He is Alive!

Today we celebrate the triumph of love and life over sin and death. Those of you who have watched how a caterpillar transform itself into a butterfly would have had the thrill of seeing how new life emerges from a seemingly lifeless pupa or chrysalis.

A caterpillar – or what we city folks call a “worm” or a “bug” – does nothing but eat and eat and eat. But when the right time comes, the caterpillar attaches itself to a branch or under a leaf. Then its skin breaks open and the caterpillar changes its shape into a coffin-like thing without any sign of life. It gives the impression that it has died.

But then after some days, something marvelous happens! The shell breaks open and a butterfly with its wings folded climbs out of the shell to a high spot. The wings slowly unfold and begin to flap gently to dry. And, after awhile, it is ready to fly away enjoying its new life and freedom.

Something like that happened on that first Easter morn over 2000 years ago. On Good Friday, Jesus was a complete failure. The soldiers and the crowd laughed and jeered at him. They made fun of his claim. His enemies thought they had finally gotten rid of him. He was now buried in the tomb. His disciples were disappointed with him. Their hopes were shattered. In the words of the disciples going home to Emmaus, “We were hoping that he would be the one who could set Israel free.”

Then Easter morning came and something was astir. There was news from the women that the tomb was empty, and that angels announced, “He has been raised!” The whole thing was incredible.  The authorities tried to suppress the truth by inventing a story that the body of Jesus was stolen by the disciples during the night.

And yet the faith of the followers grew stronger each day. More and more people bear witness to a Christ who is alive. Not because they have seen Him; only because His word has come through them, had touched their hearts, compels them to proclaim to one and all: “He is alive!”

He said: “I am the resurrection and the life!” So, a new song of the angels to the women, “He has been raised,” rounded up the song of the angels to the shepherds, “A Savior is born to you.”

St. Paul puts it emphatically to the Christians of Corinth: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith is futile, and you are still in sins.”

What our faith professes is a truth as thrilling as it is profound, a truth Jesus summed up at the Last Supper: “Because I live, you will live also.”

That is why water is poured over you in baptism, the Holy Spirit poured into you: that you might become the “new creature” St. Paul talks about – transformed into the likeness of your risen Lord, alive with the very life of God-man, believing what you cannot see, hoping against human hope, loving as Jesus loved. That is why oil anoints your forehead – in the shape, significantly, of a cross – the power of the Spirit to live that life with the courage of Christ, to live for God and your sisters and brothers even unto crucifixion.

Now, what does “alive to God in Christ Jesus” mean to us today? To be “alive to God in Christ Jesus” is not a private party. Once they believed on good authority that Jesus was alive, Joanna and Susanna, Magdalene and the other women did not reserve a function room for themselves at the Jerusalem Plaza Hotel with lots and lots of cakes and champagne to celebrate. They hurried back to tell “the Eleven” and all the others. They became “apostles” themselves, sent by the angels to spread the good news, to share good tidings, to bear witness that the Lord Jesus had not only died but had been raised to life again.

And so for you – for those newly born in baptism and those grown old in our faith, baptism is indeed a breathtaking personal gift. Any action that with one swoop of God’s hand washes away your every sin, adopts you as God’s daughter or son, enrolls you in Christ’s community, and grants you on earth a title to heaven is something to treasure – but not to hold on selfishly to your own Christian bosom.

Baptism sends you out on mission, commissions you to bear witness, to testify to a whole little world around you that is looking for the living among the dead: “He is not here.” As risen Christians, your life should bear witness that the risen Christ is not in a reactivated rugged individualism, not in economic man or woman in pursuit of private self-interest, not in the perpetual search for comfort and pleasure.

Your life should proclaim and testify that in a culture that canonizes youth and beauty, activity and productivity, power and sexual exploits and pleasure, the aging too can be “alive to God in Christ Jesus,” those who suffer in spirit or flesh, those St. Paul calls “foolish in the world… wear in the world… lowly and despised in the world, can be alive in God… so that no human being must boast in the presence of God.”

And so, my dear sisters and brothers, what does Easter invite us to do? To borrow the words of Fr. Mark Link, an American Jesuit: “Easter invites us to open our hearts to the risen Jesus and let him do for us what he did for his disciples and his people to whom they preached after the first Easter.”

“It invites us to let Jesus help us love again, after we’ve had our love rejected by someone.

It invites us to let Jesus help us trust again, after we’ve had our trust betrayed by another. It invites us to let Jesus help us hope again, after we’ve watched our hope flicker and die. It invites us to wipe our tears, pick up the pieces, and start over again after some great tragedy.”

This is what Easter is all about.  It’s the good news that the risen Jesus is in our midst, ready to work miracles for us, if we let him. It’s the good news that nothing can defeat us anymore – not discouragement, not pain, not misfortune, not even death. It’s the good news that Jesus has triumphed, and so will we, if we open our hearts for him.

This is what Easter is all about.  This is what we celebrate as we now prepare to break bread together on this great birthday of our Christian faith.

Happy Easter to all of you!