On this Easter day, we confess our faith that love [God] raises up what seemed lost in death. We deal with evil by faith in the resurrection of Christ. We transform hopelessness that we feel in wars, poverty and injustice with life-changing power of faith in Easter. We surrender only to the beauty of love and not to any other power. The women who followed Jesus overcame their fear and shaming of the crowd by love. Their love for Jesus took them to the tomb on Easter day, to the reality of the resurrection, while the men disciples were in hiding, overcome by fear and doubt. Today Christ opened for us the passage to the land of everlasting life. Hippolytus: “This is the day freedom from suffering comes from suffering, immortality from death, life from the tomb, healing from a wound, resurrection from the fall and ascension into heaven from the descend into hell. God does this mystery work, bringing the incredible from the impossible”.
Today Christ became the good news to all who live in the shadow of death and gloom. The tomb could not hold the power of God’s love. If everything ended in the tomb, survival of the fittest, power and greed would be the law of the land. Jesus is the living One because love cannot die. Now we can live an ‘yes’ to love, truth, beauty and goodness and let go the ‘no’ that says, ‘I am afraid, I am a sinner, I have no strength, I am depressed’. Gandhi said: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time, they can seem invincible but in the end, they always fall”. Christ has made us people of ‘blessed hope’; we never surrender to despair because Christ will raise us up from the tomb and this faith is the wind behind our sail.
Easter changed the disciples’ life story! Fear of death scattered them on Good Friday; the risen Christ brought them courage and gathered them in joy because, Christ kept his promise, ‘I will not abandon you in death and destruction’. Christ the great light showed them the beyond of death. He changed the meaning of being in the tomb; there he fashions the new creation. Are we indifferent to this faith in the resurrection? or is our faith dormant? Do burdens of life and noises of the world around smother and destroy our faith? Today, confusion, doubt, fear and distress turned to a beholding of life triumphant over death. Many stones block our vision, the light of Christ; the tomb is a hopeless end for many. Risen Christ keeps shining his light through the darkened corridors of our life to see a seeing that is eternal. Let us turn our gaze on the empty tomb of Christ, the stone rolled back and feel the power of love that changes our crosses into tree of life; above all long for faith because, we will not get to anywhere without the desire! Roll back the stone, awake from sleep, Christ is Risen!