The Resurrection

Jesus of Nazareth, Rosary

The Resurrection

The Resurrection of Jesus is fundamentally about hope. Hope that God can take even the greatest evil and use it for the greatest good. Hope that despair is always temporary. Hope that love must always triumph, because love is stronger than hate.

The Church gives us the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary to reflect on our sinfulness, to call us to penance, and gently admonish us to take up our daily crosses as our Savior took up his. The Glorious Mysteries could just as easily be called the Hopeful Mysteries. When we reflect on them we recall Christ’s triumph over sin and death, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the eternal joy awaiting his faithful servants.

Trusting in Jesus compels us to hope. As Christians, we are actually obligated to be hopeful! This is not always an easy thing. Negativity is all around us. It can be hard to escape negativity in any age, but modern media especially seems to feed off negativity. Controversy and hatred generate clicks, which generate ad dollars, which make a few people wealthy and many people in a constant cycle of misery. As Christians we can’t be oblivious to what’s going on in the world, but we can’t become so mired in it that it drowns out the good news, the incredible news, of the Resurrection. (1)

Because of its familiarity, we can lose sight of just how incredible the Resurrection is. What a turnaround for Jesus’ friends! Mary, the apostles, the women that followed him, must have felt the depths of despair as they laid Jesus to rest. They had left everything to follow him, believing him to be the Messiah. He tried to prepare them for what was coming, but they could not understand how God could allow his anointed one to suffer and die so horribly. They must have concluded that they were wrong. That the last three years had been for nothing. That God had abandoned them.

When you experience setbacks, when you feel like nothing is going right, when you are giving into despair, remember the apostles and saints who felt worse the day before Easter. And then imagine Easter morning. Imagine the shock of Mary Magdalene and the other women upon finding the stone rolled away. Their bewilderment as the angel tells them Jesus “has been raised just as he said.” (Matthew 28:6) Astonishment begins to give way to joy, just as the rising sun is brightening the day. Is this really happening? Then Mary Magdalene sees Jesus. There is something different about him, such that she doesn’t recognize him at first, but when her eyes are opened, the hope that had been swelling in her all morning has been fulfilled. She falls to the ground to worship him, clinging to his feet, so overjoyed and thankful that the Lord is alive again! (John 20:11-18)

Hope does not mean that nothing bad will ever happen to you. It doesn’t mean you won’t face trials and sufferings. It means those who persevere will triumph with our Lord. We will be raised up with him. Raised up to new life, forever young, free of suffering, because the root cause of suffering is sin, and by his grace we will have become holy like him, and sin, suffering, death will be no more.

That is hope. That is the hope that gave the saints the grace to not only persevere through all their trials, but even rejoice in their trials. Two examples.

Saint Paul and his companions suffered greatly throughout their missionary activities. Their experience in Philippi demonstrates their ability to remain hopeful amidst their trials:

“The crowd joined in the attack on them, and the magistrates had them stripped and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After inflicting many blows on them, they threw them into prison and instructed the jailer to guard them securely. When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and secured their feet to a stake.

About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened, there was suddenly such a severe earthquake that the foundations of the jail shook; all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.” (Acts, 16:22-26)

What do Paul and Silas do after being beaten with rods, shackled and thrown into jail? Sing hymns of praise to God! “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:11-12) Paul and Silas are living examples of the Lord’s word.

So too, nearer to our time, is Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He was born in Poland (then part of czarist Russia) in 1894. As a young man, he had a vision of Mary. Our Lady offered him a crown of white (for purity), and a crown of red (for martyrdom), asking him if he could accept either one. He took them both.

Maximilian became a Franciscan priest and founded a Christian publishing company in Poland, along with monasteries in India and Japan. He was imprisoned at Auschwitz in 1941 after printing many publications hostile to the Nazi regime.

After one man escaped from the camp, the SS commander selected ten men at random to be executed as examples to the other prisoners. One of the men selected (Franciszek Gajowniczek) begin crying, lamenting that he would never see his wife and children again. Saint Maximilian volunteered to take this man’s place. (2)

The condemned men were sent to a starvation cell to roast in the August heat. What did Maximilian do? He led the group in prayers! He encouraged the condemned men to forgive their captors! After two weeks, inexplicably, Maximilian had still not succumbed to starvation and dehydration. The miserable Nazis, unable to stomach any more of the saint’s grace, sent him to Heaven with a lethal injection of carbolic acid. St. Maximilian Kolbe died on August 14, and was cremated the following day, the feast of the Assumption. (3)

From the darkest nights God brings forth new light. Jesus is raised. The gates of Heaven are opened, and we follow the saints home. For we are people of hope.

Notes:

(1) See this earlier post on the historical evidence for the Resurrection.

(2) Franciszek Gajowniczek survived over four years in various concentration camps. Though his sons were killed during a Soviet bombardment of Poland in 1945, he was reunited with his wife Helena after the war. Gajowniczek lived to the age of 93, always promoting Kolbe’s heroism. He was a guest of Pope Saint John Paul II when Maximilian was canonized in 1982.

(3) You can read more about St. Maximilian at catholic.org and wikipedia.org.

Image: The Resurrection by Lucas Cranach the Younger (downloaded from Wikipedia Commons).

 

Michael Haverkamp

Michael Haverkamp is a lifelong member of the Roman Catholic Church. He is grateful to his parents for raising him in the faith. He resides in Columbus, Ohio with his amazing wife and three sons. By day he is a (usually) mild-mannered grant writer.

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