As I walked through my university corridors last week, I noticed one of my former students sitting with another student by the corner, reading their well-marked-up Bibles. The marked-up Bibles caught my attention. I have known this student as a hardworking young man, but not particularly religious.
I approached and saw that they were sharing and looking closely at the text. “Studying the Word?” I asked. They nodded. It has been their new-found joy to study the Word first before they do their usual class readings every day. They were studying Romans and discussing the life of Christ. I joined them, and we had about a thirty-minute conversation on the Word and what they seek their future to be. We ended up on the theme of discernment and how the Lord guides us to the right way.
As I left, I thanked God who has raised these men from their old ways of life to a new one. One of them came to know the Lord a couple of years ago and will be graduating this month as someone who entered the university without much concern for faith and now leaves deeply convinced and in love with God. The other had been a person of faith but is now becoming more fervent.
Surprises of the Risen Lord
These are some of the surprises of teaching in the university, where you have the opportunity to be with teens and young adults and witness their transformation outside the walls of the formal curriculum. There are these quiet moments when the younger generation opens their hearts to something deeper than classroom study or scholarly assignments. God has blessed me with witnessing these kinds of moments every semester since I have been teaching at the university. What we begin to see in such moments is the quiet work of resurrection, the gift of new life taking root in ways God alone knows.
The Risen Lord touches people in ways known to him alone. As the Risen One, he raises those who come to him broken and weighed down, as though dead while still biologically alive. He also raises those who pass from this world in him into the new life of the beatific vision.
In the first reading, Paul speaks of this same reality. He recalls how Jesus was rejected, condemned, and put to death even when no true charge stood against him. Yet, “God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:30). Paul insists that this is not an idea but the fulfillment of God’s promise, witnessed by those who walked with Christ. What God promised, he has brought to fulfillment by raising Jesus (Acts 13:32–33).
Raised from Old Ways to New
This is why, when we speak of the resurrection, we are not speaking of a fable or something imagined. We speak of the reality of the Son of Man who came, died, and rose. We adore the very Lord who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). The Father’s promise is fulfilled. He lives, and because he lives, he gives new life to those who turn to him.
I see this in these two students. They have been raised, from old ways to new. This experience of new life in Christ continues in the life of the Church. This year alone, the Church has recorded hundreds of thousands of new converts who have come to know the Lord. Conversion is a form of Resurrection, a passage into new life. A life without the knowledge of God may continue outwardly, but the spiritual life is as though sealed in the grave. It is the Risen Lord who gives power to the soul to rise from the stillness of sin and unbelief into the life of faith.
The Blessed Lord declares to Thomas, and indeed to you and me, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). These words assure us that there is no better path to our eternal rest, no other truth that gives the fullness of the answers we seek, and no greater life than to live, move, and die in the One who is Life eternal.
As we continue to celebrate this Easter season and prepare for the Ascension and Pentecost, I pray that the Lord who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies and lead us fully into this new life.
Amen.
[Readings: Acts 13:26-33; John 14:1-6]
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