Newness of life

THIS is what we can expect with the celebration of Easter. We are made new! We have a new life. We are actually made a new creature. The old man in us is buried. A new man is formed in each one of us!

            This is because Christ has risen. With his resurrection, he has conquered sin and death. He died for us, so we can rise with him. The sting of our death has been taken away, and is replaced with the saving resurrection of Christ who shares it with us. That’s the marvelous exchange we sing about in the Easter hymn of the Exsultet.

            Thus, if we unite ourselves with him and die with him—a dying that can take many forms before it takes on the ultimate form—we will also rise with him. Everything, in the reality presented to us by our Christian faith, will be new.

            It’s a beautiful truth that should be engraved deep in our mind and heart “I make all things new,” (Rev 21,5) Let’s be reassured of this very consoling truth of our faith. The same truth is reiterated by St. Paul: “If any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new.” (2 Cor 5,17)

            We may not know the mechanics of how this is to take place, but this is what our faith tells us, and so we believe. It’s a mysterious gift from God, first of all, and being a gift, we usually do not bother ourselves about the technical details about it. Ours is simply to receive it, ever grateful and seeing to it that we take care of the gift.

            This does not mean that we have nothing to do with this affair. Though gratuitous, this tremendous gift of a new life ought somehow to be deserved. Christ himself said so in so many words: “New wine is not put into old wineskins…new wine is put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Mt 9,17)

            We would do well to really live in intimate union with Christ. That is how, as a love song beautifully expresses it, we can keep the music playing, how we can keep the song from fading too fast, how we cannot run out of new things to say.

            St. Paul puts it very bluntly in his Letter to the Romans. “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste.” (1 Cor 5,7) In the mind of St. Paul, this is how we may be like the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

            This can mean many things. Among them, the effort to truly understand others in spite of and even because of their defects, because this is how Christ deals with each one of us.

            Recently, I watched two movies that wonderfully dramatized how understanding others in spite of their very obvious defects can make a lot of difference. One was “Saving Mr. Banks” and the other was “In front of the class.” In both movies, the main characters had very irritating defects. In the former, the defect was psychological, and in the latter, physical.

            We should realize that every one of us is a child of God who, even if one has lost his goodness, is still loved and redeemed by Christ. This is the basic and constant assumption we should have when dealing with others.

           

            And so when we see the defects of others, especially those defects that would really bother us, we have to think that there is a reason behind them. We need to know where they are coming from.

            And then putting ourselves in the dynamics of Christ’s universal love for us, and never without it, let us try to deal with them kindly and patiently. This is how we can understand everyone, including ourselves, with all that we have, both the good and the bad things in us.

            It is only this love that is capable of understanding everyone and everything, warts and all. It is this love that can cure and transform people. It is this love that makes everyone new again. It is this love that is able to forgive everyone, including ourselves.

            We need to learn to develop and live this love, starting with our own personal selves through our personal prayers and other forms of personal relationships with our Father God through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

            Then let us pass this on to those in our families. Then let’s do everything that this kind of love is taught and lived actively in schools and everywhere else.