The Resurrection of Christ

     Throughout the celebration of the Triduum I have been consumed with desire for God. JoAnne feels the same fire. But as it burned I became afraid that nothing could ever satisfy this desire, because we are weakened by sin and subject to death. Faith tells me that he can do everything, that he has defeated both sin and death, but where does it leave us when we are cast adrift on the sea of our longing, when flesh itself remains imperfect, a fragile vessel for the miracle he wishes to endow?
     Jesus told me to reflect on his conversation with the Pharisees, who criticized him for eating with sinners. He replied that it was for such people that he came, not for the righteous. But he was also explaining their own faith crisis: as long as they were trying to make themselves righteous through ritual and worship, they were impeding the work of grace. They could not know God until they entrusted their righteousness to him...

     None of us can be saved by what we think, do or say. Even when we proclaim him in faith, it is his action, the faith he gives us, that saves us. How, then, do we surrender our self-made faith and accept the faith he gives, every moment, every day? 
     The secret is to love, not the way the world loves, which is always with a price. We must learn to love with power and abandon, for the love we receive from God, is God. He gives himself to us as the answer to every challenge, the tool for every job. The secret is to abandon our weak, imperfect love for his infinite, total love. The secret to any good work, indeed the source and origin of every good work, is God/Love. Having one, we have the other. Having Love, we have everything.

     A teacher once told me that life is like an hourglass. It slowly closes in to a single point, and then, when we pass through that narrow gate, it begins to open and everything that comes is defined by what we discover in the passage. For me it must be Love. Not my old, small love, as hopeful as it ever could be, but the Love that is God himself, alive in me. The Resurrection of Christ is born into my own flesh and I expect things will begin to change. Reading the stories, I couldn't imagine what had happened to the apostles, how they could be so changed after the Resurrection. Now I think I am beginning to understand, and with the same passion that I wanted Christ, I now hope for what he will do.