There was one time in the New Testament when the Faith was spoken of as "worthless"-and that is the actual word that was used: "worthless." When is Christianity worthless? Listen: "If Christ is not raised, your faith is worthless" (1 Cor 15:14).
What the first Christians were told was devastating in its directness and simplicity: "Unless you believe the Lord burst out of the tomb, you have nothing at all to believe in."
You have little pin-pricks of what Gethsemane means when, as the Gospels tell us about the Lord, "He began to be depressed and exceedingly afraid." Or you know what it is to meet Judas: "Judas, for what a purpose you have come?" Or you understand what it is to be condemned by Pilate or howled down by the mob. Crisis is the instrument that God takes to make us ready for glory. That is why a religion of slogans will never do.
I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.
That is how we end the Creed. We proclaim our belief and our hope in the resurrection of the body. What you have now--the animated organism you call your body that is so deeply a part of you, you think your body is you--that is only the shell, the framework, the seed of the real body that will enshrine the real you when the grace that came to you in baptism bursts into your resurrection. We could almost say that this is how they were given the Faith: by repeated insistence on their identification with Christ.
The moral imperatives of Christian life-and they were stringent--flowed from here.
Christianity is a very bodily religion, if I may use such an earthy term to speak of religion. Our Faith gives enormous importance to the physical. To give a new emphasis to an outworn phrase, we are a down-to-earth people and that is precisely the imagery that was used in the first days of the Faith: "In baptism you were not only buried with him but also raised to life with him" (Col 2: 12).
There are three reasons why the Resurrection is the heart of our Faith. The first is that the Lord of Glory--Jesus Christ risen from the dead--is the power house from which he sends out a Force that enters into the core of your being to make you the person He means you to be. We call this Force flowing down from the powerhouse of the resurrection: the grace of God.
To be a Christian is to live with the life of a Man who is God. Do not think of Christianity as doing something but in being someone: a human caught up into the Life of a Man who burst out of a tomb filled with a Force, a Power that was divine, that He now passes on to us. We were linked with the powerhouse of Jesus Christ when we were baptised. This is Christianity: our share in the Risen life of Jesus Christ our Lord which we carry under our human nature that is destined to be transformed in glory. The New Christians of Colossae were told the same truth. They were given the same exhortation that we are given now.
Since you have been raised up in company with Christ, set your heart on what pertains to higher realms where Christ is seated at God's right hand. Be intent on things above rather than on things of earth. After all, you have died! Your life is hidden now with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then you shall appear with him in glory (Col 3:1-4).
It is no small privilege to belong to this Church. We are the chosen-and-called-and-Christ-Engrafted People for this is how the New Testament describes us; this is what we are: the members of His Body. It is a terrifying loss--it is a fearsome tragedy--to lose sight of the enormous dignity of this call that came to us and that did not come to others.
By grace we pulsate in the life of Jesus Christ risen from the dead and we are slowly transformed so that we become all that the Lord means us to be. It is grace that makes the ultimate difference between persons.
The difference between persons is not so much in what they do as what they are, and what we are depends on what is in the innermost core of our being. It is to that core that the grace of God must come. This is sanctity: to be touched and transformed by the Holy Spirit. This, too, is what the first Christians were taught:
All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading you back into fear, but a spirit of adoption through which we cry out, "Abba!" (that is "Father"). But if we are children, we are heirs as well: heirs of God, heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so as to be glorified with him. (Romans 8: 14-17)
When you receive the Lord in Holy Communion make a special effort to bring into focus what the words you hear mean. The priest says over you, "The Body of Christ!"
He is proclaiming: "The Lord Risen from the dead and filled with the glory of Resurrection now comes to you under what looks like bread. He comes to draw you into union with Himself. He comes to breathe His life into you, to touch you at the core of your being. He comes to make you ready for the glory that He means you to have. Body of Christ!"
You respond: "Amen." You are saying: "I believe! Help me do your Will! Come into me as my Guest and Friend. Amen."
The second reason: If we do not believe in another life after life-in-this-body it is difficult to see why we should be honest or dedicated or kind when it is extremely inconvenient to act that way.
If we do not believe in life after life in the body the only thing left is that grave in the ground. If you have a world filled with people who have nothing to look forward to beyond that grave, some of them will be consistent and they will act out the wickedness in their souls.
There is a third reason why the Resurrection makes such a difference. This reason was given by the Lord Himself on the first Easter Sunday. The disciples were all huddled together in another room. The Gospel tells us that "the doors were locked ... for fear." Suddenly the Lord came right through the closed doors and stood in front of them. They must have gaped at Him, their mouths open and their eyes bulging out. A dead silence filled the room until, at last, He spoke. He gave the third reason why the Resurrection is central. He said, "Why are you disturbed? Why do these ideas cross your mind? See, it is I, I Myself."
This is what the Lord says to you and to me.
"You are a part in My Body. You are linked to me as closely as your hands and feet are part of you. You will share in the same glory that I have. Yet when something bad happens to you, or what you think is bad, you start going to pieces. Why do you act this way? Do you not believe that life in this earthly body is only a passing thing? This is not your real life. Do you not believe that everything painful that happens to you had to pass by Me before it got to you?"
These are the three reasons why the rising of the Lord from the dead is the heart of our Faith. All through the letters that were written to the first Christians that is what they were told. That is what they heard over and over again.
If Christ was not raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. And, those who have fallen asleep in Christ are the deadest of the dead. If our hopes in Christ are limited to this life only, we are the most pitiable of men.
Abridged from Rev. Patrick J. McHugh, In Season, Out of Season: Meditations on the Sunday Gospels and Second Readings.
I have been thinking a great deal about my experience at Reconciliation this past Saturday. I felt an intense and unexplainable urge to go and confess my sins when I woke up that morning. I try to go every six weeks or so, but this was no routine visit to the priest for me. I needed to unburden myself of the numerous venial sins I had committed since I last participated in this Sacrament.
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Picking up my pen to write this column, I couldn’t imagine how time flies. Since the last publication of this column I have gone through a lot, especially the loss of my dear mother to whom I dedicate this article. Not only her, but seems I lost a whole generation of my close family.
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Saint Josephine Bakhita »
Feast Day: February 8
Patron Saint Of: Sudan
Saint Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born around 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was a member of the Daju people and her uncle was a tribal chief. Due to her family lineage, she grew up happy and relatively prosperous, saying that as a child, she did not know suffering.
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The Norbertine Canons of St. Michael's Abbey have created this digital Lenten retreat so that you can journey through this holy season alongside them. If you want to have one of your best Lenten seasons yet, join us in our Lenten Program "The Great Fast" - https://theabbotscircle.com/the-great-fast-join
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Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent, and we’re on both dangerous and very holy ground with the first reading from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. The ancient Israelites referred to it as the “Akedah,” which means the “binding”: Abraham binds and is ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.
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