Dear St. Rita Families,
A blessed Easter to all of you! As we celebrate this most important feast of the Church year, I encourage you to ponder how the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection affects and has affected your life. You know that it has defined Western civilization up until recent years, and even the relatively recent, wholesale rejection of Christianity is an indication that its presence is still important today.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is and will be of perennial importance for all times and places. As the Exultet Hymn from the Easter Vigil reminds us, “Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.” Those are powerful words! It means that our earthly life is nothing without Christ. It means that nothing we do can take care of our own sin. It means that if I gain the whole world, but do not have Christ, I gain nothing (cf. Mt 16:26).
It is, then, of the utmost urgency that we preach the Gospel, that we conform our lives to Christ and to the will of God, that we open ourselves to become instruments of His grace and mercy! This Gospel that we preach is not a matter of compulsion for others, however. It is a matter, though, of being firm, clear, and direct about who Christ has revealed Himself to be. There is no room for compromise about Christ, because anything other than Christ does not save. You and I do not want (for ourselves or for anyone else) a dead version of the Gospel, like a vaccine that the recipient can overcome, because that would be a dead-ly version of the Gospel, one that does not bring life, but one that rather leaves the recipient to believe falsely. When falsehoods are spread, it is not the work of the Spirit of Truth.
Therefore, proclaim with the Apostles and the whole Church that Jesus Christ really and truly rose, bodily, from the dead. Proclaim that He is in fact the Son of God made man, that He really lived and died 2000 years ago, on the Cross, for our salvation. Be assured that the Scriptures preserve for us the truth about Jesus Christ, the only Name under Heaven by which men are the be saved (cf. Acts 4:12), and that they teach “solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation” (Dei Verbum, 11)! Believe and proclaim too, that the Church that Christ founded “subsists in the Catholic Church” (Lumen Gentium, 8), and that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).
These are truths that the world shuns and cannot bear to hear. These are truths, however, that we do not fear to shout from the housetops. No one likes medicine when they have to take it, since it can be bitter and painful. But in the Charity of Christ, you and I are given to offer it, to strive with all our might to get people to take it. Such efforts are not due to arrogance or pride, but they come rather from a deep humility. You and I have been shaken out our earthly reveries and been permitted to see and experience the saving action of God. It was not because of any merit of ours, for “it was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn 15:16). It was, however, that God’s salvific action might be shown through “earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). What else could we do but proclaim that which we have seen and heard (cf. Acts 4:20)? In charity for our neighbors who find themselves stuck in sin and sadness, we hand ourselves over even to their rejection, insults, and anger solely so that they, too, might have some hope of forgiveness, peace, and salvation.
The Solemnity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead spurs us on to rejoice in this great truth and reality, that God’s life permeates all things, and not even sin or death can stop it! Seen through this lens, life takes on a whole different hue. We can see the world clearly for what it is, not obscured by sin or earthly desires. And we have the God-man, Jesus Christ, to thank for it all!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen