The Passionate Glory of Christ

Easter is the celebration of God’s love for the world, made manifest through the life, passion, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is the axis upon which our Christian faith rotates. Without the resurrection, our faith would be meaningless, and the resurrection would be meaningless without the passion of Jesus.

The greatest love story ever told is relived every year at the Easter Triduum, wherein Jesus lived in its fullness all that He preached during His lifetime. Let’s have a look at how He did it.

The first day of the Easter triduum is Maundy Thursday. On this day, the Church commemorates Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist and the Holy Priesthood. The only form in which Jesus would appear to the world today is in the form of bread as a major part of the world, sleeps in hunger. The world waits with eager longing for the satisfaction of their spiritual hunger for God with spiritual bread. The breaking of bread that happened at the Last Supper, should happen at the altar of our lives every day through our service to others. Jesus became food and drink for us all, let us in turn be food and water for each other daily.

The world today tells us to seek success, power, and money; but God tells us to seek divinity, humility, service and love. At the meal of the manifestation of the greatest love one can have, the apostles were lost in seeking the greatest among them, but Jesus revealed through the washing of feet that the one who is in authority, in other words, the greatest is called to serve and not to be served.

The second day of the Triduum is Good Friday, where the love story reaches its climax. Jesus, who had just said that He would give us His body and blood for nourishment, gave himself up to death for the salvation of our souls. One of the only thing He could call His own was the cross and through it, He bought us our redemption. Good Friday is also a call for each of us to realize how much God loves us and come back to His loving embrace, to be cleansed of all our sins in His precious blood and begin anew.

The third day of the triduum is Holy Saturday, a day when we watch and pray with the sorrowful mother of Jesus, whom He gave us as our own mother. Through Her entire life this courageous virgin accepted the will of God and is now at the test of her faith as she watched her own Son die before her in the most gruesome manner on earth. Yet, she continued to firmly believe that God would fulfill all that He said. With her we await the day of the glorious resurrection.

At the Easter vigil, we await the Resurrection through contemplation on the love of God which He showed from the very beginning of time and continued to show to His people despite all our unbelief.

And then the day of the Resurrection; the day when Jesus won the victory of over death and rose triumphant from the tomb. Yes, the tomb is empty, He has risen.  Easter is a proof that our faith is joyful, but not without thorns. Only through death will we have a resurrection. The cross is not the end of our faith, but the resurrection is.

Let us be an Easter people, alleluia is our song of joy. May Jesus grant us the eyes of Easter that can look past death and see life, look past division and see unity, look past ugliness and see splendor, look into the human person and see God, look at God and see every human, look past I and see U.

JESUS IS RISEN! HE IS TRULY RISEN!