The Freedom of the Resurrection

For the Church, Easter is the starting-point of the new creation. Death and decay no longer have a place in the life of humankind and creation, but ‘everything is filled with light: the heavens, the earth and the underworld’. This would appear to be a contradiction in terms for our way of thinking.

We can all see the constant destruction of the environment; death, which holds all of us in thrall; and also the fact that our world has changed very little, despite the messages and presence of faith in Christ. Injustices and wars are rife, private interests groups are dominant, life’s always easy for a few, but difficult for most people, and progress hasn’t brought happiness but has instead expelled God from many people’s lives.

So the question ‘What’s the significance of the resurrection for people today?’ seems a hard one to answer. Most people wait to hear ‘Christ has risen’ and then disperse. But we’re the children of the risen God. Christ isn’t a moral sermon, a social reformer, a mere revolutionary, one of the many who’ve arisen throughout history. Christ is God and human, and has made us gods by grace. He’s given us the opportunity to see the face of God in this life and the next. He’s brought the new creation, the Church, to everyone, even to those who don’t believe in him.

In this new creation, everything is of value, even the smallest leaf, since, through it, we’re able to marvel at the beauty of the life that God’s made: the mystery of love; the transfiguration of all those who believe and strive; the power of repentance; the sanctity that embraces other people and the whole of the world. It’s this strength that empowers the Church to move forward, without the errors of its members destroying it. The blood of persecutions increases the faith; it doesn’t diminish it.

If everything’s made new, if death and decay have been abolished, we can experience it only if we see Christ as our God: crucified, risen, coming for us personally. In our relationship with him we acquire the gift of the genuine and unique freedom of being able to be his children, children of the resurrection.

Those of us who experience the light which rises from the Holy Sepulcher- believing, forgiving communing- don’t ignore our troubled world. We strive to improve it. Our hope is in the freedom of the resurrection. We flee from what kills us. And, at each divine liturgy, we taste the partaking of the light, experiencing joy in the faces of our brothers and sisters and awaiting the moment when our risen Lord will snatch us up into his heavenly kingdom, taking us through the Passover of death into the joy of the next life, that of eternity, of the resurrection and of unique freedom.

So we experience mystical joy. We have the voice of Christ’s resurrection as an anchor of hope in our life. We celebrate ‘not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth’ (1 Cor. 5, 8). And, as a small piece of leaven, we raise all the dough, inviting the whole world to share in our joy. We become those Christians who experience, in the Church, the hope, the truth and the freedom of the resurrection. Christ has risen.