Easter 2006

It has pleased the good God to bless us with some warm weather this Holy Week and Easter which has accelerated the sprouting of the earth’s foliage. This budding of nature is coincident with Easter for good reason: we are to think of God as the One who makes life. There is movement in creation, a stirring of forces, which leads the inquisitive mind to discover that behind the movement which exists in everything in the universe must be One who Himself is its cause and yet who Himself isn’t moved by any other source. Life, the rhythm of the movement of nature, is especially an indicator of the existence of God. And that is the thing that captivated my thought in pondering the mystery of Easter this year.

The question that arises in the mind when thinking about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is: why did He do it? He performed in His public life so many miracles–what the NT calls ‘signs’–that were in themselves convincing proofs that He was from God: calming the stormy sea; making a cripple walk; and–most impressive–raising Lazarus from the dead. These were no stunts that could be simulated by a charlatan, but real happenings that motivated belief in the divinity of Jesus. Many, as you know, came to believe in Him because of these very signs. And indeed our Lord specifically asked that men believe in Him on account of the signs He was performing. So then, if we were to imagine that these things themselves would have been sufficient for motivating belief in Jesus as God, why then this one more thing: the resurrection of His Body after His death?

The answers to this question may be several, but there is at least one that comes to my mind. The resurrection of His own body was not merely a stunning and remarkable feat, the final and most convincing proof of His divinity, but it also verified, validated, the whole religious account or religious telling of the history of the human race. That story, as you know, is that there was a time when there was no such thing as death; there was only life. Death was introduced into the human scene for one reason only: that there was a rebellion, a sin, against God from sometime near the beginning of human history, a sin which produced an enduring testimony–an enduring proof, if you will–that this sin had been committed. And that proof that original sin was committed is death. Death is the witness that there was original sin. Life ought to have gone on and on, at least in some form, but it was instead cut short–even though not taken away entirely–because of this first sin.

If God did not entirely regret having created humanity after the Fall, but if He rather had some plan for mankind’s future and for repairing the damage done by sin, He would want to give man not just any sign of this, however impressive, but the one that would most clearly indicate that what had caused death in the first place–sin–was being reversed, by a counter force: grace. Now, what would show, more than any other thing, that such an invisible thing as grace truly exists than life, and, not just any life (since there is a lot of that in the world), but a life that springs up from death, and a life which can never again die: an irreversible, permanent life; an eternal life, in fact? The resurrection of Jesus from dead was not just a confirmation of His divinity (which it is) but also a vindication of the whole religious account of man: made originally perfect, man fell, became defective (with death as a consequence), needed a rescue, a redemption.

It is significant, I think, that there are people of high-mindedness who know of Jesus but deny his resurrection. I’ll bet they also deny original sin; they’d almost have to. But I wonder also whether or not they believe in God at all. God is the Life-giver. If He were to go on giving bodily life after the Fall only to let all men die and be done, His creation would be futile, and ultimately pointless, meaningless. His plan then in making the world for man so that man might come to be eternally with God would have been frustrated. But this was not to be the case. God Himself became a man (since it was man who did the original damage) and then did the one thing that proved that man was made by God only so that man could live with Him forever. That one thing was the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

The resurrection of our Lord then makes sense, gives comprehension, to the whole story of creation. It satisfies the catechetical answer to the question ‘why did God make us?’ It must be that we are meant to live for God eternally.

I began my reflections by noticing the signs of life in nature. If you will look about the Church tonight, you will see other signs–of a different kind–but also impressive, which indicate life; the fire, the water, baptism, the Eucharistic Presence of Christ (later), not to mention the music, the flowers and, of course, the Christian people. The risen Jesus is alive in His Church and the Church loves to use material signs to awaken our dull minds to the reality of Christ’s Presence.

When I think of Easter, I’m filled with hope. It tells me that for sure there is eternal life after death. The Christian story, the Christian faith is true, whole and entire. And it was proved true by the undisputed witness of hundreds of people who saw the once dead Jesus risen from the dead.

Jesus risen from the dead is the foundation of my whole Catholic faith!