Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord 

April 1, 2018

Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Over the few years, I’ve only shared an Easter poem I wrote, but today I want to offer a more nourishing reflection on the impact of Christ’s resurrection upon Christian people and upon folks like you and me. I hope  inspires you and brings you joy to celebrate the feast with renewed faith and hope.

I’m going to cull together excerpts of several of the great articles in the Lenten book Bread and Wine similar to the Jurgen Moltmann I quoted in the Good Friday blog . . . .

Our first article by Brennan Manning states that over a hundred years ago in the Deep South, a phrase common in our Christian culture today the term born again was seldom used. Rather, the words used to describe the breakthrough into personal relationship with Jesus Christ were:

“I was seized by the power of a great affection!”

It was a profoundly moving way to indicate both the initiative of the almighty God and the explosion within the human heart when Jesus becomes Lord. (p. 224)

Now that, dear friends, is an amazing description of what should take place in the soul of our catechumens baptized at the Easter Vigils in churches all over the world and anyone who wishes to “become a convert”—as we used to say.

To continue the same theme in our second article by E. Stanley Jones brings out a theme that I’ve always stressed “The Christ of Experience.”  The early disciples had little ritual but a mighty realization. They went out not remembering Christ but experiencing him. He was a living, redemptive, actual presence then and there. They went out with the joyous and grateful cry:

“Christ lives in me!”

The Jesus of history had become the Christ of experience. Some have suggested that the early Christians out-thought, out-lived and out-died the pagans. But that was not enough; they out-experienced them.

We cannot merely talk about Christ—we must bring him. We must be a living vital reality –closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet. We must be “God-bearers.” (pp.346-9)

As a priest—and in my younger days when I taught young people and adults, I would use the phrase: “Experience precedes understanding.”  The point I was trying to get across was the same as Mr. Jones—the only true experience of our faith is to have Jesus in one’s heart. To know him, not just know about him. When I was growing up, all that was required was to regurgitate Catechism answers.

And in the 1980’s, when I first when to study about how the ancients conducted their Catechumenate—what we now call the “RCIA—or Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, I was amazed to find out that they did not teach them about the sacraments until what we call the Mystagoia Period which is after Easter!

Again, the point is that experience precedes understanding. You see, in the early Church, they guarded their experience of the Holy—the Eucharist. In fact, the catechumens today are still supposed to be dismissed from the assembly after the Liturgy of the Word and at that time they are taught about the Word and only at the Easter Vigil do they come into the presence of our sacraments. But I’m not going to win that argument. Oftentimes priests settle for the minimum and, sadly many “converts” are not converted at all. They are not “seized by the power of great affection.” They do not experience the Lord Jesus in their heart and become “God-bearers.”

But let’s move on to the third one ~  second article by Jurgen Moltmann. . . .The resurrection faith is not proved true by means of historical evidence, or only in the next world. It’s proved here and now, through the courage for revolt, the protest against deadly powers, and the self-giving of men and women for the victory of life.

Christ’s resurrection imparted the movement of the Spirit “who fills the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in the fire of your love . . . and you shall renew the face of the earth.” The movement of the Spirit is the divine “liberation movement,” for it’s the process whereby the world is recreated.

So resurrection means rebirth out of impotence and indolence for the “living hope.” And today “living hope” means passion for life and a lived protest against death.

Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s rebellion. That rebellion is still going on in the Spirit of hope, and will be complete when together with death, “every rule and every authority and power is at last abolished. (1 Cor. 15:24)

The resurrection hope finds living expression in men and women when they protest against death and the slaves of death. But it lives from something different—from a superabundance of God’s future. Its freedom lives in resistance against the outward and inward denials of life. But it does not live from this protest. It lives from joy in the coming victory of life.  (pp. 368-9)

Did you ever think of the resurrection as the beginning of God’s rebellion? Well, think a moment. The resurrection of Jesus Christ turned the world on its head, didn’t it? So the resurrection, in other words, was the beginning of God’s rebellion. How ‘bout that?

Now here’s more on the same theme by N. T Wright . . . . Listen to what St. Paul says taking the brutal facts of the cross and turning it inside out:

“God cancelled the bond that stood against us, with its legal demands: he set it aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col 2:14)

That is to say: The world, and the rulers of the world, had you in their grip. But Jesus took that bondage upon himself: it is all there in the charge that was nailed over the cross and in Pilate’s cynical us of his authority: “What I have written, I have written.” ~ INRI  Jesus took it on himself: and, being the one person who had never submitted to the rulers of this world, who had lived as a free human being, obedient to God, he beat them at their own game. He made a public example of them; God, in Christ, celebrate his triumph over the prince of the world.

The cross is not a defeat but a victory. It’s the dramatic reassertion that God’s love is sovereign, that the rulers of the world don’t have the last word, that the kingdom of God has defeated the kingdom of Satan, that the kingdoms of the world, now become, in principle, the kingdom of our God, and of his Messiah and he shall reign for ever and ever and ever!  (pp. 388-90)  

Now here’s the poem I wrote to celebrate this great feast . .  .

First day of the week now come

The dawn, now dawning

Women rushing with their spices

Quaking earth trembling, trembled

An angel dazzling, dazzled

Rolling back the stone

Do not be afraid! he said,

Do not be afraid! he said,

He has been raised!

He has been raised!

Go quickly!!

Tell it!

Jesus is risen!

What did he say?

Do not be afraid?

Does that apply to us?

To people struggling to pay their rent?

To old people wasting away in nursing homes?

Immigrants afraid of being deported?

Syrian children in bombed-out rubble?

Go quickly!

Tell it!

To your neighbors, to America, and all the world!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

JESUS IS RISEN!

Before you go, here’s the Australian young people’s group Hillsong singing “Worthy is the Lamb” Click Here. Be sure to turn up your speakers and be sure to enter full screen.

Now here are today’s Mass readings if you’d like to reflect on them Click here.

With love, 

Bob Traupman

Contemplative Writer

Bread and Wine / Plough Publishing House / Walder NY 2003