JESUS IS ALIVE!

I love to watch old movies from the 30's and 40's, and yet I am very much sobered when watching these movies because I realize that 99% or more of the people I am looking at in the movie, who seem so alive, are actually now very dead, and one day I will join them.  It is a a fact of life which cannot be negotiated in any way.

All of us live with the fear of death, our own death and that of those we love.   No matter how much happiness and satisfaction we may find in our lives, we know that one day it will all come to an end.

But today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the victory over death. Jesus Christ has risen and conquered death and sin, and there can be no greater message. "You shall not die." St. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:55

“O death, where is your victory?
Where is your power to hurt?”

As Catholics, we celebrate the physical death of our saints because we know that is the day they entered into eternal life, into glory and eternal bliss in the presence of God.  It is Jesus Christ, the God Man who died a horrendous death on a cross and then rose to life who made this possible for us.  It doesn't matter how black our sins are, it doesn't matter what we have done in life.  If we are willing to coming to Our Lord and let Him cleanse our soul in His Precious Blood, we can be made whole and enter into True Life with Him.

Here is a very joyous, upbeat video which I think really expresses it well.  I have included the lyrics below:

Have a wonderful, happy Easter (which lasts all week long) as we celebrate the great victory over death.

For all the earth had trembled,

The sun had hid its face,

All the men that walked with him

Had turned and run away,

They crucified Our Savior,

And laid Him in a tomb.

The Life that once brought love and hope slipped away that afternoon.

Satan gleamed with pleasure that day at Calvary,

For he thought he had won a mighty victory.

And like him all of the demons of hell began to cheer,

Oh but little did they know that their end was drawing near.

Cause early Sunday morning just like Jesus said,

He broke the curse of sin and death and He rose up from the dead.

Now we have a new beginning in a Kingdom that has no ending. 

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!!

Jesus Is Alive!

Death has lost its victory and the grave has been denied.

Jesus lives forever.

He’s Alive! He’s Alive!

He's the Alpha and Omega

The first and last is He.

The curse of sin is broken,

And we have perfect liberty

The Lamb of God is risen.

He's alive! He's alive! 

He’s the author and the finisher of our faith,

The Stone they threw away is the Cornerstone today.

Death has no more victory and the grave has no more sting.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!!

Wonderful Counselor, A Mighty God is He!

The Everlasting Father, He’s the Precious Prince of Peace.

He’s the Word that lives forever.

He’s Alive! He’s Alive!

Oh Hallelujah!

Jesus is Alive!

Death has lost its sting, and the grave has been denied.

Jesus lives forever! He’s Alive!

He’s Alive!

He’s Alive!

Jesus is alive!

Meditation on the First Glorious Mystery: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Yesterday, Saturday, May 4, was the First Saturday of the Month. The First Saturday Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was first mentioned by Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917. After showing the three children a vision of hell she said, "You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace... I shall come to ask for... the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays..." The First Saturday devotion is as follows:

It consists in going to Confession, receiving Communion, reciting five decades of the Rosary and meditating for a quarter of an hour on the mysteries of the Rosary on the first Saturday of five consecutive months. The Confession may be made during the eight days preceding or following the first Saturday of each month, provided that Holy Communion be received in the state of grace. Should one forget to form the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it may be formed at the next Confession, occasion to go to confession being taken at the first opportunity.

We are in the midst of the Easter Season, and therefore I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the First Glorious Mystery of the Rosary. Everything in existence hangs on this one event. I Corinthians 15:17 tells us: "If Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins." This tells us that Jesus' great sacrifice of pouring out His Precious Blood on the cross and all the suffering He experienced for us would have no meaning if He is not raised from the dead. St, Paul goes on to explain in verses 18-19 the consequences of Christ not rising from the dead: "Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." There is no more important event in the history of all creation than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is why this event is marked not by just one day in the Church calendar, but the entire week of Easter is considered one long solemnity. Easter is preceded by Lent, which is a 40-day preparation period. The Easter season itself lasts for 50 days, until the Feast of Pentecost, thus comprising 90 days of the Church calendar.

But why was it so necessary for Christ to rise from the dead? St. Paul tells us in verses 21-22 of I Corinthians 15 that, "For by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive." When our Lord conquered death for Himself, He also conquered death for each one of us, and freed us from the punishment we inherited from the first man, Adam, who was condemned to death when he and his wife, Eve, disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 5:14: "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." The One against whom Adam, along with all his progeny - which includes you and me - had sinned, the One whom we all had rejected and thus brought upon ourselves the justly deserved penalty of death, is the same One who came to us in the form of a man, poured out his Life on the Cross and then rose from the dead to free each one of us from death. It is an amazing Truth that we so easily take for granted because we have heard it so many times. Romans 5:15-17 explains it:

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!  Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Think of it in these terms. We are all aware of the terrible bombing in the Boston Marathon a few weeks ago. Picture the innocent people who were killed, injured and maimed in that barbaric act somehow being able to take upon themselves the penalty of those who did the bombings and thus spare the guilty. That is analogous to what Christ did for us.

Further, Christ didn't first check with us and say, look, I'm willing to die for you and free you from sin and death, but first you have to promise that you'll make it worth my time and effort by turning from your sins and following me.  As St. Paul tells us in Romans 5:6-8,

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Christ paid the penalty for sinners with no assurance that they would accept this free gift.  Christ came to this earth and sacrificed Himself while mankind was still in full rebellion against Him.  In fact, the ones for whom Christ died are the very ones who put Him to death.  Christ's Love for us is so great that He even allows us to continue to reject His Love and remain in our sinful ways.  The first law of love is freedom, and that is certainly integral to the Love of God.  Christ, the Good Shepherd, always leads us, but never forces us.  The Love our Lord has for mankind is so great that we will never fully comprehend it as mortal human beings.

During His earthly ministry, Christ told His followers many times that He would be put to death but then rise again from the dead.  The only one who truly believed and understood this was Mary, Christ's Blessed Mother.  As one priest explained it, Mary comprised the entirety of the Church from Good Friday through Resurrection Sunday.  When our Lord was arrested, all of his followers fled, with the exception of a handful who stayed with the Blessed Mother.  When they witnessed His agonizing death on the cross, they were convinced, as any rational person would be, that the dream was over.  His words and promises were forgotten.   They buried him and then walked away.  Ironically, as the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen pointed out, Christ's followers were the ones who had to be convinced He was truly resurrected from the dead.  It was Christ's enemies who actually took His words to heart.

The following is from a recorded talk by Archbishop Sheen entitled "Miracles" which you can listen to here.  This is from proecclesia.com, which offers 50 talks Archbishop Sheen had made as a record (this was before CD's), and which are offered free by proecclesia.com.  I highly recommend listening to as many of these as possible.

In the history of the world, only one tomb has ever had a rock rolled before it and a soldier set to guard it to prevent a dead man from rising, and that was the tomb of Christ on the evening of the Friday called Good. What spectacle could be more ridiculous than armed soldiers keeping their eyes on a corpse. But sentinels were set lest the dead walk, the silent speak and a pierced heart quicken to the throb of life.

They said he was dead. They knew he was dead. They said he would never rise again.  And yet they watched. They remembered that he called his body the temple, and that in three days after they destroyed it, he would rebuild it. They recalled too that he had compared himself to Jonas, and said that as Jonas was in the belly of the whale for three days, so would he be in the belly of the earth for three days, and then would rise again. . .

Their request for a guard until the third day [the Pharisees requesting a guard from Pontius Pilate] had more reference to Christ's words about his resurrection than it did to the fear of the apostles stealing a corpse and propping it up like a living thing in simulation of a resurrection. . . .There must be a seal, and the enemies would seal it. There must be a watch, and the enemies must keep it. The certificates of the death and resurrection must be signed by the enemies themselves. . .

The King lay in state with his guard about him. The most astounding fact about this vigilance over the dead was that the enemies of Christ expected the resurrection, but his friends did not. It was the believers who were the skeptics. It was the unbelievers who were credulous. His followers needed and demanded proofs before they would be convinced.

Guards at the tomb of Jesus

As Venerable Fulton Sheen pointed out, Christ's followers did not keep watch over the tomb because they thought he was dead and gone and his message had died with him.  Christ's enemies, ironically, had more faith, although it was in the form of fear, that Christ would rise from the dead than the followers of Christ did.

Our Lord wanted to make sure that there could be no doubt that He had risen from the dead.  He remained on the earth for 40 days in His Glorified Body, appearing to many.  St. Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15:3-7:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.

There is the famous story of Doubting Thomas (John 20:24-28):

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

By the end of the 40 days after Easter, on the first Ascension Thursday when Christ rose to heaven to sit at the Right Hand of the Father, all of His Followers were fully and completely convinced that Christ had risen from the dead. The dream was not only not dead, it was more alive than they could have ever imagined. They were hoping for a Savior who would rescue them from the tyranny of the Romans. Instead, they had a Savior who rescued them from the eternal tyranny of sin and death, as St. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:54-57:

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Death no longer has power over us.  The bonds of sin have been broken.  As St. Paul concludes:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

There is no power greater than the risen Christ.  No one and nothing can defeat us except our lack of belief in the Risen Lord.  If we are willing to give ourselves to Him without reservation, He will reward us with eternal life in the Presence of the Holy Trinity.  That is the message of the Resurrection.

Christ has risen!  Alleluia!

Easter Meditation: The Women At Christ's Sepulchre

Easter is such a joyous Feast, celebrating Christ's victory over sin and death and the opening of heaven to mankind, that it cannot be celebrated in just one day.  Easter is celebrated the entire week, so each day is Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, etc. 

Below is the meditation from yesterday's traditional Breviary on the women who came to Christ's tomb early in the morning and were greeted by an angel who told them to fear not, that Christ was not there but had risen as he said he would.  St. Gregory the Great tells us that the story of these women symbolizes our walk with Christ, in that just as the women brought spices to Christ's grave, our good works are a sweet fragrance to our Lord.  The Roman guards were very frightened by the angel when he came and rolled back the stone, and they, who were supposedly afraid of nothing, even ran away.  This represented the fear of those who are opposed to our Lord compared with the love and acceptance shown to those who follow our Lord. 

The women going early in the morning to the grave are an inspiration to me because even though Jesus was dead, and as far as they knew, he was no longer there for them, their love for him was so great that they still served him.  After three days, a dead body would have a very bad smell, plus Jesus had been beaten so badly that it would have been worse than a normal dead body.  But that did not deter them at all.  Also, while Peter and the other apostles were hiding away from the Roman soldiers in fear of their lives, the women boldly went out without thought for their own safety to minister to Christ in the only way they could.  For this they were rewarded with a greeting from an angel of God, and were the first to receive the message that our Lord had risen.  They did not understand this message and Mary Magdalene was not convinced it was true until Christ Himself appeared to her and told her so.  But her lack of understanding was not counted against her or the other women.  And so our lack of understanding is not an impediment to us.  Intellectual understanding by itself will not save anyone.  It is only faith that counts, and that is what these women illustrated in their actions. 

A Homily by St. Gregory the Pope

Dearly beloved brethren, ye have heard the deed of the holy women which had followed the Lord ; how that they brought sweet spices to his sepulchre, and, now that he was dead, having loved him while he was yet alive, they followed him with careful tenderness still. But the deed of these holy women doth point to somewhat which must needs be done in the holy Church. And it behoveth us well to give ear to what they did, that we may afterward consider with ourselves what we must do likewise after their ensample. We also, who believe in him that was dead, do come to his sepulchre, bearing sweet spices, when we seek the Lord with the savour of good living, and the fragrant report of good works. Those women, when they brought their spices, saw a vision of Angels, and, in sooth, those souls whose godly desires do move them to seek the Lord with the savour of good lives, do see the countrymen of our Fatherland which is above.  [Like the women who came to the sepulchre on that first Easter, even though we may not totally understand all that we do for our Lord, he will reward us in far greater measure than we can ever imagine as long as we proceed in faith.]

The Demons Cast Out Of Heaven

It behoveth us to mark what this meaneth, that they saw the angel sitting on the right side. For what signifieth the left, but this life which now is? or the right, but life everlasting? Whence also it is written in the Song of Songs : His left hand is under my head and his right hand doth embrace me. Since, therefore, our Redeemer had passed from the corruption of this life which now is, the Angel which told that his undying life was come, sat, as became him, on the right side. They saw him clothed in a white garment, for he was herald of the joy of this our great solemnity, and the glistering whiteness of his raiment told of the brightness of this holy Festival of ours. Of ours, said I? or of his? But if we will speak the truth, we must acknowledge that it is both his and ours. The Again-rising of our Redeemer is a Festival of gladness for us, for us it biddeth know that we shall not die for ever ; and for Angels also it is a festival of gladness, for it biddeth them know that we are called to fulfil their number in heaven.  [St. Augustine taught that one of the purposes of creating man was to replace the fallen angels who had rebelled against God and been cast out of heaven.  Therefore, the angels in heaven rejoice greatly that man has been saved to join them in heaven.]

On this glad Festival Day then, which is both his and ours, the Angel appeared in white raiment. For as the Lord, rising again from the dead, leadeth us unto the mansions above, he repaireth the breaches of the heavenly Fatherland. But what meaneth this, that the Angel said unto the women which came to the sepulchre : Fear not? Is it not as though he had said openly : Let them fear which love not the coming of the heavenly countrymen ; let them be afraid who are so laden by fleshly lusts, that they have lost all hope ever to be joined to their company. But as for you, why fear ye, who, when ye see us, see but your fellow-countrymen? Hence also Matthew, writing of the guise of the Angel, saith : His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. The lightning speaketh of fear and great dread, the snow of the soft brilliancy of rejoicing.

Easter Vigil Message: The Holy Father Warns Of Great Peril To The World

Christ Rising From The Dead

Today is Easter Sunday.  On Good Friday we commemorated the most solemn day of the Christian calendar, the day on which our Lord died on the cross for our salvation.  Today, Easter, we celebrate the most joyous day, for today Christ is risen and death is conquered.  Christ has opened the door to heaven for all mankind, and beckons us to follow Him.  Darkness and destruction have been lifted from the earth.  Our Lord has redeemed us, bought us back from the evil one.  We rejoice with the angels in heaven today.  As the Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"  Our Lord has conquered death not through violence or anger or hate, but through love.  He has given himself for us, and now we must give ourselves to him and to each other. 

But as we look around us, it certainly doesn't seem that anything has changed.  If anything, the world seems to be descending into more and more evil.  Man's inhumanity to man is reaching new heights, or should I say, depths.  The evil one seems to be the one who is winning. 

Our Holy Father, as usual, explains this far better than I can even begin to.  Here is his Easter Vigil message:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Easter is the feast of the new creation. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer knows illness and death. He has taken mankind up into God himself. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”, as Saint Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:50). On the subject of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, the Church writer Tertullian in the third century was bold enough to write: “Rest assured, flesh and blood, through Christ you have gained your place in heaven and in the Kingdom of God” (CCL II, 994). A new dimension has opened up for mankind. Creation has become greater and broader.

Easter Day ushers in a new creation, but that is precisely why the Church starts the liturgy on this day with the old creation, so that we can learn to understand the new one aright. At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day, the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: “God said, ‘let there be light!’” (Gen 1:3). The creation account begins symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created being.

What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial.   It is a “no”.  [St. Augustine explained that good can exist without evil, but there can be no evil unless there is good, because evil is the absence of good, or as the Holy Father explains, the absence of light, the True Light that is Jesus Christ.]

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. [This is the message of Easter - good has triumphed over evil.  Evil has been banished, and all those who cling to evil will be banished with it.  Come out of the darkness into the Light, the True Light of Jesus Christ.]  The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. [John 1:9 says that Jesus is "the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world."] With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.

But how is this to come about? How does all this affect us so that instead of remaining word it becomes a reality that draws us in? Through the sacrament of baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us, through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptized: Fiat lux – let there be light. God’s new day – the day of indestructible life, comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by him and walk with him into the light, into real life. For this reason the early Church called baptism photismos – illumination.

Why was this? [Here the Holy Father gets to the heart of the cause of evil in the world, that fact that mankind rejects the light of Christ and chooses instead the darkness of his own understanding.]  The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil. The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.  [The Holy Father is giving us a dire warning here, that because of the spiritual darkness we have chosen, the continued physical existence of our world is in peril.]  If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk. Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible. Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment? With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify. Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.  [All of the great creations of mankind mean nothing without faith and belief in his Creator, and in fact, those manmade creations will actually lead to our destruction.]

Dear friends, as I conclude, I would like to add one more thought about light and illumination. On Easter night, the night of the new creation, the Church presents the mystery of light using a unique and very humble symbol: the Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives himself and so bestows the great light. Secondly, we should remember that the light of the candle is a fire. Fire is the power that shapes the world, the force of transformation. And fire gives warmth. Here too the mystery of Christ is made newly visible. Christ, the light, is fire, flame, burning up evil and so reshaping both the world and ourselves. “Whoever is close to me is close to the fire,” as Jesus is reported by Origen to have said. And this fire is both heat and light: not a cold light, but one through which God’s warmth and goodness reach down to us.

The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light. But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church,. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds up the community of light. So the candle serves as a summons to us to become involved in the community of the Church, whose raison d’être is to let the light of Christ shine upon the world. 

Let us pray to the Lord at this time that he may grant us to experience the joy of his light; let us pray that we ourselves may become bearers of his light, and that through the Church, Christ’s radiant face may enter our world (cf. LG 1). Amen

Pope Benedict XVI never ceases to amaze me with the depth of his thought and clarity of vision.  He makes his statements softly and without fanfare, and we must listen carefully to what he says.   He is giving us a very urgent message here which has relevance to every man, woman and child on this earth.  It truly is a message of life and death, of physical life and death, and of even far more importance, spiritual life and death.   The world ignores this message at its own peril.