WHERE TO LOOK FOR THE ONE WHO LIVES?
Faith in Jesus, raised by the Father, didn’t spring naturally or spontaneously in the heart of the disciples. Before meeting him, full of life, the Gospel writers talk about their confusion, their searching around the tomb, their questions and uncertainties.
Mary Magdalene is the best example of what probably happens for everyone. According to John’s account, she’s looking for the Crucified One in the midst of darkness, «when it was still dark». As is natural, she looks for him «in the tomb». She still doesn’t know that death has been conquered. That’s why the emptiness of the tomb leaves her confused. Without Jesus she feels lost.
The other Gospel writers gather another tradition that describes the search of the whole group of women. They can’t forget their Master who has welcomed them as disciples: his love carries them to the tomb. They don’t find Jesus there, but they hear the message that points to where they need to direct their search: «Why are you seeking among the dead the one who is alive? He’s not here. He’s risen».
Faith in the Risen Christ isn’t born for us today spontaneously either, just because we’ve heard it from childhood from catechists and preachers. To open ourselves to faith in the Resurrection of Jesus we need to make our own way. It’s decisive to not forget Jesus, to love him passionately, and seek him with all our efforts, but not in the world of the dead. To seek the one who’s alive we need to seek him where there’s life.
If we want to find the Risen Jesus, full of life and creative power, we need to seek him not in a dead religion, one that’s reduced to fulfilling and observing laws and norms externally, but where one lives according to Jesus’ Spirit, welcomed with faith, love and responsibility for his followers.
We have to seek him not among Christians who are divided and faced with sterile struggles, empty of love for Jesus and of passion for the Gospel, but where we go about constructing communities that put Christ in their center, because they know that «where two or three are united in his name, there he is».
We will not find the one who is alive in a paralyzed and routine faith, one that’s worn out by all kinds of cliches and formulas that are empty of experience, but by seeking a new quality in our relationship with him and in our identification with his project. A Jesus extinguished and inert, that isn’t in love or isn’t seductive, that doesn’t touch hearts or spread freedom, is a «dead Jesus». He not the living Christ, raised by the Father. He’s not the one who lives and brings about life.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
