Are you risen?

Every Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Christ our Savior. Many of us religiously take out from their boxes our little "Belens" and display them at the center of our homes. We freeze the scene. We eternalize the "Santo Niño" and even deck him with jewels and heavy, embroidered, suffocating gowns. We overwhelm him with our endless petitions in childlike, or is it childish fashion. After the season is over, we keep our "Belens" back in their places, until the following Christmas.

As a result, Christmases come and go. But many of us, like that Child in the "Belen", remain the same. Many of us hardly change. Hardly grow. And so our nation, the one and only country entrusted to us by God, is still where it is. Christian in name. Hardly Christian in our national life.

And now, it is Easter Sunday. In like manner, many of us celebrate the rising of Christ from the dead. We celebrate his victory over death. We rejoice, sing, and dance because by his resurrection, we, too, can rise from death. Ironically, though, our focus is mostly on him, and what he did for us. But is this the ultimate meaning of Christ’s resurrection in our own personal lives? We can celebrate Easter this way year after year, decade after decade, and still find ourselves somehow the same as ever before. What might the Risen Christ be saying to each one of us if we are to really listen to him, rather than simply celebrate his resurrection?

"Show me your own resurrection, your personal Easter. Are you risen? Where is your Good Friday? Are you expecting to reach your Easter without going through your Good Friday?"

The focus in the here-and-now must really be on us, from Christ to us. Are we embracing our Good Friday as Jesus did, so that we could reach our Easter, as he did? As Christians, our one and only mission in life is TO LOVE AS JESUS LOVED. A ceaseless dying to the self. This is our Good Friday that will unfailingly lead us to our Easter Sunday. And HOW did Jesus love? This is the human-spiritual punchline that many of us find ourselves avoiding, resisting, or compromising.

Selfless, unconditional love. Not only for a few, chosen ones within our own family, relatives, and friends – but for anyone and everyone of God’s human family. This means committing ourselves to the MAGIS, the MORE, beyond the boundaries of duty, obligation, and legalities.

Let us single out this past December tsunami disaster in Southern Asia. No less than the Good Friday passion and death for so many of our fellow human beings, our true brothers and sisters in Christ. Did we accept this Good Friday as our own? Perhaps some of us may even have questioned how a loving God could allow such a horrible tragedy to happen. But as described in Connections for March 2005, the angel of Easter said after the darkness of such tragedy: "God is not entombed but very much alive here. See the doctor who leaves his practice to travel half-way around the world to help care for the survivors? See the relief workers who work night and day setting clinics and camps, drilling fresh water wells and rebuilding roads? See the churches and schools and communities around the world who mobilize to collect money and clothing and food and medicine? God is not buried in the rubble – God is raised up in such compassion and generosity."

What about our own Filipino priest who recently reached out to flood victims in Real and lost his own life as a consequence? Or even more recently – the two brothers who helped to save people from a capsized boat and both drowned in the process?

Certainly, most of us will not be asked to literally give up our mortal lives as that priest or those two brothers did. But we must not avoid or hide from our own, personal Good Fridays if we want to reach our Easter Sundays. The call of the More. The call of the Magis. To rise from the dead as Jesus did means to love as Jesus loved. "When you learn how to die, you learn how to live." (M. Schwartz). Selfless, unconditional love.

Good Friday is God’s way to Easter Sunday. Do you know of any other way?