TO BELIEVE IN THE RISEN JESUS
We Christians must not forget that faith in Jesus Christ raised from the dead is much more than an assent to a formula of faith. Much more than the affirmation of something extraordinary that happened to the dead Jesus about 2 thousand years ago.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to believe that Christ is alive right now, full of energy and creativity, driving life toward its final destiny and freeing humanity from falling into definitive chaos.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to believe that Jesus becomes present in the midst of believers. It’s to take an active part in the gatherings and the tasks of the Christian community, knowing joyfully that, when two or three gather together in his name, there he is putting hope into our lives.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to discover that our prayer to Christ isn’t an empty monologue, without a speaker who hears our call, but rather a dialogue with someone alive who is near to us in the same root of life.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to allow ourselves to be questioned by his living word that has been gathered in the Gospels, and to go about discovering in practice that his words are «spirit and life» for whoever knows how to be nourished by them.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to live out the personal experience that Jesus has power to change our lives, to raise up what’s good in us and to go about freeing us from what kills our freedom.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to know how to discover he’s alive in the least and smallest of our brothers and sisters, calling us to compassion and solidarity.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to believe that he is «the first-born from among the dead», thereby initiating now our own resurrection and opening to us now the possibility of living forever.
To believe in the Risen Jesus is to believe that neither suffering nor injustice, neither cancer nor heart-attack, neither machine guns nor oppression, not even death has the last word. Only the Risen One is Lord of life and of death.
Jose Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
