Resurrection Sunday!

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death.

Come awake, come awake, come and rise up from the grave.

Here we are, Resurrection Sunday! Today is a day when we can all breath a sigh of relief and whisper a prayer of gratitude. It has been a weekend riddled with drama; from the death of God to the quiet despair that comes with the tomb, we have once more walked our hearts through the path of Christ.

However!

The story does not stop there; we are not followers of a God that can be kept in a building, a book or a tomb. We are the adopted children of the One who breathed movement into atoms and first erected the cell walls of life on this planet. The incarnation, ministry, death, burial and resurrection of our God is now our family heritage.

I went through a phase in my spiritual development where I seriously doubted if I wanted to be a Christian any more. After all, I said to my older brother, "if we are Christians, then our spiritual heritage is one of butchers and pirates (and not the cool kind)". The fundamental flaw in my assertion was that I had forgotten that our primary heritage is that of martyrdom and love.

This is the relevance of the resurrection

That by the awakening of Jesus on Sunday morning, we may join in God's victory over death. The gospel or good news is not that God beat death - of course he beat death - the good news is that God wants to freely share that victory with us; he wants us to be one with him. 

Adam of old was deceived:

Wanting to be God he failed to be God.

God becomes man,

so that He may make Adam god.

- "Doxastikon at the Praises," Feast of the Annunciation.

By our baptism, we are joined in the process of deification, the union of man and God. Make no mistake, the creature will never be the Creator, but now we are joined in that creative energy which is the foundation to all life and all nature: grace. The truth of the events of the resurrection is that it necessarily elicits a response and only one is appropriate. We devote our lives to taking the same course as our savior and brother, Jesus. Our lives are now intrinsically oriented toward martyrdom; we take up our cross - our sin and sickness - and carry them towards the death of the corrupt us so that the resuscitation of the new us can thrive.

Today, let not a moment more go by before you acknowledge the new essence in your being, the deep connection we now have with the divine. Rejoice indeed and come awake.

peace,

C.M.

Dissonant Saturday

 Today - Holy Saturday - we mourn at the level to which humanity is capable of stooping. The crucifixion is, if nothing else, a glaringly obvious example of the enormous capacity that mankind has for evil. Why do I point this out? Because

it is good for Christians to exist on Saturday.

What I mean is that so often we reach Good Friday and talk about the events of Christ's crucifixion and how incredible they were - and we should. Also, we like to spend time on  Sunday and before talking about how incredibly joyous an occasion the resurrection of Christ is - and it is. But what about Saturday? What is the purpose?

We mourn

You see, the problem with shaking our heads on Friday and clapping our hands on Sunday without bowing our hearts and bending our knees on Saturday is that we are able to simply say "Jesus died and Jesus was raised". The truth, however, is that there is a Saturday and it exists to give space to reflect on the events at hand. The sin of humanity, the missing of marks, the shortcomings and sickness in our hearts which put Christ to death.


We chose to kill God.

We do so with every act of evil.

 Every act.

 Let us take this time to remember that despite our incredible capacity to accomplish the seemingly impossible (cell phones, moon landings, DNA splicing, etc.) we are intrinsically missing something.

Goodness; we're missing goodness.

Jesus of Nazareth - a lay worker, a brick-layer and an innocent pauper - shows humanity how evil it is by willingly being crushed and laying cold in a tomb.

We know what comes next, but let's not gloss over the ugly part for our own sake. Look at the tomb. Look at the blood on the ground. See the weeping mother and brothers. We did this and we deserve no forgiveness for it.

Reflect and pray

peace,
C.M.