Lent is completed. Holy Week is in progress. And this Sunday is the greatest and highest Feast of the Christian faith. 

 

We sing out “Alleluia” once again as we celebrate Easter and the Lord’s resurrection from the grave. 

 

Not long ago I was talking with a very committed and practicing Catholic. She made the comment to me that she had always envisioned heaven as a sort of elevated and purified state of mind. 

 

The idea, it seemed, was that freed from the temptations and worries of this world, heaven will allow us to concentrate more fully on God and His love.

 

That idea is fine, as far as it goes. There is something about our souls, weighed down in this world of sin and its toxic consequences, that will be freed and even transformed if we are judged worthy of entry into Christ’s kingdom. 

 

But the resurrection of Jesus on that Easter tells us that the reality to which we are called is even

 greater.

 

Jesus did not simply come back to life again on Easter Sunday like Lazarus. Even less after rising from the dead did He start appearing to His followers and to the world as a sort of hologram, some kind of gleaming see-through figure ultimately separated from our worldly existence.

 

Instead, the testimony of those who encountered Jesus was a jumble of statements and experiences that arrived at one central fact. That is, Jesus was risen from the dead in His body. 

 

Some, it is true, did not immediately recognize Jesus. Mary Magdalene, for example, did not recognize the resurrected Christ until He called her by name (Jn 20: 11-18). But at no point did she see Him as one only of spirit. In fact, she sought to embrace and cling to Jesus.

 

Likewise, on Easter Sunday, when Jesus appeared to His disciples in the locked room, His body still bore the wounds of Good Friday in order, according to St. Bede, “to wear them as an everlasting trophy of his victory.” 

 

Jesus invited His disciples to examine His hands and His feet. He then ate some fish in front of them. (Lk 24:36-43). All of these were signs of the presence of a body like ours.

 

Still, that body of Jesus bore at the same time the glory of the Transfiguration that we read about in the Gospel of the second Sunday of Lent. 

 

The risen Jesus came and went, disappearing from sight and entering locked rooms. Clearly, the witnesses left us a testimony of a true body of Jesus, but one that related to us and this world in a new and fuller manner.

 

Jesus, however, showed that He wanted His disciples to know Him by more than bodily sight. 

 

On Easter Day he walked with two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35). They did not recognize Jesus physically, but did so more and more as He explained the Scriptures that were fulfilled in Him. Then they truly knew Him when He broke the bread with them in the Eucharist.

 

In short, Easter tells us that we are called to rise with Jesus, soul and body. That is the fullness of ourselves. 

 

But Christ has also told us that we must agree to join Him. We must live our lives in a manner that is dedicated to Him. We have to suffer with Him. 

 

And we must walk the road to Emmaus living and constantly renewing our faith, including the faith that directs our moral lives according to God’s will.

 

We must not sell Easter short. Its fullness is the greatness of our calling and God’s promise. It is worth every effort and sacrifice of faith.

 

A Blessed Easter to all!