Today we are celebrating the great mystery of our faith, the Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Paschal Mystery can be best understood in the entire length of the history of salvation as Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. We celebrate the love and mercy that God has shown in giving his only son to be our Redeemer and reunite us with Him. Easter is the greatest moment of faith and Hope. It is the moment of Grace. As the Psalmist proclaims, ‘this is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad’ because, through the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we have been freed from our sins and brought us together with the father.
Today we meditate on the greatest example of love that God has given to us. Through the Death and resurrection of His Son, He has dispersed the darkness of our lives and has brought us into the light and in his love, we have gained life (John 3:16). We have gained unbounded grace. However, it is not easy for us to recognize this grace in our lives, like the disciples of Emmaus in the Gospel. Our blindness prevents us to see and recognize Jesus through the journey of our lives.
Jesus is always journeying with us. He does not force us to recognize or accept him. Rather, He walks with as all the time. He shows us his love, teaches us that his sacrifice was not an accident but an act of love. Through His death, we have also died with him and we gained new life in his resurrection (Romans 6:8) because God in his mercy “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6).
The readings of this Easter Season invite us to deepen the mystery of our faith, where we are called to seek grace and things from above because through the mystery of the Suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ we are united once again with the Father. Besides, the Paschal Candle is, during this time a reminder of the salvific light and the infinite love of the Risen Christ that shines in our lives and the grace that we receive during our baptism
As I said in the beginning, it is not easy to recognize the Grace of God in our lives because even though we have been cleansed from the stain of original sin, we are constantly tempted. Therefore, we have to learn how to open the ‘eye of our heart' and let this Grace that we have received shines in us. The disciples of Emmaus were prevented to recognize Jesus because they were not only close-minded, but because their hearts were hardened with fear, doubts, and despair, for this reason, they were unable to recognize the Risen Lord, therefore, they say to one another "were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us." Frequently, we too are prevented to recognize Christ with His grace, love, and mercy in our lives because of the hardiness, fear, and despair that blind us to have this encounter with the Risen Christ.
Moreover, some Fathers of the church describe Christ as the source of the resurrection and life because it is through Him that the “Spiritual health has been restored to the human race… human nature is raised up, redeemed, restored and purified in Christ.”[1] Saint John XXIII also said that "Easter is for us all a dying to sin, to passion, to hatred, and to enmity, and all that brings about the disorder, spiritual and material bitterness, and anguish. This death is indeed only the first step toward a higher goal – for our Easter is also a mystery of new life.” Indeed Easter is the Mystery of life because even though we are not worthy of such great sacrifice, he gives his life for the remission of our sins. Besides the CCC affirms that the Mystery of the resurrection has two important aspects which we cannot separate them. The first aspect is the death of Jesus who liberates us from the chains of sin. The second aspect is the Resurrection of Christ, who opens for us the way to a new life in the Grace of God (CCC 654). The CCC calls this new life of Justification that “reinstates us in God's grace, ‘so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.’ Justification consists in both the victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace. (CCC 654)”
Furthermore, we cannot separate the Cross from the Resurrection as we cannot also separate the suffering from our lives because as the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ make us children of God, and suffering brings us also close to him. Saint Paul says, “do you not know that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus we were, by the very action sharing his death? (Rom 6: 3).” Through Christ, we become adopted sons of God and we are united to him through the resurrection (Rom 6:7) because in this adoptive filiation we obtain a “real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in his Resurrection. (CCC 654)”
God in his infinite mercy wants us united with him because as the Psalmist proclaims, ‘"his mercy endures forever'...I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” because this is the day the Lord has made for us and has saved us (Psalm 118). As adopted children of God through our Baptism, we must proclaim the grace of the Lord because Peter says that "He (Christ) commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42).”
Thus, we “must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it. (CCC 1816)” Besides, as Philip Yancey said, grace will always seem irrational, unfair or unjust to us because as sinful people we do not deserve it, but as he says, it will only make sense to us if we believe in a world governed by a loving and merciful God who is always ready to welcome us back and give us another chance to be with him[2] like in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15: 11-32). However, we can only recognize the grace of God in our lives through the holy sacrament of Baptism and living behind our sinful life by confessing our sin and partaking in the Eucharist, like the two disciples of Emmaus that were able to recognize Jesus only at the breaking of the bread. Therefore, through the Mystery of the Resurrection God has shown the "immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (Eph 2: 7-8).
[1] Easter Homily by an ancient author. Office of the readings, Wednesday within Octave of Easter.
[2] Philip Yancey, Rumors of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing? (Manila: OMF, 2004), 223-34.
