The Resurrection

Christianity is true because Jesus is risen.

So that he wouldn’t be taken from that pitiful tomb a large stone blocked the entrance and in front of that there was a guard. But the story took another direction, through which he left and opened up eternal life, even in death.

The Church exhorts, on the mouth of the empty tomb: heads of State, Kings and magistrates to understand; that which is difficult to understand; so much so that the same mistakes are endlessly repeated: they come from one dictatorship and prepare another; they take note of the second war and plan a third; they take care of people in disasters by adding to their mourning.

Through the countryside of the resurrection pass the delicate figures of women. In these love has overcome fear: and when the apostles had gone to ground hiding, the women came out and looked for the one who is Love: they discovered that He had risen. They find the confirmation of the Gospel: that the religion of Jesus is a duel against death, a victory over it; in fact its substance is love, which knows no limits. Beauty ends, honour terminates, justice stops at the margins of law, but love knows no barrier, it goes beyond the furrows of evil, the background of death. With the sacraments we can assure a continual resurrection from evil, which is the substance of death: and the sacraments, the substance of life, are produced by love, as redemption and as the Church.

Christians are not allowed to despair; they are not allowed to lose heart when faced with death. Their house can collapse, their riches scatter: they will pick themselves up, and take up the fight again: the fight against evil. Christianity lasts whilst it remains firm in the belief of the resurrection.

The resurrection of Christ, our Leader, draws us into and makes us participants in it through his life, he obliges us to never despair. He gives us the secret to lift ourselves up in every fall. He gives us the arms for the fight and the strength to conquer death. The spirit, if it is rooted in Christ, prevails. Ours is a religion of life; the only one in which death has be victoriously, and if we want it, definitively banished.

Today, we are on earth, but linking ourselves to the Christian spirit, people rise again. So, like Mary, who took her son freed from the nails of the cross and held him in her arms, the Church holds our crucified humanity in its womb and prepares it for the resurrection.

The resurrection of Christ must be the reason for us to be reborn in our faith, hope and charity: victorious in our actions against the tendency of death, each one with their neighbour reborn in a unity of affection, every nation reborn, in agreement of actions, with other nations.

St Augustine, in a talk about Easter and the process of our resurrection, couldn’t find better words than to quote the apostle of love who says: – We have passed from death to life because we love our brothers.

And therefore: let us love one another, to help each other to live. In this way we will rise again.

Igino Giorndani, published in Le Feste, Turin, 1954