Jesus is Risen!

“The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” — Matthew 28:5-6.

Jesus is risen. He is risen. He. Is. Risen. Three small words that changed the world 2000 years ago, and can change our lives today if we let them.

The Resurrection is one of the cornerstones of Christianity. The Gospels tell us that Jesus died upon the cross, and He physically rose again from the dead. If this was a farce, the whole edifice of the Faith crumbles into dust. Christianity becomes a half-baked legend that’s easily dismissible, like Pandora’s box or any of Aesop’s fables. But if it happened, it means that Jesus truly is God in the flesh, and following Him and the Church He established through His Apostles is a sure foundation all of us can build our lives upon.

Before we look at evidence defending the Resurrection, let it be mentioned that if Jesus never rose from the dead, there’s no way you can form a coherent understanding of His life and message. On one hand, He says nice, fluffy things such as “Love one another.” That type of message gives all of us warm fuzzies inside, like the reaction a toddler has to watching an episode of Barney.

On the other hand, Jesus sometimes seems like the biggest narcissist the world has ever known. He says things like “I am the vine, you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.” He tells His disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

If the Resurrection never happened, there is no way you can reconcile those different sides of Him. You’d have to paint Jesus as being half teddy bear and half psychopath, and leave it at that. You’d never want to worship Him, much less get to know Him at all.

Non-Christians often say they respect Jesus and His teachings, but don’t believe Him to be God incarnate. But it’s logically impossible to treat a madman as a legitimate religious figure, much less as a normal human being. The English author GK Chesterton said it like this: “No modern critic in his five wits thinks that the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount was a horrible half-witted imbecile that might be scrawling stars on the walls of a cell.” But if Jesus rose from the dead, it gives us all a reason to stop and pay attention to Him.

So let’s look at some of the alternative things that may have happened on that first Easter, and why those theories don’t work.

It could be said that the Sanhedrin, or Herod, or Pontius Pilate (who all condemned Jesus to death) stole His body. But once people started talking about Jesus coming back from the dead, any of them easily could’ve produced the body in order to save themselves from becoming the laughingstock of the synagogue and the Roman Empire. None of them did.

Or maybe it was all a hallucination. But St. Luke’s Gospel gives the account of the Emmaus-bound disciples who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, after spending a whole day not knowing it’s Him. St. John’s Gospel has Thomas touching Jesus’s wounds and St. Peter eating fish with Him. Saints Peter and John witnessed His trial and crucifixion, and knew it really was Jesus who died on the cross.

Many have argued that the Apostles stole the body. But let’s consider their fate. With the exception of Saint John (who was exiled to Greece for preaching the Gospel in Asia Minor), almost all of them were martyrs. These were not ISIS radicals blowing themselves up to be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife. And they certainly were not staging a massive publicity stunt for money or fame, since they had nothing on earth to gain for becoming missionaries. Instead, they sacrificed absolutely everything they had to tell everyone who would listen that Jesus had risen from the dead. They left behind their families and jobs, and became separated from each other as they spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth. These were Jesus’s 12 closest friends; who ate and drank with Him, traveled with Him, did ministry with Him, and witnessed His miracles. And when they were asked if Jesus is God incarnate, they put their very lives on the line to testify that He is.

Given all of this, I honestly don’t see how you can say that the Resurrection never happened. But now we get to the part where this changes everything. And for every single person on this Earth, whether we’ve believed the Gospel message our entire lives or are hostile to it, this makes everyone uncomfortable.

In this relativistic day and age in which we live, there’s a false sense of humility that comes with it. So often, it’s said that there are no facts, only opinions; that there may be truth out there that’s bigger than all of us, but it can’t be comprehended at all, not even a little bit. And if we have that mindset, it gives all of us permission to make things up as we go along.

On the other hand, if there’s any truth at all that’s bigger than ourselves, and we can proclaim it to others, the best and humblest thing any of us can do is surrender our lives to it. St. Maximilian Kolbe said it like this: “No one on Earth can create truth. But what we all ought to do is seek truth and serve it when we’ve found it.”

So if we commit ourselves to following the risen Jesus, and seeking the truths He has revealed to us through His life, death, and resurrection; and through the Church He established, there’s no way we can be the same people we’ve always been.

It changes the way we view the Sacraments and the Liturgy. Do we make the effort to attend Mass each weekend and on Holy Days of Obligation? When we do attend, do we receive the Eucharist in a state of grace? Do we view the Mass as a celebration of how wonderful we are? Or do we see it as an opportunity to worship a God who is infinitely greater than we can ever imagine? When we sin, do we go to Confession to make ourselves right with God again?

It changes the way we see our fellow human beings. Do we uphold and advocate for the dignity of every person, from the unborn to the dying, and everyone else in between? Are we patient and loving towards those we don’t like; realizing that we are all children of God?

What about our list of priorities? Are our dreams and ambitions all about money, power, and the pursuit of pleasure, with our relationship with God taking a sideline seat? Do we see our identities as Christ followers as a box to be checked off on a survey? Or do we pursue sainthood with every fiber of our being?

But ultimately, being a Christian is not just agreeing with a set of intellectual concepts or making a lifestyle change. It’s about following a person; that is, following Jesus, who is the Resurrection and the Life. In dying on the Cross, our Lord made a gift of Himself to us. All He asks is that we make a gift of ourselves to Him in return.

As the Church, the Body of Christ, Jesus has given us a great calling: that we act as His hands and feet in the world, loving one another as He loved us and proclaiming the same message He shared with His disciples 2000 years ago: that through His life, His death and His Resurrection, there is hope for our salvation.

Carrying out this mission is not always easy. It involves dying to self. It involves preaching the truth in and out of season. It involves taking up our crosses and carrying them to places we don’t necessarily want to go. It involves confronting our ugliest sins and secrets and letting God redeem them.

And it involves failing at all of this a lot. I know I do all the time. I’m a sinner in need of God’s grace just as much as everyone else.

But I can also tell you that in all the years I’ve spent following Jesus, I have found no greater love, no greater joy, no greater hope, and no greater peace. It truly is the best journey I’ve ever been on.

And I want to invite all of you to come along on this adventure with me. My encouragement to you, this Eastertide, is this: Please don’t be afraid to let the power of Jesus’s Resurrection change your life.

In making the grave His own temporary resting place, Jesus made the grave temporary for all of us. He loosened the grip that sin and death have on our lives and gives us hope that our passing from this life is a pathway for us to return to our true home; to Heaven, where our Creator dwells and longs to be with us.

And that hope fills us with joy. The death, sin, and decay we see all around us as a part of our human condition don’t have the final say in defining who we are or what our lives are all about. Jesus has the final say over all of it IF we hand ourselves over to Him. His mercy is new every morning, and it is enough to free us from our sins if we would but ask for His grace. It is as St. John Paul II once said: “Do not give in to despair. We are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song!”

And I believe he said it like that because the news of Jesus’s Resurrection is too good to for us to keep it to ourselves. It’s a message that everyone we meet deserves to hear, and for us to hold back from sharing it would be to deny the world a great gift.

So today and throughout our lives, may our voices echo the same message that the angels shared with the women at the tomb: “I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen, just as He said.”

Jesus is risen. Truly He is risen, indeed.

A blessed Easter to all of you. 🙂