[AI translation] Of the many mighty revelations of our Lord Jesus, this is perhaps the most powerful, in which the mystery of his divine person is most fully revealed to us. He said this to Martha before the great event of Easter, when He comforted her on the occasion of Lazarus' death. Martha could have understood very little of it at the time, for then no one could have dreamed with the wildest imagination of the miracle that took place on Easter morning. But now, looking back from the tomb that was opened, we can hear this powerful declaration: 'I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, lives'. For us, the very fact of Easter illuminates the meaning of these words and the truth they express. I would like to emphasise each word, in the hope that in the end the Holy Spirit of God will lead us to the triumphant confession of faith that Martha said to Jesus: 'I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'How much mystery there is in that single word: resurrection! It expresses the human effort, the longing, the hope, the desire of many millennia. There are two great miseries in our human life: sin and death. All other miseries of life can be overcome by science, by power, by good will, by human strength. But sin and death are our destinies over which man has no power and will never have power. We are at its mercy, we are its slaves, and in whatever way we begin to fight it, we are always defeated. Sin remains sin even if we make it a virtue in our desperate helplessness, and death remains death even if we try to deny its reality in our fear of it.
In fact, the Bible goes even further and says that they are not two, but one. Sin and death are inseparable, inseparable. The wages of sin is death. Sin is the sting of death. Sin is the deadly poison that breeds death. For sin is precisely the separation from God, the departure from the Source of Life, the absence, the lack of true life: eternal life, and therefore: death! That is why the prophet Ezekiel sighs: "Our sins and our transgressions are upon us, and in them we shall rot" (Ez 33,10). This is our life. Such is human life!
But man in all ages and in all degrees of culture has instinctively felt that this was not his original destiny, that this could not be the true life. He was not created in the tyranny of sin and death. This cannot be resigned to. From this terrible misery there must be deliverance. That is why in all pagan religions and religious myths there is some reference to the resurrection, to the breaking of the power of death. Ancient religious myths speak of a dying and rising again spring-god. All of these pagan myths are expressions of an unfulfilled longing, the yearning of the eternal man for divine redemption, for resurrection, for the something that must come one day. And this universal, this eternal human longing was fulfilled at Easter in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one in whom the full redemption: that is, the conquest of sin and death has taken place, He is the resurrection and the life.
Man is right, therefore, when he cannot resign himself to the tyranny of sin and death, for behold, there is a way of life in which neither sin nor death is any longer Lord - in Christ, in His person. Behold, He says: "I am the resurrection and the life". Not so, that I am the risen and living Christ - no. It is more that He is the resurrection and the life itself. In him, life and resurrection are no longer a promise, a wish, a longing, but a fulfilment, a reality made flesh! The resurrection of Jesus is not only the resurrection of Jesus, not only His personal resurrection, but the resurrection in general, the divine victory over death, over all death, over moral death, spiritual death, the death of sin. It is the beginning of a new creation of the world, only here God does not create life out of nothing, as in the beginning, but life from death, that is, life won by resurrection.
And it is also very important that Jesus says: "I am the resurrection and the life." So it's not that I will be the resurrection for you when you die. But I am, now, here, already on this earth, in the present! So the resurrection, that is, the form of life in which sin and death are no longer lord and master, is not to be found somewhere beyond space, not in heaven - and not beyond time, sometime after death, on the last day - but beyond the realm of sin, beyond and above the fate of sin and death, where the binding and death-rotting powers of sin are no longer harmless, and therefore the will of God, the justice of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, the life of God, are free to prevail. Eternal life! This is the resurrection! From the reality of sin dragging down into death, life is being purified into divine eternal life. This is life, this life won by resurrection from the dead: this is me, says Jesus.
It is as if he were saying: 'I am the resurrection and the life for you' - so much for you that if anyone believes in me, he also lives, he can also live in the resurrection form of life! What this means is that we should therefore not think of the resurrection as something that will happen sometime after our death, towards the day of judgement, in the far future. Let us not postpone the resurrection for millennia into the mists of uncertainty, for the resurrection as a form of life triumphant over sin and death has already begun in Christ, and through faith in him it can begin in us. So the resurrection can happen within this life on earth. That is why he says that he who believes in me lives. He lives the resurrection. As He said on another occasion, he who believes in Him has already passed from death to life. (John 5:24) He lives in eternity on this earth.
So: he who believes in Christ! In the Christ who came after us into our separation from God, who descended into hell after us, who became sin and death for us - and whom God raised from this death. Who believes in the Christ, Who sank to the depths of the sea of sin and death precisely because He clung to us, because He embraced us, the sinking, the drowning. And if God now brings Him up from this death and saves Him, raises Him from the dead, then this means that He has brought us with Him, raised us up into the resurrected life.
So to believe in Christ, in this Christ, means first of all to let myself go like a drowning man, to let myself be led by my Saviour, to let Him embrace me, to hold me, to cling to me, to take me - and to let Him take me with Him into the resurrection. I believe in Christ, who is the resurrection and the life for me. To believe in Him is to give myself to Him, to give myself to Him in whom sin and death have lost their power, no longer reign.
But this is only one side of faith. And the other side is that I myself am now beginning to live the resurrection, moving into a new life that is already beyond the dominion of sin and death. I begin to love where there has been only hatred, I begin to forgive where there has been anger and hurt, I begin to be patient in the midst of the greatest anxiety. I will try to bring peace in the peacelessness, light in the darkness, bring joy in the sadness, comfort in the sorrow, take upon myself the burdens of selfish people, look with clear eyes into the impure world, go two miles with the one who forces me, not worry in the daily worries, speak the truth in all circumstances, look to the future with serene confidence. Yes: this is what it means to believe in Christ, in the resurrection. The mystery of the resurrection is not to be understood - it cannot be understood - but lived, because it can be lived, through faith in Christ. By faith, Jesus himself becomes resurrection and life in man.
Resurrection means life created out of death, precisely that where we consider any movement of life impossible, where we ourselves are helpless, powerless, incapable, Jesus opens up possibilities and brings forth a rich flowering. Believing in Christ: believing in the reality of the resurrection, believing so much that we see its powers extended to our most ordinary world, and believing that there is no situation where the resurrection cannot reach. To believe: to pass from death to life, to live the resurrection by His power.
So to believe is a great, bold resolve, an ever-renewing decision to obey, to dare to go out over the waves of sin and death, like Peter when, at Jesus' call, he got out of the boat and walked on the water, with the seemingly impossible certainty that I would not sink, that I would be sustained by the powers of the resurrection. The word of Jesus will become reality: he who believes in me, lives! May live! So he can live. He can live the resurrection, life beyond the reign of sin and death. Isn't this the true life?
To live does not mean to gorge myself on the pleasures that a brief sojourn on earth can offer, to get everything that can satisfy my comfort, my vanity, my ambition, and at the same time to dread growing old, which slowly erodes everything that can be enjoyed. This is not life, so the animal can live. The true life is the life we live reconciled to God and man, the life we live for the glory of God and the good of men, the life we live freed from the bondage of sin and death, the life in which we do not fear old age because we can see in it the joy of maturity and fulfillment, in which the transient is more and more wiped away and eternal life is more and more revealed in us.
So it is true life that we live and can live through faith in Christ. So much so that Jesus says it plainly, "He who believes in me, even though he dies, lives." Even death does not end it. Dying is only the end of mortality, of an imperfect state, not of life! Life itself, resurrected life, goes on richer, fuller, with greater possibilities. Yes: he who believes in Him, as He said: never dies!
Do you believe this?", Jesus asked Martha, and now he asks us. Do you believe that in Christ you have resurrection and life? May the grace of God grant that we may be able to say with all our hearts Martha's confession of faith: 'Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God'! (Jn 11,27)
Amen
Date: 5 April 1953, Easter.
Lesson
Mt 28,1-10