XV. — SI CONSURREXISTIS CUM CHRISTO (Paschal time)

SUMMARY. — The Church calls the Resurrection of Jesus “holy”. Double element constituting holiness. — I. The Risen Christ is exempt from all human infirmity. — II. Glorious plenitude of “life unto God” in the triumphant Christ. — III. Baptism inaugurates the Paschal grace in us. Doctrine of St. Paul. How the Christian, by avoidance of sin and detachment from creatures, must, during his whole life, imitate the spiritual liberty of the glorious Christ. — IV. How we should belong fully to God: Viventes Deo; the realisation of this in the soul. — V. How this twofold Paschal grace is strengthened within us by the contemplation of the mystery of the Resurrection and by Eucharistic Communion. — VI. The resurrection of the body completes the manifestation of the greatness of this glorious mystery. The joy that union with the Risen Christ gives rise to in our souls: the Easter Alleluia.

THE whole of the mystery of Christ during the days of His Passion can be summed up in those words of St. Paul: Humiliavit semetipsum, factus obediens usque ad mortem (Philipp. II, 8): “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death.“ We have seen Christ’s self-abasement; He touched the lowest depths of humiliation; He chose the death of one accursed, as it was written: Maledictus omnis qui pendet in ligno (Deut. XXI, 23; Gal. III, 13).

But these abysses of ignominies and suffering into which Our Saviour willed to descend were likewise abysses of love; and this love has merited for us the mercy of His Father, and all graces of salvation and sanctification.

If the word “humiliation” sums up the mystery of the Passion, there is another word of St. Paul which recapitulates the mystery of Christ in His Resurrection: Vivit Deo (Rom. VI, 10): “He liveth unto God.” Vivit: there is henceforth in Him only perfect and glorious life without infirmity or perspective of death: Jam non moritur, mors illi ultra non dominabitur (Ibid. 9); life wholly for God, more than ever consecrated to His Father and to His glory.

In her litanies, the Church applies certain qualifying titles to some of the mysteries of Jesus. She says of His Resurrection that it is “holy”: Per sanctam resurrectionem tuam. What does that mean? Are not all the mysteries of Jesus holy? Certainly they are. He Himself is the Saint of saints: Tu solus sanctus, we sing at Mass in the Gloria. And all His mysteries are holy. His birth is holy: Quod nascetur ex te sanctum (Luc. I, 35); all His life is holy; He does “always the things that please“ His Father (Joan. VIII, 29); and none can convince Him of sin (Cf. Joan. VIII, 46). His Passion is holy; true it is that He dies for the sins of men, but yet the Victim is sinless, He is the spotless Lamb. The High Priest Who immolates Himself is “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners” (Hebr. VII, 26).

Why is the Resurrection, in preference to all the other mysteries of Jesus, called “holy” by the Church?

Because it is in this mystery that Christ particularly fulfils the conditions of holiness; because this mystery principally places in relief the elements that formally constitute human holiness whereof the model and source are found in Christ; because if, by all His life, He is the Way (Joan. XIV, 6), and the Light (Ibid. VIII, 12), if He gives the example of every virtue compatible with His Divinity,—in His Resurrection, Christ is above all the Example of holiness.

What, then, are the elements that constitute holiness? Holiness can be resumed for us into two elements: separation from all sin, detachment from every creature; and the belonging totally and steadfastly to God.

Now, in Christ’s Resurrection, these two characters are found in a degree not manifested before His coming forth from the tomb. Although the Word Incarnate had been, during His entire existence, the “Holy One” like to none other, it is with effulgent brightness that He especially reveals Himself to us under this aspect in His Resurrection and it is therefore that the Church sings: Per sanctam resurrectionem tuam.

Let us contemplate this mystery of Jesus coming forth living and glorious from the sepulchre; we shall see how the Resurrection is the mystery of the triumph of life over death of the heavenly over the earthly, of the divine over the human, and that it eminently realises the ideal of all holiness.

I

What was Christ Jesus before His Resurrection?

He was God and Man. The Eternal Word had espoused a nature belonging to a sinful race; without any doubt, this Humanity has not contracted sin, but it has been subject to such corporal infirmities as are compatible with the Divinity, infirmities which, in us, are often the consequences of sin; Vere languores nostros ipse tulit, et dolores nostros ipse portavit (Isa. LIII, 4).

See Our Lord during His mortal life. In the manger, He is a feeble little Infant, Who needs His Mother’s milk to sustain His life; later, He feels real fatigue: Fatigatus ex itinere sedebat (Joan. IV, 6): sleep, real and unfeigned sleep, closes His eyelids, the apostles have to awaken Him when the ship in which He sleeps is tossed about by the tempest (Matth. VIII, 24-25; Marc. IV, 35; Luc. VIII, 23-24); He knows hunger: Esuriit (Matth. IV, 2; Luc. IV, 2); He knows thirst: Sitio (Joan. XIX, 28); He knows suffering. He also feels interior desolation; in the Garden of Olives, fear, weariness, anguish and sadness sweep over His soul: Coepit pavere et taedere... et moestus esse; tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem (Matth. XXVI, 37-38; Marc. XIV, 33-34). Finally He endures death: Emisit spiritum (Joan. XIX, 30).

It is thus He shares our weakness, our infirmities, our sorrows; sin alone, and all that is the source or moral consequence of sin, is unknown to Him: Debuit per omnia tratribus similari, absque peccato (Hebr. II, 17; IV, 15).

But after the Resurrection, all these infirmities have disappeared. There is in Him no longer any weariness, nor any need of sleep, neither has He any infirmity whatsoever. Our Lord no longer experiences anything of the kind: it is a total separation from all that is weakness. Is His body no longer real? Certainly it is. It is truly the Body which He received from the Virgin Mary, the Body which suffered death upon the Cross.

See how Christ Himself shows this. On the evening of His Resurrection, He appears to the Apostles. “But they being troubled and frightened, supposed that they saw a spirit. And He said to them: “Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself; handle and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see Me to have. And when He had said this, He shewed them His hands and feet” (Luc. XXIV, 37-40). Thomas was then absent. “We have seen the Lord,” the other Apostles say to him on his return. Thomas will not believe; he remains incredulous. “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails and put my finger into His side, I will not believe.” Eight days; later, Jesus again appears to them; and after having wished them peace, He says to Thomas “Put in thy finger hither, and see My hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into My side; and be not faithless but believing” (Joan. XX, 24-27).

Thus, Jesus Himself proves to His Apostles the reality of His Risen Body; but it is a body henceforward exempt from earthly infirmities; this body is agile; matter forms no barrier to it; Jesus rises from the sepulchre hewn out of the rock and whereof the entrance is closed by a heavy stone; He appears in the midst of His disciples: Januis clausis (Ibid. XX, 26), the doors of the place where they were gathered together being shut. If He takes food with His disciples, it is not because He hungers, but because He wills, by this merciful condescension, to confirm the realty of His Resurrection.

This Risen Body is henceforth immortal. Christ “died once”: Quod enim mortuus est, mortuus est semel (Rom. VI, 10); but, says St. Paul, “ Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over Him”: Mors illi ultra non dominabitur: the body of the Risen Jesus is no longer subject to death nor to the conditions of time: it is free from all servitude, from all infirmities; it is impassible, spiritual, living in a sovereign independance.

Herein is represented in Christ the first element of holiness separation from all that is dead, from all that is earthly, from all that is creature: freedom from all weakness, all infirmity, all suffering. On the day of His Resurrection, Christ Jesus left in the tomb the linen cloths, which are the symbol of our infirmities, of our weaknesses, of our imperfections. He comes forth triumphant from the sepulchre; His liberty is entire, He is animated with intense, perfect life with which all the fibres of His being vibrate. In Him, all that is mortal is absorbed by Life.

II

Doubtless, we shall see the Risen Christ still touching earth. Out of love for His disciples, and condescension for the weakness of their faith, He vouchsafes to appear to them, to converse with them, to share their repasts; but His life is before all things heavenly: Vivit Deo.

We know scarcely anything of this heavenly life of Jesus after He had risen from the tomb; but can we doubt that it was wonderful?

He had proved to His Father how much He loved Him by giving His life for men; now, all the price is paid, all is expiated; satisfied justice demands from Him no more expiation; friendship is restored between men and God; the work of redemption is accomplished. But the worship rendered by Jesus towards His Father continues, more living, more entire, than ever. The Gospel tells us nothing of this constant homage of adoration, of love, of thanksgiving, that Christ then rendered to His Father; but St. Paul sums up all in saying: Vivit Deo, He “liveth unto God.”

This is the second element of holiness: the adhering, the belonging, the consecration to God. We shall only know in heaven with what plenitude Jesus lived for His Father during those blessed days; it was certainly with a perfection that ravished the angels. Now that His Sacred Humanity is set free from all the necessities, from all the infirmities of our earthly condition, it yields itself more than ever before to the glory of the Father. The life of the Risen Christ becomes an infinite source of glory for His Father; there is no longer any weakness in Him; all is light, strength, beauty, life; all in Him sings an uninterrupted canticle of praise.

If man gathers up into his being all the kingdoms of creation in order therein to sum up the song of praise of every creature, what shall we say of the unceasing canticle that the Humanity of the glorious Christ, the supreme High Priest, triumphant over death, sings to the Trinity? This canticle, the perfect expression of the Divine life that henceforward envelops and penetrates with all its power and splendour the human nature of Jesus, is ineffable...

III

Such is the life of the Risen Christ. It is the model of ours, and Christ has merited for us the grace of living for God as He did, the grace of being associated with His risen life. True, it was not by His Resurrection that Christ actually merited this grace. All that He acquired for us was won by His sacrifice which was inaugurated at His Incarnation and consummated by His death upon the Cross. In drawing His last breath, Christ reached the term of His mortal existence He can hence no longer merit.

But His merits remain to us after His glorious coming forth from the tomb. See how Christ Jesus has willed to keep the marks of His Wounds: He shows them to His Father in all their beauty, as titles to the communication of His grace: Semper vivens ad interpellandurn pro nobis (Hebr. VII, 25).

It is from our baptism that we share in this grace of the Resurrection. St. Paul affirms this: “We are buried together with Him by baptism unto death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the power of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life” (Rom. VI, 4).

The holy water into which we are plunged at baptism is, according to the Apostle, the figure of the sepulchre; upon coming forth from it, the soul is purified from all sin, from all stain, set free from all spiritual death, and clad with grace, the principle of divine life: in the same way as upon coming forth from the tomb, Christ freed Himself from all infirmity so as to live henceforth a perfect life. This is why, in the early Church, baptism was administered only on the Paschal night, and at Pentecost which closes the Paschal season. We shall understand scarcely anything of the liturgy of Easter week, if we do not keep before our eyes the thought of baptism which was then solemnly conferred upon the catechumens. (See in Christ, the Life of the Soul, the conference “Baptism, the Sacrament of Adoption and Initiation: death and life”.)

We are therefore risen with Christ, by Christ, for He infinitely longs to communicate to us His glorious life. And what is necessary in order to respond to this divine longing and become like unto the Risen Jesus? It is that we should live in the spirit of our baptism. That, renouncing all that sin has vitiated in our lives, we should die more and more to “the old man” (Rom. VI, 6); that all in us should be dominated and governed by grace. All holiness for us lies in this: to keep away from all sin, all occasion of sin, to be detached from creatures and all that is earthly, so as to live in God, unto God, with the greatest plenitude and steadfastness possible.

This work, begun at baptism, continues during our whole earthly existence. Christ, it is true, dies but once; He has given us thereby to die like Him to all that is sin. But we must “die” daily, for we have remaining in us the roots of sin, and the old enemy labours unceasingly to make them spring up. To destroy these roots in us, to keep ourselves from all infidelity, from loving any creature for itself, to remove from our actions not only every culpable motive but even every motive that is merely natural; to keep our hearts free, with a spiritual freedom, from all that is created and earthly: such is the first element of our holiness which Christ shows us realised in Him by this supreme and admirable independance wherein His Risen Humanity lives.

This is indeed one of the most marked aspects of the Paschal grace. St Paul puts it in bold relief. “Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new paste,” he says. For since Christ our Paschal Lamb, has been immolated for you, you have become unleavened bread. Therefore let us share in the feast, “not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Cor. V, 7-8).

This pressing exhortation of the Apostle forms the Epistle for the Mass on Easter Sunday. It must appear obscure to more than one Christian of our days, and yet it is this passage that the Church has chosen out of all others to sum up what our conduct ought to be when we celebrate the mystery of the Resurrection. Why this choice?

Because it so distinctly, although at the same time so profoundly, denotes the fruit that the soul should gather from this mystery. What, then, do these words signify?

We know that at the approach of the festival of the Pasch, —which recalled to the Hebrews the famous anniversary of the “passage” of the destroying angel (Pasch signifies passage. Cf. Exod. XII, 26-27)—they had to see that no trace of leaven was left in their houses; then, on the day of the feast, after having sacrificed the paschal lamb, they ate it with unleavened bread, that is to say bread made without yeast (Ibid. XII, 8, 15).

All this was only a figure, a symbol (I Cor. X, 6, II) of the true Pasch, the Christian Pasch. “ Purge out the old leaven”; “put off the old man” (Ephes. IV, 22; Col. III, 9), born in sin, with his evil desires which you have renounced by baptism; at that moment of baptismal regeneration, you participated in the death of Christ, Who caused sin to die in you (Cf. Rom. VI, 2 et seq.); you have become, and you must remain, through grace, a new paste, that is to say a “new creature” (II Cor. V, 17), “a new man” (Ephes. IV, 24), after the example of Christ come forth glorious from the sepulchre.

Therefore, like the Jews, who, the Pasch having come, abstained from all leaven in order to eat the Paschal lamb, we, Christians, who would be partakers of the mystery of the Resurrection, who would unite ourselves to Christ, the Lamb Who was slain and rose again for us, we must henceforward live no longer in sin; we must keep ourselves from those evil desires which are like a leaven of malice and perversity: Non ergo regnet peccatum in vestro mortali corpore (Rom. VI, 12); we must preserve within us the grace which will enable us to live in the truth and sincerity of the Divine law.

Such is St. Paul’s doctrine that the Church reads to us on the very day of Easter, and that especially points out the first element of holiness to us: to renounce sin, and all human springs of action which can, like old leaven, corrupt our deeds; to live, in regard to all sin and all created things, in that spiritual liberty which appeared so vividly in the Risen Christ.

We ask this grace of Jesus Himself, in this strophe repeated in each of the paschal hymns.

Quaesumus auctor omnium
In hoc paschali gaudio,
Ab omni mortis impetu,
Tuum defende populum.

(Hymn at vespers, Matins and Lauds. (Monastic Breviary.)

“We beseech Thee, the Author of all things, to defend Thy people from all attacks of death in these days full of Easter gladness.“ We ask Christ to preserve His people,— this people “purchased with His own Blood” (Act. XX, 28), says St. Paul, that it may be pleasing to Himself, Populum acceptabilem (Tit. II, 14). To preserve it from what? From all the attacks of spiritual death, that is to say from all sin, from all that leads to sin, from all that tends to destroy or weaken within us the life of grace. It is then that we shall make part of that society that Christ wills to be without “spot or wrinkle,” but “holy and without blemish”: Sine ruga, sine macula (Ephes. V, 27).

IV

The second element of holiness, which, moreover, gives its motive and value to the first, is the belonging to God, devotedness to God, which St. Paul calls living unto God: Viventes Deo (Rom. VI, II).

This life for God comprises an infinity of degrees. To begin with, it supposes that one is totally separated from all mortal sin; between mortal sin and the divine life, there is absolute incompatibility. Next there is separation from venial sin, from all natural springs of action, and detachment from all that is created. The more complete the separation is, the more we are spiritually free, and the more also the divine life develops and expands within us in the measure that the soul is freed from what is earthly, she opens to what is divine, she savours heavenly things, she lives unto God.

In this happy state, the soul is not only free from all sin, but she no longer acts save under the inspiration of grace, and for a supernatural motive. And when this supernatural motive extends to all her actions, when the soul, by a movement of love, habitual and steadfast, refers all to God, to the glory of Christ and that of His Father, then there is within her the plenitude of life, that is holiness: Vivit Deo.

You will notice that during Paschal time, the Church frequently speaks to us of life, not only because Christ, by His Resurrection, has vanquished death, but above all because He has reopened to souls the fountains of eternal life. It is in Christ that we find this life: Ego sum vita (Joan. XIV, 6). This is why, likewise frequently, the Church makes us read over again on these blessed days, the parable of the Vine: “I the vine,” says Jesus, “you are the branches; abide in Me and I in you, for without Me you can do nothing” (Ibid. XV, 4-5). We must abide in Christ and He in us, in order that we may bear much fruit (Cf. Ibid. 5).

How is this accomplished?

By His grace, by the faith that we have in Him, and by the virtues whereof He is the Exemplar and which we imitate. When, having renounced sin, we die to ourselves, as the grain of wheat dies in the earth before producing fruitful ears (Ibid. XII, 25), when we no longer act save under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and in conformity with the precepts and maxims of the Gospel of Jesus, then it is Christ’s divine life that blossoms forth in our souls, it is Christ Who lives in us: Vivo ego, jam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus (Gal. II, 20).

Such is the ideal of perfection: Viventes Deo in Christo Jesu. We cannot attain it in a day; holiness, ingrafted in us at baptism, is only developed little by little, by successive stages. Let us try to act in such a way that each Easter, each day of this blessed season which extends from the Resurrection to Pentecost, may produce within us a more complete death to sin, to the creature, and a more vigorous and more abundant increase of the life of Christ.

Christ must reign in our hearts, and all within us must be subject to Him. Since the day of Christ’s triumph, He gloriously lives and reigns in God, in the bosom of the Father: Vivit et regnat Deus. Christ only lives where He reigns, and He lives in us in the same degree as He reigns in our soul. He is King as He is High Priest. When Pilate asked Him if He was a King, Our Lord answered Him: Tu dicis quia rex sum ego (Joan. XVIII, 37); “I am, but My kingdom is not of this world.” “The kingdom of God is within you”: Regnum Dei intra vos est (Luc. XVII, 21). This dominion of Christ must, day by day, be extended in our souls; it is this that we ask of God: Adveniat regnum tuum! Oh, may it come, Lord, that day when, truly, Thou wilt reign in us by Thy Christ!

And why has not that day already come? Because so many things in us, self-will, self-love, our natural activity are not yet subject to Christ, because we have not yet done what the Father desires: Omnia subjecisti sub pedibus ejus (Ps. VIII, 8), we have not yet put all things beneath the feet of Christ. That is a part of the glory which the Father wills henceforth to give to His Son Jesus: Exaltavit ilium et donavit sili nomen... ut in nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur (Philipp. II, 9-10). The Father wills to glorify Christ, because Christ is His Son, because He humbled Himself; the Father wills that every knee should bend at the name of Jesus; all in creation is to be subject to Jesus; in heaven, upon earth, in hell; all, too, in each one of us: will, intelligence, imagination, energies.

Jesus came in us as King on the day of our baptism, but sin disputes this dominion with Him. When we destroy sin, infidelities, attachment to the creature; when we live by faith in Him, in His word, in His merits; when we seek to please Him in all things, then Christ is Master, then He reigns within us; as He reigns in the bosom of the Father, so He lives in us. He can say of us to the Father: “Behold this soul: I live and reign in her, 0 Father, that Thy name may be hallowed.”

Such are the most profound aspects of the Paschal grace—detachment from all that is human, earthly, created; the full donation of ourselves to God, through Christ. The Resurrection of the Word Incarnate becomes for us a mystery of life and of holiness. Christ being our Head, “God hath raised us up together“ with Him: conresuscitavit nos (Ephes. II, 6). We ought then to seek to reproduce within ourselves the features that marked His Risen life.

St. Paul exhorts us to this with much insistency during these days. “ If, “ says he, “you be risen with Christ, that is to say if you wish that Christ should make you partakers of the mystery of His Resurrection, you should enter into the dispositions of His Sacred Heart, if you wish to “eat the Pasch” with Him, and one day share His triumphant glory, “mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth,” love heavenly things that abide, detach yourself from things of earth which pass away: honours, pleasures, riches; Si consurrexistis cum Christo, quae sursum sunt quaerite... non quae super terrain (Col. III, 1-2). “For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God.” And as “Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more” but lives for ever for His Father, so do you die to sin and live for God through the grace of Christ: Ita et vos existimate, vos mortuos quidem esse peccato, viventes autem Deo in Christo Jesu (Rom. VI, 9-11).

V

You will perhaps now ask how we can strengthen this Paschal grace within us.

First of all by contemplating the mystery with great faith. See how when Christ Jesus, on appearing to His disciples, bids Thomas, the incredulous apostle, put His finger in the marks of His Wounds which He keeps, what does He say to him? “Be not faithless, but believing.” And when the apostle adores Him as his God, Our Lord adds: Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt (Joan. XX, 27-29). “Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.”

Faith places us in contact with Christ; if we contemplate this mystery with faith, Christ produces in us the grace which He gave to His disciples when, as their Risen Lord, He appeared to them. Jesus lives in our souls; and ever living, He unceasingly acts in us, according to the degree of our faith and in accordance with the grace proper to each of His mysteries. It is related in the life of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi that one Easter Day, when she was at table in the refectory, her countenance reflected such joy that a novice who was serving her could not refrain from asking her the reason. “It is the beauty of my Jesus,” she replied, “which makes me so joyful; I see Him now in the heart of each one of my sisters.” “Under what form?” asked the novice again. “I see Him in them all risen and glorious as the Church brings Him before us to-day,” answered the Saint.

It is above all by Sacramental Communion that we now assimilate the fruits of this mystery.

What, indeed, do we receive in the Eucharist? We receive Christ, the Body and Blood of Christ. But if Communion supposes the immolation of Calvary and that of the Altar which reproduces it, it is however the glorified Flesh of the Saviour wherewith we communicate. We receive Christ such as He is now, that is to say glorified in the highest heavens and possessing, in its fullest expansion, the glory of His Resurrection.

He Whom we thus really receive is the very Fount of holiness. He cannot fail to give us a share in the grace of His “holy” Resurrection; here, as in all things, it is of His fulness that we are all to receive.

Still in our days, Christ, ever living, repeats to each soul the words that He said to His disciples when, at the time of the Pasch, He was about to institute His Sacrament of love: “With desire, I have desired to eat this pasch with you” (Luc. XXII, 15). Christ Jesus desires to effect in us the mystery of His Resurrection: He lives entirely for His Father above all that is earthly; He wills, for our joy, to draw us with Him into this divine current. If, after having received Him in Communion, we leave Him full power to act, He will give to our life, by the inspirations of His Spirit, that steadfast orientation towards the Father in which all holiness is summed up; so all our thoughts, all our aspirations, all our activity will refer to the glory of our Father in heaven.

It is You, 0 Divine Risen Lord, Who come to me; You Who after having expiated sin by Your sufferings, have vanquished death by Your triumph, Who, henceforward glorious, live only for Your Father. Come to me “to destroy the works of the devil, and to destroy sin and my infidelities; come to me to detach me more from all that is not You; come to make me a partaker of that superabundant perfect life which now overflows from Your Sacred Humanity; I will then sing, with You, a hymn of praise to Your Father Who upon this day has crowned You, as our Captain and our Head, with glory and honour!

These aspirations are expressed in one of the collects where the Church sums up, after the Communion, the graces which she implores of God for her children. “We beseech Thee, 0 Lord, that being purified from the stains of our past guilt, the participation in Thy august Sacrament may transform us into a new creature” (Postcommunion for Easter Wednesday).

The Church wills that this grace should remain in us, even when communion is over, even when the Paschal solemnities shall have come to an end. “Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the virtue of the Paschal mystery may remain in our souls” (Postcommunion for Easter Tuesday). It is a permanent grace which gives us the power, according to the expression of St. Paul, of being “renewed day by day” (II Cor. IV, 16), of increasing the life of Christ within us by bringing us to a closer and closer resemblance to the glorious traits of our Divine Model.

VI

In indicating the double aspect of the mystery of holiness that the Resurrection of Jesus ought to produce within our hearts, we have not exhausted the riches of the Paschal grace.

God is so magnificent in what He does for His Christ, that He wills that the mystery of His Son’s Resurrection should extend not only to our souls but also to our bodies. We too shall rise again. That is a dogma of faith. We shall rise corporally, like Christ, with Christ. Could it be otherwise?

Christ, as I have often, is our Head; we form with Him a mystical body. If Christ is risen,—and He is risen in His human nature,—it is necessary that we, His members, should share in the same glory. For it is not only in our soul, it is likewise in our body, it is in our whole being that we are members of Christ. The most intimate union binds us to Jesus. If then He is risen glorious, the faithful who, by grace, make part of His mystical body, will be united with Him even in His Resurrection.

Hear what St. Paul says on this subject “Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep”; He represents the firstfruits of a harvest; after Him, the rest of the harvest is to follow. “By a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” (I Cor. XV, 20-22). God, he says more energetically still, “has raised us up together... through Jesus Christ”: Conresuscitavit nos... in Christo Jesu (Ephes. II, 6). How is this? It is that, by faith and grace, we are the living members of Christ, we share in His states, we are one with Him. And as grace is the principle of our glory, those who are, by grace, already saved in hope, are already also, in principle, risen in Christ.

This is our faith and our hope.

But now “our life is hidden with Christ in God”; we now live without grace producing those effects of light and splendour which will have their fruition in glory; even as Christ, before His Resurrection, held back the glorious radiance of His Divinity and only allowed a reflection of it to be seen by the three disciples on the day of the Transfiguration on Thabor. Our inner life here below is only known to God; it is hidden from the eyes of men. Moreover, if we try to reproduce in our souls, by our spiritual liberty, the characteristics of the Risen Life of Jesus, it is a labour which is still wrought in a flesh wounded by sin, subject to the infirmities of time; we shall only attain this holy liberty at the cost of a struggle incessantly renewed and faithfully sustained. We too must suffer so as to enter into glory, as Christ said of Himself to the disciples of Emmaus, on the very day of His Resurrection: Nonne haec oportuit pati Christum et ita intrare in gloriam suam (Luc. XXIV, 26)? “We are the sons of God,” says the Apostle, “and if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ; yet so if we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.”

May these thoughts of heaven sustain us during the days we have yet to pass here below. Yes, the time will come when there shall be no more mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow; God Himself will wipe away the tears of His servants (Rom. VIII, 17) become the co-heirs of His Son; He will make them sit down at the eternal feast which He has prepared to celebrate the triumph of Jesus and of those whose Elder Brother Jesus is.

If, each year, we are faithful in sharing in Christ’s sufferings during Lent and Holy Week, each year, too, the celebration of Easter, the contemplation of the glory of Jesus triumphant over death, makes us participate more fruitfully and more abundantly in the state of Our Risen Lord; it increases our detachment from all that is not God, and, by grace, faith and love, it makes the divine life grow within us. At the same time, it enlivens our hope: for, says St. Paul, when at the last day Christ, Who is our Life and our Head, shall appear, then we also, because we share in His life, “shall appear with Him in glory” (Apoc. XXI, 4): Cum Christus apparuerit VITA VESTRA, tunc et vos apparebitis CUM IPSO IN gloria (Col. III, 4).

This hope fills us with joy, and it is because the mystery of Easter, being a mystery of life, strengthens our hope, that it is also super-eminently a mystery of joy.

The Church shows this by multiplying, throughout Paschal time, the Alleluia (“Praise God.”), the cry of gladness and felicity borrowed from the liturgy of Heaven. She had banished it during Lent in order to manifest her sadness and communicate in the sufferings of her Bridegroom. Now that Christ is risen, she rejoices with Him; she takes up again, with new fervour, this joyous acclamation wherein is summed up all the ardour of her feelings.

Never let us forget that we make only one with Christ Jesus. His triumph is ours; His glory is the principle of our joy. With the Church our Mother, let us, too, often repeat the Alleluia so as to manifest our joy to Christ in seeing Him triumphant over death, and to thank the Father for the glory that He gives to His Son. The Alleluia that the Church unweariedly repeats, during the fifty days of the Paschal season, is like the ever renewed echo of that prayer with which she ends Easter week: “Grant us, we beseech Thee, 0 Lord, ever to rejoice through these Paschal mysteries; that the continual work of our regeneration may ensure to us perpetual joy in heaven” (Secret for Easter Saturday).

NEO Personality Inventory

Defensive Mechanisms scale

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