The mystery of Easter is Christ’s resurrection. Without the risen Lord, our faith would be meaningless, for there would be nothing to proclaim, nothing to believe in. If Christ had not risen from the dead, the teaching of the Catholic Church would be robbed of its essential truth – that by Jesus’s unselfish offering every human being can attain eternal life. If Christ did not conquer death, everlasting life could not be passed on to men made in the image and likeness of God.
The story of Jesus Christ is, indeed, unparalleled. No human being has ever been able to overcome death. Only Jesus could transcend death due to his divine spirit, allowing the Eternal word to become flesh and, by doing so, to attest for eternity. If Christ had died without subsequent resurrection, his story, however impressive, would have remained a footnote in the tales of history and in the collective memory of mankind. Yet the mere fact that his Church has thrived throughout the ages, beset by countless trials and tribulations, is a testament to its authenticity, truthfulness, and mystical presence of God. Christ’s body and blood, soul and divinity, are the fountain of spiritual life manifested in the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is the Holy Communion and other sacraments of the Catholic Church that shield it from misery, destruction, and oblivion.
Had Christ not risen from the dead, there would be no disciples, nor followers, who – initially insignificant – grew steadily in number to become a universal force of believers. Who would be prepared to lay down his life for a man, claimed to have been the Redeemer, if his agenda was a fiction? Throughout history more than 40 million people, many willingly, drank the cup of martyrdom. Every stone of St. Peter’s, originally making up the walls of the Colosseum in Rome, was, quite literally, soaked in blood of innocent Christians from the early Church. The waves of initial persecution lasted more than 300 years, until the Catholic Church gained official recognition in the Roman Empire. Would Michelangelo have been able to paint the Sistine Chapel, or to breathe life into what later became his grand Pieta, if he did not believe in the resurrected Lord? Would Mozart’s Requiem or Handel’s Messiah become possible without insight, without knowledge from the Holy Spirit that Christ is the Truth Incarnate?
Would ordinary men, ever since the establishment of the Catholic Church, want to become priests to take up the cross of Jesus? Would countless members of religious orders offer their lives for God’s word in their vocation to transform the face of the earth? None of that would become reality, if Christ did not conquer death. For this very reason, Easter is and always will be the point in time of our salvation and the beginning of our sincere willingness to glorify God in his only begotten son and our Lord Jesus, the Risen Christ.
FAITHBOUND 