Christ’s resurrection our supreme joy

THAT’S right! With the resurrection of Christ, we have our greatest joy since we are now assured of our own redemption as long as we also do our part of the deal. Christ has given us everything to recover us from our self-inflicted alienation from God. The only thing that can stand in the way is when we obstinately refuse to believe this truth of our faith. 

 With his resurrection, Christ has finally conquered death itself and with it all the malice of sin and evil. It’s the victory that recovers our original dignity as image and likeness of God and nothing less than God’s children in Christ, the dignity we lost because of sin. 

 This ultimate victory even enhances that dignity, since it involves God becoming like us so that we can be like him! It’s this very sublime exchange and sharing that comprises the supreme good that can happen to us. Yes, we are meant to be one with God, sharing his very life and nature, since we are his image and likeness, children of his. 

 Some people have considered it a Pyrrhic victory since it involves quite a tremendous cost. It’s like saying that the resurrection of Christ has given us only a zero-sum triumph, since what we gain with it is almost the same as what we lose. 

 This is, of course, a very poor understanding of this truth of faith. While it’s true that this culmination of the redemptive work of Christ on us entailed nothing less than his life, it’s also true that that death has been converted into a gateway to our salvation with his resurrection. What matters is what happens in the end, with an effect that will be for always. 

 If we believe this truth and live it ourselves, identifying everything in our life with the life and the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, then we too can partake of this ultimate victory. 

 We should not forget that it will involve nothing less than the offering of our life. Before that, it obviously will entail a lot of suffering—the cross, in other words—which Christ already warned us about when he said that if we want to follow him, then we should deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. 

 It would be nice if we can quit wasting time by fussing about this truth, and simply proceed to live it, acquiring the relevant attitude and skills to put it into practice. Yes, with this truth about our assured ultimate victory in Christ, we ought to have the confidence and serenity in going about the affairs of our life. Plus, a driving sense of responsibility that should push us to do things for others without counting the cost. 

 We just have to deepen our belief that with Christ’s resurrection, sin and death have been definitively conquered, and a new life in God is given to us. We are now a new creation, with the power of Christ to conquer sin and death and everything else that stands in the way of our becoming true children of God. 

 And so, we have every reason to think that we can live forever in Christ over whom death no longer has dominion. In spite of whatever, we have every reason to be happy and confident, as long as we are faithful to Christ.

Our need for the cross

IT’S Good Friday! The mood, the atmosphere takes on a very dark hue. And despite the many secularizing and paganizing elements around these days, somehow we assume a most serious face as we commemorate, bring to mind, and liturgically make present, the very passion and death by crucifixion of the Son of God, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. 

 Yes, the readings are long, (cfr. Jn 18,1-19,42) but thanks to God, we have learned how to bear the experience and to make alive and be part of the very events narrated in those readings. We try to draw meaningful and spiritually vivifying insights from the prayers offered on this day. 

 The main lesson we can derive from this celebration of the death of Christ is that we have a great and essential need for the cross of Christ. We need to know the purpose of the cross because the cross, through Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, is where everything in our life is resolved. Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is the culmination of Christ’s redemptive mission on earth. 

 Yes, Christ preached. He performed miracles. But in the end, he had to offer his life on the cross because no matter what he did, our sins are such that they simply cannot be undone and forgiven through the preaching of the truths of our faith and the tremendous effects of the miracles. Christ has to offer his life on the cross! 

 In other words, the cross and all the suffering it involves are the consequences of our sins which need to be forgiven and undone. And that can only happen when with Christ, we go through the consequences of our sin by suffering them with Christ on the cross. Thus, the cross of our sins has been converted by Christ into the cross of our salvation. That’s how we have to understand the cross and all the suffering it involves. 

 We should not be afraid of the cross. In fact, we should be looking forward to have it if only to help in Christ’s continuing work of our redemption. We need to understand that unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to limit our loving to ways and forms that give us some benefits alone, be it material, moral or spiritual. While they are also a form of love, they are not yet the fullness of love. 

 We have to realize more deeply that the cross heals what is sick and wounded in us, resurrects what is dead, forgives what is sinful. There is no evil in man and in the world that cannot be handled properly by Christ’s cross. That’s why we should not feel at all hopeless when we find ourselves in a deep mess, often created by our own selves, our own foolishness. 

 The cross symbolizes all evil and sin, and with Christ embracing it and dying on it, the cross gets transformed from being a tree of death to a tree of life. It effects our redemption. We should not be afraid of the cross. In fact, we should learn to love it.

Love consummated and made perpetual

THAT, I believe, is the main message of the gospel we have on Holy Thursday. (cfr. Jn 13,1-15) It’s about what happened during the Last Supper where aside from instituting the two sacraments of Holy Orders and the Holy Eucharist, Christ showed his apostles how love that is consummated by him in his total self-giving to us can be made perpetual. 

 The gospel started by stating that Christ, upon knowing that his hour of supreme sacrifice was coming, continued to love his people and “loved them to the end.” That’s when he instituted the two sacraments and showed his apostles how this consummate love of his can be made perpetual. 

 That’s when he proceeded to wash their feet that shocked them. Even Peter at first refused to be given such treatment. But Christ insisted, telling them, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” (Jn 13,14-15) 

 There’s no other way to imitate that consummate love of Christ for us and to cooperate perpetually in the Christ’s continuing work of redemption, his supreme manifestation of his love for us. As Christ told his apostles, we too have to learn how to lower ourselves to be able to serve everyone, which is what loving in its true essence is all about. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to get self-absorbed, the very opposite of what we are supposed to be—to think always of the others and to serve them unstintingly. This tendency is actually the stupidest thing we can get enmeshed in. But it’s kind of automatic in us to get self-absorbed. We have to be more aware of this disturbing reality and do something about it non-stop. 

 We have to do everything to acquire, develop and enrich this attitude of always wanting to serve and not to be served in ourselves and among ourselves, inspiring and inculcating it in others as much as we can, for it is what is truly proper of us all. 

 With God’s grace, we have to exert effort to overcome the understandable awkwardness and tension involved in blending the natural and the supernatural aspects of this affair, as well as the expected resistance we can give, due to the effects of our sins. 

 We can make use of our daily events to cultivate this attitude. For example, as soon as we wake up from sleep in the morning, perhaps the first thing we have to do is address ourselves to God and say “Serviam” (I will serve). It’s the most logical thing to do, given who God is and who we are in relation to him. 

 And “Serviam” is a beautiful aspiration that can immediately put us in the proper frame of mind for the day. It nullifies Satan’s “Non serviam” and our tendency to do our own will instead of God’s, which is what sin, in essence, is all about. 

 And as we go through our day, let’s see to it that everything we do is done as a service to God and to others. Let’s not do them merely out of self-interest or self-satisfaction. That kind of attitude is highly poisonous to us, ruinous to our duty to love. Sooner or later, we will find ourselves completely engulfed by self-centeredness. 

 This is how the consummate love of Christ for us is made perpetual.