By Frank Wessling
The Resurrection changes everything.
As St. Paul noted in his First Letter to the Christians of Corinth, if Christ has not been raised, then my work is all in vain and you have been duped. If death rather than life is the winner in the end, if corruption is the only direction of life, then my preaching is a fraud and our faith is a waste of time.
But Paul had experienced the presence of Jesus in his new life and he knew others with a similar experience. They could see beyond appearances. Their grasp of reality, of truth, had changed. They now saw everything, understood everything, valued everything through Jesus. He was the lens of their vision corrected to perfection.
If we have taken Lent seriously and used the time to shake off some old habits, we might reach Easter’s resurrection celebration ready to share a bit of Paul’s experience. With him we may be jolted to realize that attachment to anger or new shoes or beer or gambling or fashion or Facebook or pornography or video games or sweets or a particular prejudice takes us nowhere; means nothing in the end. The turn we made to more generosity, more sacrifice and service for others, less filling of our own appetites and more goodness offered to others – that shift of vision and energy makes life new.
By taking on the sacrificial love of Jesus we allowed ourselves to be taken up in the new life of Christ.
This is what happens with the primary virtues of faith, hope and love. Make them the bedrock of life, especially love. Death loses its hold then. The future with God begins now.
Happy Easter!
