Greeting: Christ is risen!
Response: He is risen indeed!
This is our greeting throughout the Easter Season! So, don’t be surprised if I say this to you instead of hello or good morning!
After six weeks of Lent, we celebrate eight weeks of Easter! Our Lord, who was dead, has been raised and is alive! What a wonderous mystery! We walked with Him in His passion, suffering, and death. We now live with Him in His resurrection! As St. Paul writes to the Romans, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over Him.” We have been baptized into His death and raised to life with Him. Death no longer has power of us!
For those who have been baptized, life is changed not ended when we breath our last breathe. Today’s culture, because it is a culture of death, tries to defy death at every turn. All the emphasis is on getting younger or living longer and longer. Doing everything we can to avoid death. We are encouraged not to age gracefully, but to always look, dress, feel, like we are 21. We chase that illusion because we, as a culture and civilization have no hope and can see nothing beyond the grave.
We Christians should not be caught in this trap. Our time on earth is only an instant in our existence. We believe in the resurrection of the body. We believe in life after death. We believe that death no longer has power over us! He and we in Him have been raised from the dead. We were made for heaven! We were made to life a life of abundance in eternity with Almighty God. He wants to share His life with us! This desire of His is shown in the amazing, magnificent kenosis (emptying) of Himself and becoming man and dying to destroy our death and rising to give us life eternal! This Easter, soak in this love! Be filled with this hope! Live in this joy!
We have no fear of death or of whatever may come to us in trial and tribulation, in suffering and sacrifice, in death and destruction. God walks along with us through it all as painful as it might be. In this accompaniment of God with us, we are conquerors of the world, sin, and death. We can endure suffering and pain as much as it might hurt. Patient endurance and hope are needed and come from a deep relationship with Jesus Christ and following Him as a disciple in word and in deed.
Happy Easter to you and to your families!
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
~ Fr. Daniel Firmin