by Sister Elise Saggau
Another Lent has passed; another spring is upon us. The earth is awakening. Soon it will be time for the sower to sow once more. The seed has been waiting for this moment, dormant until the earth and the sun and the rain are ready. It is fitting that we who live in a northern clime should celebrate Easter at just this time of year, when all of nature engages in a peculiar and remarkable renewal of life.
Both Jesus and St. Paul find the image of the seed significant for reflecting on the meaning of resurrection. Jesus reminds us that the seed must fall into the ground and die. Otherwise it remains just a useless lone seed (John 12:24). Paul reflects: “The seed does not germinate unless it dies. You do not sow the full-blown plant, but a kernel of grain. God gives body to it—to each seed its own fruition. . . . Weakness is sown, strength rises up” (1Cor. 15: 36-43). We don’t plant a seed in the hope that another seed will come up. We look for something far greater—a whole plant that, in turn, will produce multiple new seeds! . . . We expect transformation, an apt symbol for a human life surrendered to God in death (Monika Hellwig).
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus was victory over, not only his own death, but ours as well. Jesus lives and we will live. Death is not the last word in our human experience. “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?’” (1Cor. 15:54-55).
Only because God has done this for Jesus are new possibilities opened for those have come to believe in him. If Jesus rose bodily from the dead, then Christians should believe in their own future transformation (Raymond Brown). During the past year, the human community has lived intimately with dying and death. Our own country alone has lost, through the pandemic, well over half a million citizens! We know something about death. But Christians also know something else—something that God has revealed through the death and resurrection of Jesus. While death is the end of something, it is not ultimate. It gives way to something else—something unimaginably new. Christians call this the resurrected life, its promise proclaimed and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus, witnessed and verified by his companions and fellow missionaries. Those who followed him in faith during his public ministry experienced Jesus’ new life in a convincing way. We who continue to follow him in faith into the twenty-first century experience it in our own time and place.
This past year has been a test of the human spirit. Its events have the potential for teaching us important lessons about our own strengths as well as about our own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and limits. Such lessons are always valuable for the human community. We must not waste this moment. As we Christians celebrate Easter today, we dwell on the Paschal mysteries of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We draw from our reflections and our remembering an ever more intimate understanding of who we are and what we have been given. Our very humanity, our very existence—our life in all its possibilities, with all its joys and trials, with all its sufferings and personal and corporate resurrections is God’s gift to us. It is headed for unimaginable new life. And so we celebrate, with gratitude and joy, God’s never-failing promise. The Lord is risen, indeed. And we will rise! Alleluia!
