He Has Risen! He Has Truly Risen! : TURNBACK TO GOD

He Has
Risen! He Has Truly Risen! : TURNBACK TO GOD

He Has Risen! He Has
Truly Risen!

Posted: 03 Apr 2013 10:27 PM PDT

May the jubilant
voice of the Church reach all of you with the words which the ancient hymn
puts on the lips of Mary Magdalene, the first to encounter the risen Jesus on
Easter morning. She ran to the other disciples and breathlessly announced: “I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18).
We too, who have journeyed through the desert of Lent and the sorrowful days
of the Passion, today raise the cry of victory: “He has risen! He has truly
risen!”

Every Christian
relives the experience of Mary Magdalene. It involves an encounter which
changes our lives: the encounter with a unique Man who lets us experience all
God’s goodness and truth, who frees us from evil not in a superficial and
fleeting way, but sets us free radically, heals us completely and restores
our dignity.

This is why Mary
Magdalene calls Jesus “my hope”: he was the one who allowed her to be reborn,
who gave her a new future, a life of goodness and freedom from evil. “Christ my hope” means that all my yearnings for goodness find
in him a real possibility of fulfillment with him I can hope for a life
that is good, full and eternal, for God himself has drawn near to us, even
sharing our humanity.

But Mary
Magdalene, like the other disciples, was to see Jesus rejected by the leaders
of the people, arrested, scourged, condemned to death and crucified. It must
have been unbearable to see Goodness in person subjected to human malice,
truth derided by falsehood, mercy abused by vengeance. With Jesus’ death, the
hope of all those who had put their trust in him seemed doomed. But that
faith never completely failed: especially in the heart of the Virgin Mary,
Jesus’ Mother, its flame burned even in the dark of night.

In this world,
hope can not avoid confronting the harshness of evil. It is not thwarted by the wall of death alone, but even more by
the barbs of envy and pride, falsehood and violence. Jesus passed through
this mortal mesh in order to open a path to the kingdom of life. For a moment
Jesus seemed vanquished: darkness had invaded the land, the silence of God
was complete, hope a seemingly empty word.

And, on the dawn
of the day after the Sabbath, the tomb is found empty. Jesus then shows
himself to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to his disciples. Faith is
born anew, more alive and strong than ever, now invincible since it is based
on a decisive experience: “Death with life contended: combat strangely ended!
Life’s own champion, slain, now lives to reign”. The signs of the
resurrection testify to the victory of life over death, love over hatred,
mercy over vengeance: “The tomb the living did enclose, I saw Christ’s glory
as he rose! The angels there attesting, shroud with grave-clothes resting”.

Dear brothers and
sisters! If Jesus is risen, then – and only then – has something truly new
happened, something that changes the state of humanity and the world. Then
he, Jesus, is someone in whom we can put absolute trust; we can put our trust
not only in his message but in Jesus himself, for the Risen One does not belong to the past, but is present
today, alive.

Christ is hope
and comfort in a particular way for those Christian communities suffering
most for their faith on account of discrimination and persecution. And he is
present as a force of hope through his Church, which is close to all human
situations of suffering and injustice.

Happy Easter to
all!

- – -
written by Pope emErItus Benedict XVI

Tags: christ,
easter,
jesus,
risen,
thoughts

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