During the Lenten season of the year I was going to be ordained a deacon, I found myself in a deep crisis. I had no doubts about my vocation and was convinced that my call to the priesthood came from God. However, I became so overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy for the mission God was entrusting to me that I was unable to experience peace for a long time.
Shortly before the Easter Triduum, I went to speak with my spiritual director to confess and seek guidance. When I told him how much I was suffering and how “dead” I felt inside, he responded, “Fantastic! Now you can truly celebrate the Triduum and look forward to Easter—to experience the resurrection in your own life.” “Fantastic” was certainly not the word I expected to hear, but he spoke with such conviction that I chose to trust him. I entered the Triduum with a sincere sense of expectation and ready to listen to the Lord speak to me.
Transformation
He was right. My experience of suffering and interior death allowed me to experience the Paschal Mystery of Christ that Easter night in a very powerful way. The Word touched my heart, and I experienced a deep transformation. My external circumstances had not changed, but my entire perspective had. I had encountered the grace of the risen Christ and was able to pass from death to life. From that moment on, I began to emerge from my crisis, and by the time of my ordination, I was filled with peace and serenity.
This is the message we receive from the readings on this Easter Sunday: Christ is risen, and His victory over death offers us a completely new life. We can have the life of Christ in us and be free.
Victory
Indeed, all of today’s readings point to the truth that through Christ’s resurrection, we can move from death to life—into eternal life. In the first reading, St. Peter proclaims the kerygma, declaring that the one who was crucified— “this man God raised on the third day.” The one who endured suffering and death is now alive, and His life is offered to all who are open to receiving the message of His victory.
In the second reading, St. Paul invites us to recognize that if we have been raised with Christ, we are called to “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” In other words, because we share in His passage from death to life, we can begin to live heaven even now, confident that our true lives “are hidden with Christ in God.”
Finally, the Gospel recounts the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Overcome by disappointment and despair after Christ’s death, they were ready to abandon everything. Yet the risen Christ meets them and helps them see that “it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory.” With patience and tenderness, He challenges their lack of faith and opens their eyes to recognize Him alive and present right there and then. They were also taken out of their death into a new life.
From Death to Life
Today is a day of immense joy for all of us. Today, we too can experience this passage from death to life, from darkness to light, from sadness to joy—because Christ is risen.
I know that many of you may be facing situations of suffering and death, maybe not physical but existential. I am sure that many of you are faced either with financial struggles, or difficulties with your children, or challenges in your marriage, or uncertainty about the future, or a test result that maybe did not give great results, or the actual death of a loved one, or loneliness in your old age or burdens for which there seem to be no answers. Today, I invite you to remember: Christ is risen.
Because He is alive, He can manifest to you and encounter you in all those situations and share with you the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead. Through the power of this Spirit living within you, you too can rise from your sufferings and your deaths and experience the freedom of those who share in eternal life.
Take courage! Christ has conquered death, and He will come to meet you in your struggles, inviting you to pass from death to life, from anguish to peace, and from darkness to light.
Let us celebrate this Easter season with hope and joy.
God bless you. Christ is risen—He is truly risen, alleluia!
[Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9]
