Today is Resurrection Sunday, the Sunday on which the Church celebrates in a special way the event that radically changed the history of humankind. To appreciate better the radicality of the change, it will help us to review some elements from the Lenten Sundays.
The very first Sunday of Lent, we heard the biblical story that narrates why the redemption or rescue process is needed. We heard the story of Adam and Eve’s fall. What happened was that the serpent convinced our first parents that God was deceiving them: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil” (Gen 3:4-5). This was a lie. The consequence was that Adam and Eve became naked, unprotected. By mistrusting God, they gave up the original gifts that kept them safe and sound, and, as a consequence, suffering with all its variations (physical, psychological, social, etc.) and death entered the world.
During the following Sundays, we were instructed about God’s plan and Jesus Christ’s essential role in it as Living Water, Light of the World, and Resurrection and Life.
Now, here we are today celebrating the moment in which the Promise given by God in Genesis 3 that the serpent’s head will be crushed became true. Diana Butler expresses it very fittingly: “In John 20, the account of Mary Magdalene and Jesus on the morning of the resurrection, the reversal of Eden becomes complete when, in a graveyard — a garden of death — the curse of death itself, the curse of Eden, is defeated in the reunion of woman and man as friends and co-workers. She is sent out — not cast out — to proclaim new life birthed into the world: ‘Christ is alive!’”
What made such a reversal possible? St. Paul expressed the challenge that existed: “Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8). Last Friday, on Good Friday, we read the passage from the letter to the Hebrews that says, “In the days when Christ was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:7-9).
If Adam and Eve’s fall meant mistrusting God, then restoration means trusting Him. Already the Old Testament proclaimed it: “O Lord of hosts, blessed the man who trusts in you!” (Ps 84:13), advising on the other hand “Trust in the Lord with all your heart” (Prov 3:5). In fact, Jesus carried His trust in the Father to the most seemingly hopeless situation, which is death itself. That is why the Book of Revelation calls Jesus Christ “… the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead,” the one “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Rev 1:5), “The Amen, the faithful and true witness” (3:14). It is worth recalling that Amen comes from the Hebrew ’Emeth, which means “truth, trustworthiness.”
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What’s next? My call, as Fr. Green states, “I must ‘write the fifth gospel’ in my own prayer and life. I must give my own answer to the question: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ … The fifth gospel which we are writing is our answer to the question who the Lord is for us—and who we are for him. He loves us personally, in our own concrete uniqueness. The paschal mystery is not just historical fact. It is our story: the story of the Lord’s love for us unto death, and of his conquest of death in our life” (Thomas Green, Drinking from a Dry Well, p. 118-119). We have celebrated once again the Paschal Mystery of Jesus of Nazareth. After contemplating this unique event in the history of humankind, are we willing to trust fully in God?