Easter Sunday: Christ Lives in Me
Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
-Acts 10:34a, 39-43
Have you ever had an experience so powerful, so beautiful, or so tragic that you haven’t been able to find a way to tell the story of what happened or even to describe your own feelings? Sometimes, especially in the most important moments of life, words fail. There limits to what we can put into words. These same limitations can also keep us from fully expressing the truth, beauty, and goodness of God. I think anyone who has tried to express what it is that are celebrating in these holy days understands how frustrating those limits can be. Through the centuries Christians have found ways to express these truths in art, music, and in the symbols of the Mass and the other sacraments. But even then, no matter how beautiful the song, painting, church building, or ritual might be, there are still limits to how we can express ourselves.
These limits of language—and even of art and ritual—were not news to the first Christians. They also struggled to understand and express everything that happened that weekend in Jerusalem. Because of this, their experience of Easter wasn’t enshrined in abstract philosophies or complicated doctrines (those would come later). Instead, they proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus by the way they lived their lives.
“The Resurrection of Christ and the Women at the Tomb” by Fra Angelico in San Marco, Florence (1439-1443)
Rather than passively remembering Christ and the mysteries of his life, they experienced him: Jesus was a living, redeeming, actual Presence among them. And those first Christians proclaimed (sometimes at their own peril): “Christ lives in me!” They understood that the only way to truly celebrate the mystery of Easter was to live Christ.
Although the Gospel accounts of that first Easter morning might lead us to believe otherwise, Sacred Scripture tells that, in many ways, the Resurrection was an intimate, individual experience. As Henri Nouwen observed in The Road to Daybreak, there was nothing in the Resurrection that would force people to believe:
It was an event for the friends of Jesus, for those who had known him, listened to him, and believed in him. It was a very intimate event: a word here, a gesture there, and a gradual awareness that something new was being born—small, hardly noticed, but with the potential to change the face of the earth. Mary Magdalene heard her name. John and Peter saw the empty grave. Jesus’ friends felt their hearts burn in encounters that find expression in the remarkable words: ‘He is risen.’ All had remained the same, while all had changed.
With all this in mind, it isn’t by chance that Church has chosen to read the Acts of the Apostles during the Easter Season. Luke’s chronicle of the work of Peter and the Apostles in Jerusalem, of the death of Stephen, and of the missionary efforts of Paul, Barnabas, and Silas is an extended how the Resurrection had changed the lives of Jesus’ followers and of how the faith, hope, and love of those believing men and women began to spread like a fire. They carried light into the darkest places of the human experience—just like the light of Jesus’ love had illuminated the dark places of their own hearts and minds. They didn’t have everything figured out and theirs was an imperfect, all-too-human faith, but their Easter experience empowered them to proclaim that Jesus was truly alive and still at work in their lives and in the mission of the Church.
We have been re-created for love, for joy, for zeal, and for gratitude. We have been granted the freedom to be truly alive. And, like the first Christians, we are being invited to unpack that experience, discerning the grace of the Resurrection in the many little miracles of our day-to-day lives.
O God, who on this day,
through your Only Begotten Son,
have conquered death
and unlocked for us the path to eternity,
grant, we pray, that we who keep
the solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection
may, through the renewal brought by your Spirit,
rise up in the light of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord
*Note: I originally wrote the following reflection for the “Homily Hints” section of the Loose-Leaf Lectionary series. It was published by Liturgical Press in 2020.
