Easter is a transition, a radical change. Using the language of evolutionary theory, as Benedict XVI did at Easter, 2006 “it is the greatest ‘mutation’, absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life…”¹
With the Resurrection of Christ, death is buried definitively and each person no longer has to pay something for their own salvation.
The medical examiner and criminal investigator Frederick T. Zugibe in his voluminous book “The Crucifixion of Jesus” presents in the second part of his work scientific data on the holy shroud, the cloth that wrapped the body of Christ in the tomb, before the Resurrection, and shows us the image stamped on the shroud. According to this expert, such a phenomenon is only possible from an atomic explosion as happened in World War 2 when, for example, the shadow of a fence was imprinted on the ground, an image that can be seen in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
This explosion of Easter is renewed in the life of every person who dares to go against this century, refusing to have his or her life ruled by relativism, hedonism and consumerism, all of which are presented as goods in themselves.
Every Easter, in Shalom Community, something quiet and wonderful happens: hundreds of people, mostly young, renew their promises to follow Christ unconditionally in the Shalom Charism. They are ordinary people: students, doctors, working people, housewives, university students, the unemployed- in short, people who experience the shock of the resurrection in their lives and allow a nuclear fission to happen within themselves destroying sin.
They are young men and women like Tobias, Ivan, Thais, Luciana, Fábio, Solange, Daniela, among others of hundreds in the world, who show the true meaning of Easter- the resurrection of Christ who lofty ask: “Where, O death, is your victory?”2
To all cyberists browsing and landing on this portal: Happy Easter!
Vanderlúcio Souza – Missionary of Shalom Catholic Community
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1 Benedict XVI (2006). Easter Vigil Homily. Retrieved from http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20060415_veglia-pasquale.html
2 Corinthians 15:55