Second Sunday of Easter - Year C - 11th April 2010

'I am the Resurrection'

Jesus visited Bethany, four days after Lazarus had died. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she immediately ran to meet him and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." "Your brother will rise again," Jesus answered. She replied, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Then Jesus declared: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."

Jesus wants to make clear who he is for human beings. He possesses the most precious thing anyone could want: Life, the Life that will never die.

Martha believed in the final resurrection: "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." But with his wonderful affirmation, "I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus tells her that she does not have to wait for the future to hope in the resurrection of the dead. Right now, in the present moment, for all those who believe in him, he is already that divine, ineffable, eternal Life that will never die.

If Jesus is in those who believe, if he is in you, you will not die. This Life in the believer has the same nature as the risen Jesus and is, therefore, quite different from the human condition in which we find ourselves. And this extraordinary Life, which already exists in you, will become fully manifest on the last day when, with your whole being, you will take part in the resurrection that is to come.

Death will remain for you, as for everyone, a unique, intense, perhaps feared experience. But it will no longer mean that existence is pointless, no longer be absurd, your final end. Death, for you, will no longer be really a death.

In your Baptism, you received immortal Life. Jesus said "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. Do you believe this?"

'Believing', here, does not mean simply accepting the truths Jesus has proclaimed; it means adhering to them with your whole being. To have this Life, therefore, you must say your 'yes' to Christ. Jesus reinforced this, "Whoever keeps my word will never see death".

During this Easter season, let us make that decisive shift, towards the death of our ego, so that the Risen Christ, may live in us.