Aurelio Porfiri
The Resurrection of Christ is the feast that challenges us and forces a soul-searching to make a decision that must be for him or against him. Christmas, meanwhile, is not so much of time of testing or questioning especially when we leave out instances that might perturb us, such as the Virgin birth or the Annunciation, since it is about celebrating the birth of a child. Easter, however, offers us not even the semblance of composure. Instead, it spurs us on to confront the mystery of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection. In a world where the tangible is considered reality and that there is nothing beyond what is perceivable, nothing beyond physical death, belief in the Resurrection may situate us in a conundrum. The claim of the Resurrection seemingly puts our faith at risk.
In the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:12-19), St Paul already said it very well: “Now, if it is announced that Christ has risen from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither is Christ risen! But if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, your faith too. We, then, turn out to be false witnesses of God, because against God we testified that he raised Christ while, in fact, he did not raise him, if it is true that the dead do not rise. In fact, if the dead are not risen, neither is Christ risen; but if Christ is not risen, your faith is in vain and you are still in your sins. Therefore those who died in Christ are also lost. If we have had hope in Christ only for this life, we are to be pitied more than all men.” Therefore, to accept this Resurrection we must first enter the mystery of his Passion and Death, a mystery that we often can identify with when we are lost and that we experience for ourselves when we are about to enter into the next life. Alongside the lost and the dying, we ask ourselves: “what awaits us?”
In these days of the Easter season, this question becomes even more urgent and prompts us to enter the Paschal mystery, into that mystery that concerns us all. We must eschew the modern tendency to hide, to deny, to think that all this could not be, despite the evidence to the contrary. We must find the meaning of our deaths in Christ’s death and the promise of our Resurrection in his.
(Photo: 4222320 at Pixabay)
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