Christ is Risen...
He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
The title of this week’s column forms the traditional Eastern Christian Paschal greeting, “Khristós anésti! – Alethós anésti!” which has become more well-known here in the West over the past few decades.
My apologies for the delay in getting out this week’s column as well as this week’s newsletter; it seems that I pushed myself a bit too hard over the Easter weekend, and it caused some problems with my underlying medical conditions, so I have been recovering and getting everything back to normal for the past couple of days.
Thankfully, we have the next fifty days to continue the celebration and contemplate the mystery contained so succinctly in that Easter greeting. Christ is Risen! God Himself, who took flesh at the Incarnation, truly died. God, who is life itself, desired to experience death as a human, but death could not contain Him, and He rose from the dead, the first to rise as a part of a New Creation, a pledge of what we will one day share.
The temple has been restored, weeping has been turned to joy, mourning to celebration.
An old Ukrainian legend relates that, after His Resurrection, Christ threw Satan into a deep pit, chaining him with twelve iron chains. When Satan has chewed through each of the twelve chains, the end of the world will come. All year long, the Evil One gnaws at the iron, getting to the last link in the last chain -- but too late, for it is Easter, and when the people cry, "Christ is Risen!" all of Satan's efforts are reversed.
The Easter Sequence, which is prayed at Mass throughout this week’s Easter Octave, offers us another beautiful reflection for this time:
Christians, to the Paschal Victim
Offer your thankful praises!
A Lamb the sheep redeemeth:
Christ, who only is sinless,
Reconcileth sinners to the Father;
Death and life have contended
In that combat stupendous:
The Prince of Life, who died,
reigns immortal.
Speak Mary, declaring
What thou sawest wayfaring:
“The Tomb of Christ, who is living.
The glory of Jesu’s Resurrection;
Bright angels attesting,
The shroud and napkin resting.
Yea, Christ my hope is arisen:
To Galilee he goes before you.
Christ indeed from death is risen,
our new life obtaining.
Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Amen. Alleluia.
The Prince of Life is now the ever-reigning victorious King, He is the source of our hope and our joy, a joy that should be contagious, a joy that should imbue all that we do, and a joy that should infect all that we meet.
May the joy of Easter fill your whole being, and may it be as life-changing for us as it was for the first disciples.