Today, we celebrate Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Christ. What is already in the Church today is the joy, the happiness, as we have said, of Christ’s resurrection.He who lived with the apostles, who humbled himself, who lived a life similar to ours, is now at the right hand of the Father, and from this moment onwards, our life is hidden with Christ in the Father.
The disciples were witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, they are men who have lived with Christ, now we can say that it is Himself and it is not. I mean Christ. He is Himself because He explains to them the words He has spoken to them during His public life and at the same time He is another one totally hidden in the mystery of God, from now on, He is in glory, at the right hand of the Father. Today we sing this glory and this joy.
Mary runs to the tomb, as today’s Gospel expresses, she is afraid. The body of Christ is no longer in the tomb, the tomb is empty. She goes to look for Peter and John, they both run, John arrives earlier because he is much younger than Peter, however he waits for Peter. What did he see? The linens that were stretched out and the shroud with which Christ’s head had been covered. Then John entered, “he saw and believed”, says the gospel. For, until then, they had not understood the scripture that He was to rise from the dead.
Today Easter Sunday is the time of life, it is not that life that we know, that we would like to control and we cannot, as we are already seeing with this pandemic, but eternal life. Do we really believe in eternal life? Do we believe that the Father illuminates our life through his son Jesus Christ? Do we believe that this Father is absolutely peace, joy and mercy, and especially in these tragic days? Apparently it seems crazy. There is something unheard of in the mystery of Christ.
The disciples have found a Christ, a man with whom they have lived, walked, eaten, all over Judea, and he has been judged and crucified. Christ is the living One, who says “I am” (Jn 8:28). This man has died on the cross, the most shameful and infamous death at that time. The apostles’ hopes have been shattered, they are depressed, because they have heard Christ say: “I have overcome the world” and yet he has died on the cross and has been buried, it seems the opposite.
It is like in this pandemic. Are we really going to see that light after so much suffering, pain, death? Are we going to find ourselves more united? Are we really going to discover what Christ says about Love? I believe that we are already seeing the resurrection in these men and women who are totally devoted to these sick people.
Let us ask the Father to enter into this madness of love that is the cross. The pandemic is madness, madness of love because it is the cross, but, I say again, at the heart of the cross is love because at the heart of suffering is love, and we all know it.
But let’s go back to today’s Gospel. It is Mary Magdalene, in solitude, the bearer of the announcement of the empty tomb, and it is Mary Magdalene the true apostle. At this moment it is not the disciples, it is this woman who is with Mary the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross.
The disciples go home without any comment. It is the love of Christ that remains alive, and will give rise to a living faith, that faith that moves mountains. We have to leave the places of death, which are the bandages, it is the shroud, and go to the places of life which is prayer and the Eucharist.
Christ is risen, and if Christ is risen, so are we, but we begin to rise in every Eucharist. The risen Christ is my life and he is your life. “I was dead but now I am alive” that is what it says in Revelation 1, 18 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”. “When Christ, our life, appears, then, says St. Paul, you too will appear in glory with him” (Col 3:4), he is speaking of our resurrection, but not only of the final resurrection, of the daily resurrection.
We are in a time of death but also of resurrection. The resurrection begins at every Eucharist, as I said. Every time we receive Christ our center of gravity gets closer and closer to eternal life, to that kingdom of love, we begin to die to this world and be born to heaven. All human beings are called to resurrect after our clinical death. It is a resurrection, it is a light, because it is the light of the Father in the fullness of love, the Father is expressing himself in a very special way in every Eucharist.
We must make this resurrection of ours manifest, and as you can see, in the midst of pain, in the midst of drama, in the midst of sadness, we are able to smile, despite this pandemic, despite so much suffering and so much misery, everything is pierced by the love of God. We all, all have in our innermost spirit the seed of resurrection. Death sometimes knocks at our door, we know, but life in Christ is triumphant and He has said it-“I have conquered”-and He is saying it in a very special way in His own face on the Cross.
Christ will clothe us with the light of the resurrection, with the splendor of God. The word of Christ if we begin to want to live it, but in community, as he says, “when two or more of us are gathered in his name,” reading the gospel, at the moment of receiving the Eucharist, at the moment of prayer, together with this prayer which is pure love and the Eucharist which is also pure love, it transforms our resentment into gratitude and we find ourselves transfigured as it happened to Christ, in his image and likeness, and we will receive that light which is the light of grace, that is what matters.
May it be so for all of us.
!["El mundo puede cambiar desde el corazón"
(Papa Francisco, Encíclica Dilexit Nos)
"El Corazón de Cristo es éxtasis, es salida, es donación, es encuentro. En él nos volvemos capaces de relacionarnos de un modo sano y feliz, y de construir en este mundo el Reino de amor y de justicia. Nuestro corazón unido al de Cristo es capaz de este milagro social.
Tomar en serio el corazón tiene consecuencias sociales. Como enseña el Concilio Vaticano II, «tenemos todos que cambiar nuestros corazones, con los ojos puestos en el orbe entero y en aquellos trabajos que todos juntos podemos llevar a cabo para que nuestra generación mejore». Porque «los desequilibrios que fatigan al mundo moderno están conectados con ese otro desequilibrio fundamental que hunde sus raíces en el corazón humano». [21] Ante los dramas del mundo, el Concilio invita a volver al corazón, explicando que el ser humano «por su interioridad es, en efecto, superior al universo entero; a esta profunda interioridad retorna cuando entra dentro de su corazón, donde Dios le aguarda, escrutador de los corazones (cf. 1 S 16,7; Jr 17,10), y donde él personalmente, bajo la mirada de Dios, decide su propio destino».
Esto no significa confiar excesivamente en nosotros mismos. Tengamos cuidado: advirtamos que nuestro corazón no es autosuficiente; es frágil y está herido. Tiene una dignidad ontológica, pero al mismo tiempo debe buscar una vida más digna. Dice también el Concilio Vaticano II que «el fermento evangélico ha despertado y despierta en el corazón del hombre esta irrefrenable exigencia de la dignidad», aunque para vivir conforme a esa dignidad no nos basta conocer el Evangelio ni cumplir mecánicamente lo que nos manda. Necesitamos el auxilio del amor divino. Acudamos al Corazón de Cristo, ese centro de su ser, que es un horno ardiente de amor divino y humano y es la mayor plenitud que puede alcanzar lo humano. Allí, en ese Corazón es donde nos reconocemos finalmente a nosotros mismos y aprendemos a amar."](https://www.idente.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
