Christ is Risen, Hallelujah! Yes, He is truly Risen, Hallelujah!
This truth is what changes everything. Changes my life, your life, changes the history of men. This is the truth that saves us. These are not vain words. It is not the feelings that we have, not even our ideas and the ideas of the world that save us. What saves us, what saves the world, what saves history, what saves all men, and the universe is that: Christ is Risen, Hallelujah! Yes, He is truly Risen, Hallelujah!
This is a day of joy. This is a day of celebration. We, Christians, can not have a weak memory, because on that depends our salvation. Our memory must always be revived. This is a day of joy because evil has finally been overcome in the flesh, because Christ was resurrected in body, soul and spirit. Resurrecting in the flesh He resuscitates us, and even our flesh, all our humanity, with everything. Despite all the disorder that may be within us, He resurrects us.
With the resurrection of Christ, Jesus inaugurates an irreversible movement! Look! Jesus inaugurates an irreversible movement to create a new man, a new world. Irreversible! In a new world, you are within a dynamic. If you believe in Christ, trust in Him, if you persevere in Him, you are within a dynamic of an irreversible movement. History is heading for this irreversible movement. There’s no turning back, thank God! An already present irreversible world has begun to act in our life.
There is a power within you. The problem is that we often do not realize that and we get caught up in our battles and struggles. When we face the challenges, we do not realize that there is a power, there is a love, there is a grace, there is an irreversible victory of God within us. We can enjoy and embrace this victory in our lives, to overcome all the challenges in our fight against sin and evil.
Christ transfigured our flesh in His glorious body. That which was mortal, He made immortal. When the Son of God came, the Word became flesh, He assumed our mortal nature. On the cross, He took on our sins, weaknesses and infirmities. Assuming all this in the flesh, when He is risen, look! He overcame in His glorious body all the weakness of our flesh, all the weakness of our humanity. He won! Christ transfigured our flesh in His glorious body. In the glorious body of Christ shines our transfigured flesh.
There is a new existence acting within you. There is a new existence in the options, from the simplest to the most complicated, when sin presents itself before you, when you have to choose between doing God’s will and not doing it. Do you think: “Ah, I’m weak, then I won’t do it?” No! Christ is risen, you are strong! You are weak in your weakness, but the one who lives in you is strong, stronger than your weakness and a new existence is within you, and in your weakness, leaning on His strength, you can say as St. Paul: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me!” I can do anything. I can choose the good, I can choose the truth, the holiness. I can choose to live my vocation. I can choose to be at a Holy Week retreat instead of running around. I can choose to be in my prayer group, to be in my community meeting. I can choose purity, God’s love, mercy, because I can do everything through Him who strengthens me. I can do anything.
Sometimes we still live under the weight of history, of our history: “Ah, I do this because of my father, my mother, my grandfather, my uncle”, but you are standing before the re-living Lamb. He has won the story, including yours! He stands by men, look with your eyes at the immolated Lamb and you will see that history can not overwhelm you. Without Him we would be crushed. Without Him history would have power over us to destroy us. With Him we stand, we are also victorious in history! Your story does not have the power to determine your life, because Christ entered history, even in yours. It is to Him that we follow, the slain lamb who saved us, who is standing!
Standing!
We just knelt before Him. We do not kneel before sin and death. We do not kneel before weakness. We do not kneel before the wounds. We can only kneel before Him. And kneeling before Him, He lifts us up, and says, “Stand up!”, and stand up for what? To present to Him our best perfumes, to give Him our whole life, all that we are, all that we have in gratitude, to hold back nothing in ourselves, because He is a victor and makes us victorious in Him, and our gratitude is eternal for Him. Yes, says the passage of Revelation, the men are standing because the Lamb is standing. Otherwise they would all fall under the weight of the story. But no! He has won the story and He is standing!
He has risen for me, for you, so that we may rise again from this mediocre life that still drags us down, and to live that new existence that only He can give with the strength of His resurrection.
Risen Christ- You are in our midst. Humbly we ask You: justify us in this day, make us righteous with the strength of Thy resurrection. May sin and death die in us. May your divine life live in us. Fill us with Your Spirit, Raise us up with You. Light up in us the desire of God and His holy will. Give us the grace to detest evil and cling to the supreme good of Thy will, O Risen Christ. Raise us up with You and make us aspire to things above.
O Mother, standing before the cross, some exegetes, Fathers of the Church, say that You were not at the tomb by Your absolute trust in the resurrection of Your Son, as He Himself said that He would rise on the third day. O dear Mother, communicate faith to us, this spousal desire of Christ that makes us embrace good and detest evil, this desire of the Father’s will, as it burned in Your heart. That by the power of the resurrection of Christ we may be witnesses of His resurrection, as a net, with our eyes fixed on Him, with one hand on the brother and the other rescuing souls from the sea of death, so that all together we stand before the Lamb re-living, offering our best perfumes. We turn to You; we ask You and we trust in You.
Christ is Risen, Hallelujah! Yes, He is truly Risen, Hallelujah!
Excerpts from the preaching of Moysés Azevedo at the Retreat of Holy Week, Fortaleza, 2018. (Maintained in the colloquial)
Translation: Jhoanna Climacosa