
be sinning less and less. We need to
become the person whom we have been created to be as a result of the
Resurrection. The Resurrection is
efficacious as long as we desire it to be: seeking that it to be efficacious
for us, asking that it be done for us. It
is efficacious as long as we are cooperating with it. If we cease, the we are returning to living in the desires of our flesh, following the
wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we [are]… children of wrath, like the
rest, for we would have lost the faith that Christ is not working in us,
that he has kept his promises. Of course,
it is difficult; of course, we will fall.
It is for this reason, that our Lord has given us the Sacrament of
Reconciliation. He fell three times on
his way to Calvary and his Resurrection; we will also fall “three” times—which encompasses
all our falls. By the strength of
Divinity, with which his humanity cooperated, he was able to get up and continue
his journey. We can do the same,
cooperating with his grace. We will
then find that all is done through his Incarnation, death on the Cross, and his
Resurrection, which are working efficaciously in us.
[1]
Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain), The Holy Bible:
Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, (New York: National
Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1994), Mk 16:6.
[2] John
MacEvilly, An Exposition of
the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, (Dublin; New York: M. H. Gill
& Son; Benziger Brothers, 1898), 667.
[3]
Methodius of Olympus, Fathers of the
Third Century: Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus,
Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius, 1886, 6, 364.
[4]
Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustin’s City
of God and Christian Doctrine, 1887, 2, 527.
[5]
Benedict XVI, Homilies of His
Holiness Benedict XVI (English), (Vatican City: Libreria
Editrice Vaticana, 2013).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10]
Athenagoras, Fathers of the Second
Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria
(Entire), 1885, 2, 151–152.
[11] New American Bible,
Revised Edition., (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 2011), Eph 2:1.
[12] Ibid.,
Eph 2:3–7.
