There is the story about a teenaged boy who befriended some missionaries in a small town in Africa. For several weeks they chatted about their work and life in the mission. At one point, the boy asked them about Jesus. So they described the life and ministry of Our Lord to him. At the end of the conversation one of the missionaries gave him a small New Testament and suggested that he read it. To their consternation, the boy did not return for several weeks. Finally, one day he showed up on the steps of the church, asking to speak with the missionaries. They invited him in. He looked them straight in the eye and said, “I have read the gospels that you gave me and I need to ask you one question. Is it true that Jesus rose from the dead?”
“Why, yes,” they said.
To which he replied, “This changes everything! WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!”
The young man is right. It does change everything. So why are we Christians so timid about proclaiming the resurrection of Christ? Perhaps it is that we have not stopped to understand what it really means for us and for the world.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Principle #1: Whatever Christ encounters, Christ transforms. He did this when he transformed the waters of the Jordan into the waters of baptism. He did the same at the wedding at Cana and at the Last Supper, transforming those rituals in the sacraments we know today. But he did this most profoundly when he took flesh of the Virgin Mary. Christ entered fully into our humanity and thus all humankind is transformed and perfected.
Principle #2: To be a human being is a wonderful thing. We have a body and a soul. No other being in creation is like us. For example, angels are spiritual beings. They do not have a body. We do. There is a strange heresy out there that when we die and go to heaven, we become angels. It makes for great Christmas stories, but it falls flat theologically.
Principle #3: The passion, death and resurrection of Christ not only restored humanity, but transformed and perfected it. By his passion and death we have been redeemed and reconciled to Almighty God. But it is his resurrection which is the kicker. By rising from the dead, he shows us that we too shall rise with him on the last day, body and soul.
Therefore: At the end of the age, if we have died with him in baptism, we will rise with him on the last day. Our final destiny is not to morph into something else. Instead, we become what God has created us to be—perfectly human, body and soul.
There is a tendency to think of the resurrection as some future, far off reality, but that is not the case.
As St. Paul says, if we have died with him in baptism, we rise with him in his resurrection.
From the moment of our baptism, our life of grace is unfolding,
Even now, we are becoming what God has created us to be,
Let us allow God to continue to transform us into what we have been created to be…now. Christ is risen. This changes everything, right here and now. Let us be people of the resurrection…now.