Reflection
To say, “I believe in Jesus Christ . . . who rose from the dead,” is to say something about myself at the same time. It says that I myself am ready to be transformed. Once the Christ-life rises in me, I rise to new life as well. “Christ is risen, we are risen,” we sing at Easter. But it has a great deal more to do with life than with death. If I know that if Jesus has been transformed, then I am transformed myself, and as a result, everything around me. Until we find ourselves with new hearts, more penetrating insights, fewer compulsions, less need for the transient, greater awareness of the spiritual pulse of life, resurrection has not really happened for us. Jesus has risen but we have not. Resurrection is change at the root of the soul. It marks a whole new way of being in life.
Joan Chittister,OSB
Prayer
May resurrection happen in me.
Action
Reflect on the meaning of resurrection happening in us. Where does it need to happen in you? How will you move toward it?
Suggested Reading
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
1 Corinthians:15:17
And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart and there find him.
St Augustine
The real proof of the resurrection lies not in the transformation of Jesus alone but in the transformation awaiting us who accept it.
Joan Chittister,OSB
The difference between knowing Christ and knowing the power of his resurrection, is the difference between knowing a person and resembling a person…it is not about relationship but about supernatural character growth.
Tim Keller
Live in the awareness that Christ lives and He lives in His people.
Julien B. Weil
Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of a world view that provides the perspective to all of life.
Josh McDowell
Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.
N.T.Wright