CHRIST, OUR HOPE, IS RISEN
The joy of Jesus' Resurrection fills our hearts and urges us to share it with our brothers and sisters, for indeed, something wonderful has happened not only to Jesus but also to us. Jesus' Resurrection had marked his entry into a superior type of life against which death has no power... Jesus' Resurrection is the dawn of a new creation, the beginning of the new mankind that fully corresponds to the plan of God.
The Resurrection of the "Crucified One" shows that He was truly the Son of God and God Himself.
Jesus' Resurrection was not a return to earthly life, as was the case with the raisings from the dead that He had performed in His public life:at some particular moment they would die again. Christ's Resurrection is essentially different. In His risen Body He passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space. At His Resurrection Jesus' Body is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit:He shares the divine life in his glorious state.
The Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ;a faith believed and lived as the central truth by the Christian community. If Christ has not been raised, the Christian faith would be null and void. Saint Paul clearly states it in the first letter to the Corinthians... "If Christ was not raised, then our gospel is null and void, and so is your faith;and we turn out to be lying witnesses for God, because we bore witness that He raised Christ to life" (1 Cor:15, 14).
Finally, Christ's Resurrection-and the risen Christ himself- is the principle and the source of our future resurrection: "The truth is, Christ was raised to life, the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep... For, as in Adam all men die, so also in Christ all will be brought to life" (1 Cor. 15:20-22).
The Resurrection:new life for Christ, new life for all.. May the risen Christ fill our lives with His presence and joy.
Fr. Cipriano Bontacchio