Thought for the Day – 3 April – Easter Tuesday in the Easter Octave
On the Spiritual Resurrection of the Children of God
If you be risen with Christ, mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. – Colossians 3
Let us represent to ourselves Jesus Christ, rising glorious from the Sepulchre.
“Faith in the Risen One is faith in something that has really taken place. Today, it is still true, that Christianity is neither legend nor fiction, not mere exhortation nor mere solution. Faith stands on the firm basis of reality that has actually taken place. Today too, in the words of Scripture, we can as it were, touch the Lord’s glorified wounds and say, with Thomas, in gratitude and joy – My Lord and my God! (Jn 20:28)
One question, however, continually arises at this point. Not everyone saw the Risen Jesus. Why not? Why did He not go in triumph to the Pharisees and Pilate to show them that He was alive and to let them touch His scars? But in asking such a question, we are forgetting that Jesus was not a resuscitated corpse like Lazarus and the boy of Naim. They were allowed to return once more, to their erstwhile biological life, which sooner or later, would have to end, after all, with death. What happened in Jesus’ case, was quite different – He did not return to the old life but began a new one, a life that is ultimate, no longer subject to nature’s law of death but standing in God’s freedom and hence final and absolute. A life, therefore, that is no longer part of the realm of physics and biology, although it has integrated matter and nature into itself on a higher plane. And that is why it is no longer within the ambit of our senses of touch and sight. The Risen One cannot be seen like a piece of wood or stone. He can only be seen by the person to whom He reveals Himself. And He only reveals Himself, to the one whom He can entrust with a mission. He does NOT reveal Himself, to curiosity but to LOVE; LOVE is the indispensable organ if we are to see and approach Him.”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
The Word of the Witnesses – Seek that Which is Above (1985)
AnaStpaul 