A Blessed Easter to all of you! Jesus Christ our Lord is Risen from the dead
and Life Eternal is given a place in our world.
That makes all the difference. If
we can open our hearts to this Truth of truths, everything else falls into
place.
Catholics do look at the world
differently from everyone else. We see
the same world, but we see it through different eyes. In a sense, we see all that happens through
Resurrection-colored glasses. Death and Suffering
are real to us. But they do not have the
last word.
The seemingly meaningless and random
violence and disasters that occur in the end are taken up into the Mystery of
Christ and given a new meaning, a purpose.
“Everything happens for a reason” is a popular way of expressing this
truth. However, it is more precise to
say that “Everything that happens is given over to God’s Wisdom.” It is not that God sends tragedies, but that
He makes sense of the tragic in this world by filling it with a Divine Comedy
that is the Victory of the Resurrection.
God is a Poet Who writes our human
experience into His own Story. We are
invited to share Divine Life and so to allow God to write His Story into our
own history as well. The Resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth
This weekend, we welcome our
Neophytes – those received into the Catholic Church through the Sacraments of
Initiation at the Easter Vigil. May
their Faith continue to grow and may all of us become an ever more convincing
witness to the Truth of Jesus Christ.
I will be on my annual Priest’s
Retreat this week. Please keep me in
your prayers and be sure that you will be in mine as well.
Year of Faith October
11, 2012 – November 24, 2013
We continue our journey through the Year
of Faith. As one way of observing
this year, each week a small section of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church is read before the start of Mass.
The Meaning and Saving
Significance of the Resurrection
651 “If Christ has not been
raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14) The Resurrection
above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings. All
truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification
if Christ by his Resurrection has given the definitive proof of his divine
authority, which he had promised.
652 Christ’s Resurrection is the
fulfillment of the promises both of the Old Testament and of Jesus himself
during his earthly life. (Cf. Matthew
28:6; Mark 16:7; Luke 24:6-7, 26-27, 44-48.) The phrase “in
accordance with the Scriptures” (Cf. 1
Corinthians 15:3-4; cf. the Nicene Creed.) indicates that Christ’s
Resurrection fulfilled these predictions.
653 The truth of Jesus’ divinity
is confirmed by his Resurrection. He had said: “When you have lifted up the Son
of man, then you will know that I am he.”
(John 8:28.) The Resurrection of the crucified one shows that he
was truly “I Am,” the Son of God and God himself. So St. Paul could declare to
the Jews: “What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their
children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are
my Son, today I have begotten you.’” (Acts
13:32-34; cf. Psalm 2:7.) Christ’s Resurrection is closely linked to the
Incarnation of God’s Son and is its fulfillment in accordance with God’s
eternal plan.
654 The Paschal mystery has two
aspects: by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he
opens for us the way to a new life. This new life is above all justification
that reinstates us in God’s grace, “so that as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4; cf. 4:25) Justification
consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation
in grace. (Cf. Ephesians 2:4-5; 1
Peter 1:3.) It brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ’s
brethren, as Jesus himself called his disciples after his Resurrection: “Go and
tell my brethren.” (Matthew
28:10; John 20:17.) We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of
grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the
only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection.
655 Finally, Christ’s
Resurrection—and the risen Christ himself—is the principle and source of our
future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of
those who have fallen asleep.... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive.” (1
Corinthians 15:20-22) The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful
while they await that fulfillment. In Christ, Christians “have tasted... the
powers of the age to come” (Hebrews
6:5) and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so
that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake
died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:15; cf. Colossians 3:1-3.)
IN BRIEF
656 Faith in the Resurrection has
as its object an event which is historically attested to by the disciples, who
really encountered the Risen One. At the same time, this event is mysteriously
transcendent insofar as it is the entry of Christ’s humanity into the glory of
God.
657 The empty tomb and the linen
cloths lying there signify in themselves that by God’s power Christ’s body had
escaped the bonds of death and corruption. They prepared the disciples to
encounter the Risen Lord.
658 Christ, “the first-born from
the dead” (Col 1:18), is the principle of our own resurrection, even now
by the justification of our souls (cf. Rom 6:4), and one day by the new
life he will impart to our bodies (cf. Rom 8:11).
Comment: Each
human being is meant to be addressed personally by the proclamation of the
Resurrection of Jesus. How do you
understand the Resurrection of Jesus?
How do you share this Good News with others? What serves to nourish your personal Faith
and commitment to the Risen Lord?
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