He is risen! Alleluia!
The Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ B

Frank Enderle
Reproduced with Permission
www.homilias.net

After having gone through a long and sad Holy Week, commemorating Our Lord’s terrible suffering and death, today we are here, participating in this Holy Mass with joy, knowing that Christ has risen. Throughout the Easter Season, we Christians repeatedly cry out, “Alleluia!” This word, which means “Praise God,” is sung today with joy in all of the Catholic churches around the world. Alleluia! Blessed are those who praise God, obey Him, and follow Him.

We are celebrating the great triumph of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, who by His own death overcame death as He liberated us from the slavery of sin. As human beings, all of us know what death is. It is like a barrier that separates us from eternal life. Christ, as God and man, overcame that barrier, returning to us the possibility of going to heaven. He promises us that when the time for us to cross that barrier arrives we will see Him face to face. But we should bear in mind that not all who die will have the happiness of participating in the glory of God in Heaven. When we leave this earthly existence, our destiny will depend on how we prepared ourselves for our life in eternity.

The glorious Resurrection of the Lord continues to be the greatest event recorded in the entire history of humanity. Yet it can only be recognized and lived as such through faith. Faith is very important for all Christians. If Christ has not risen from the dead, our faith makes no sense. With the Resurrection of Christ is born a new age in the salvation history of humanity, a new chapter in human life that allows us to see the great love that God has for us.

This Easter Sunday, we Christians feel a very special happiness and are filled with hope. It would be a great help for us in our daily lives if we remembered frequently that Jesus loved us so much that, in spite of being God, He willingly sacrificed Himself for each and every one of us, even though He knew that he would have to go through a humiliating death on the Cross. His death reconciled humanity with God, giving us the possibility of conquering sin and going to Heaven.

In the Second Reading, we heard how Saint Paul told the Colossians, “You were raised up with Christ.” He counsels them to look for the heavenly goods that Christ obtained for us with His death. These words should make us reflect on how obsessed we can become with vanity, with power, with money when, in reality, we should be obsessed with gaining heavenly goods. If we allow ourselves to be obsessed with the things that the world offers and we only think about acquiring them, we will never reach our goal, which is to go to Heaven.

Christ, by His death, gained salvation for all humanity. Believing in Jesus, clearly, is the fundamental basis of our faith. There are some who tell us that just by saying, “I believe in Christ,” we are saved. They think that they do not have to do anything else because Christ saved all of humanity from sin. We know that Jesus’ death and Resurrection saved humanity from sin. It saved us from the darkness of sin and has given us the opportunity to fully know and share the light of the love of God, which is the grace of the Holy Spirit. Yet we also know that Christ will give the gift of salvation to those who have answered His love by surrendering to Him obediently and honestly. We must show our faith in God through solid acts, demonstrating, by an exemplary life, that we are faithful to Him. Only if we do this can we truthfully and joyfully sing out: “Alleluia! Christ has risen!”

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