Jesus is risen!

Many of us might feel relieved that it is now Easter. “No more fasting. No more sacrifices”. In a sense, on this day, it is indeed appropriate to experience a sense of relief. However, we should not be feeling relieved because we will no longer need to make any sacrifices (i.e., since we will need to make sacrifices anyway!); we should be feeling relieved because this day reveals to us a very important truth – the most important truth of all.

This truth is Christ’s perfect love for us. Surely, it’s not the first time that you heard the phrase, “God loves you”. Although today, take a moment instead to reflect upon the graces you are open to receiving as a result of Jesus’ passion and love. 

Christ’s passion is the culmination of His love. His suffering, therefore, is not something we should be afraid of, or something we should look with at with pity. In His passion, we should not simply see a human being who is undergoing pain, but to see God who is loving us and saving us. In the passion, we realise that Jesus, who is human, is also God. And in the passion, we also can see the Spirit of the Resurrection already present! Jesus’ divinity and purity remained even when he took upon him all sin – this is why he could ultimately resurrect. But what does the resurrection really mean for us humans? How should we look at it? 

When reflecting upon our call to be resurrected humans, there are two things we need to mainly keep in mind. The first is the fact that “all of us” where created to be eternal. Very often we tend to forget this, but we need to keep in mind that, before the fall, the first humans were eternal – and they were also free of pain, sickness and old-age. This is in fact what we all desire deep down. And we have this desire precisely because that it what we are meant to be! It is because humans sinned, because they broke their relationship with God, that they started to experience negative traits. Thus, it is because our world has a broken relationship with God that it has evil, suffering, and death. If our relationship with God was perfect, all this pain and evil would not exist. 

Unlike us, Jesus has a perfect relationship with the Father. It is because of this that He and only He could resurrect. This is why we compare Jesus to the “first Adam”, because He, like the first humans, has a perfect relationship with God – he exists just as God intended all of us to exist. What all this means is that it is only if we become “like Jesus”, that we can experience eternal life and resurrect. It is only if we put on the clothes of God and become divine, that we can experience eternity and the health that eternal life offers. This is what the Christian life essentially is. The Christian life is a journey through which each of us becomes more perfect and closer to the original human being. Christ helps us discover what it means to be a human – he reminds us that to be a human is, in a sense, to also share in trinitarian divinity. And finally, to those of you who still feel caught up in sin, Jesus is extending His profound love and compassion to you too. He is waiting for you with open arms! So let go of any sinful regret, let go of anything that is holding you captive in shame, and open yourself to receiving the complete cleansing and forgiveness that only God can give. This Easter, allow yourself to be clothed in Christ. Rejoice in the knowledge that love always, always has the upper hand.