A high school teacher who was an atheist once gave everyone the homework to write about the person who changed their life the most. Petike wrote about Jesus. When the teacher handed out the papers, he gave this boy one. He said it was because it was supposed to be about a living person. Even though the classmates proved that they could see how much this Jesus was a living person, since he was Peti’s only support when he lost his father, the teacher hardened himself.
Human life here on earth is a series of crises. The first crisis when we have to leave the safety of the womb is the last when we die. What does the crisis hide? Loss or growth? It really depends on us. It depends on our faith. In Greek, krisis means crisis, but also change. In such cases, a decision is at the center: either the person heals and matures, or he gets stuck and does not develop further. Faith is also such a decision. When we say with great joy in the confession of faith on the Easter holiday that I await the resurrection of the dead and eternal life, then we make a decision that we want to see even our death as an opportunity for growth, because with our death, through Jesus Christ, a way opens for us to a completely new reality dimension, to the happiness of eternal life.
The resurrection does not mean that God will eternalize this earthly life in its current form, since that would be terrible: there is a lot of sin and horror in the world. With the resurrection, a newly created world begins. The resurrection is “a radical mutational leap”, as Pope Benedict put it, that is, a leap in creation made possible by Jesus Christ. At the same time, for us, this is not a positive leap into wholeness that occurs automatically regardless of our will, but requires a decision of faith. Whether our body becomes damned or a glorified, incorruptible body (in which we can live our personal existence and relationships as a fulfilled, happy reality) depends on whether we have made this decision of faith and whether we have chosen love as the at crisis points in our lives. So crises basically test our ability to love. Those people who are able to choose love and God even in times of difficulty will develop.
With his resurrection, Jesus does not return to earthly life in his previous earthly form (like the resurrected Lazarus) so that we can kill him again or suffer again, but he freely went forward into the new world of Christ’s resurrection and took matter with him in his body in its new, eternally realized form. So Jesus went forward and since then He is the Omega point of creation. All of our lives are either going this way or going bankrupt.
In fact, the Easter mystery is encoded in our lives: death and resurrection. That we always have to leave something, first the safety of the mother’s womb, later childhood, then “piece by piece” our health, and finally even the safety of earthly life, in order to experience a new vitality. We find life lost. That is why Jesus says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled: believe in God and believe in me. There are many places in my father’s house. If it were not so, would I have told you that I will go and prepare a place for you, …I will come again and take you with me, so that where I am, you may also be with me” (Jn 14,1-3).
A believing woman was mocked a lot by her unbelieving roommates in the hospital – she endured it silently – but when she was dying and her pastor came to see her, the aunt said: “Father, I’m glad you came here. I know I’m going to die, but I’m not afraid. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, because I know I’m going home.” – suddenly there was a thick silence in the ward, they were ashamed. There, in this holy presence, they guessed something, that when our earthly life ends, we actually return home and pass from life to Life with Jesus. A new dimension of human life will be revealed and we will be able to live with God in the fullness of incorruptible life.
Many of us fear even more than death that if we become weak, fallen, if we fail, then no one will need us, perhaps not even God, and in death he will leave us forever. However, since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know for sure that there is such a strong love that takes us out of death. This is the love of God, the Father. This is love that raises from the dead. Since then, the most certain thing in life is not death, but resurrection: that we are loved the most when we are the most fallen.
I wish you a blessed Easter!
László Farkas, MD priest from Dunakesz
Cover image: painting by Péter Tuzson-Berczeli
