Father Richard describes how it’s possible to experience resurrection before we die:
We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, at that moment we’ve been resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, hopeless, we have experienced the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.
The resurrection is not Jesus’ private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.
The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: ALL are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility. Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity. But most of us walk around as if it were not true, operating in a world of scarcity where there’s never enough. There’s not enough for me, there’s not enough for you, there’s not enough for everybody.
And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life—to ourselves. We hoard grace, we hoard mercy. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world. Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. Once we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death. We ourselves contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even to the oppression of other races and religions. In that state, it’s always other people who are wrong.
In a homily from the second century of the church offered on Holy Saturday, this is what we hear Jesus say:
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell [usually a hell of our own making —RR]. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. [1]
References:
[1] Homily for Holy Saturday. See “The Lord Descends into Hell,” in The Office of Readings According to the Roman Rite, trans. by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (Boston, MA: St. Paul Editions, 1983), 483.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “What Is Resurrection? A New Story Line,” homily, April 5, 2015.
Image credit: Jenna Keiper, Untitled (detail), Washington, 2020, photograph, used with permission. Click here to enlarge image. The first rays of sun caressing our faces remind us of the importance of new beginnings, of waiting, of awe.
Story from Our Community:
At Christmas, I decorated a fir tree with many gleaming ornaments. At the time, I was challenged with a cancer diagnosis and the fir tree came to symbolize resilience and long life despite the bleak winter weather. I am now beginning to put Easter decorations on that same tree. It’s giving me signs of spring with hope of new growth and beginnings. Looking at this tree inspires me to reflect on the vulnerability of baby Jesus, the symbol of Jesus on the cross, my own journey with cancer—all with the hope of the resurrection. —Frances B.
