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PAGE 4 — The Southern Cross, April 23, 1987
Fr. John Cuddy
St. Joseph’s-Macon
Christ Has Risen!
Father Cuddy writes a regular column for the Macon
Telegraph. It is reprinted from that publication.
It was my privilege to enter again this year in Jerusalem
the monument that encloses the empty tomb of the Lord
Jesus. All pilgrims have to bow their heads and bend their
bodies in reverence as they enter this tiny holy place. As I
prayed quietly there, touching the marble slab that covers
the rock on which the crucified body of Jesus lay from Good
Friday afternoon until Easter Sunday morning (three dif
ferent days), I recalled the Eucharist I celebrated there
alone fourteen years ago on my first pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. My eyes also focused on the Greek banner over it,
with the timeless words “Christos anesti!’’
“Christos anesti!” “Christos voskrese!” “Christus resur-
rexit!” “Christ has risen!” No matter what language we
use to proclaim our faith in Christ’s resurrection, the joy
that fills our hearts is the same. We are truly filled with joy
as we proclaim that the Jesus, who seemed so defeated and
destroyed on Good Friday, won in the end by coming back
to life on Easter Sunday.
Over one billion of us on this planet believe in the physical
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Isn’t that in itself
remarkable? Almost two thousand years after He was nail
ed to a cross and executed, Jesus Christ is still worshipped
as the Lord and accepted with deep gratitude as the Savior
in a very personal way. His resurrection from the dead
proved decisively that He was truly what He had claimed to
be and what St. Peter proclaimed Him to be “the Christ
(the Messiah) the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:16)
It would be natural to remember any great teacher.
Anyone who has influenced not simply his own contem
poraries but the world itself is remembered gratefully. We
need men and women like Moses and Buddha, Aristotle and
Aquinas, Isaiah and Shakespeare, St. Francis of Assisi and
St. Therese of Lisieux, Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tub-
man. We will never forget them. In this sense, they are still
alive years, even centuries, after their deaths. But we know
they died and their bodies were buried. Their souls live on,
of course, in God’s Kingdom of Heaven. But they are still
with us through their ideas and challenges.
Jesus is different! He is with us because He is alive, body
and soul inseparably reunited at the moment of His resur
rection from the dead. He really died and he really rose
physically from the dead. No one before Him, and no one
since, has risen from the (dead, like Jesus.
He Himself summoned several people, like Lazarus and
the little girl He called “ laiitna, back to lite again. But no
one else in history on his own has returned from the dead to
live again and to live forever! Jesus was raised form the
dead by the Lord God directly to confirm as accepted
forever Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on Calvary on behalf of
the entire human race. His glorius resurrection was the
logical conclusion to His love-filled sacrifice of Himself for
you and me.
The resurrection of Jesus offers all of us hope. He assured
us that we, too, would share His triumph over death. He
assured us that we, too, could live forever-with Him! (John
14:3) He showed humanity, previously overwhelmed by
death, that death was not the end but the beginning of life
“not ended but changed.” It’s comforting to know that the
people we love who encounter physical death are still alive
in Him. It’s even more comforting to know that we
ourselves will survive death, no matter how young or how
old we are when it strikes us.
On Easter Sunday and all through the 40-day Easter
Season that follows it for Catholics we thank God not only
for the resurrection of His Son from the dead, but also for
our own immortality because of Him.
"To The City And The World"
This is the Vatican text of Pope John Paul U s Easter
“Urbi et Orbi" message read in St. Peter 's Square April 19.
“Victimae paschali laudes immolent Christiani.” Praise
and glory to the paschal victim! Christians, let us join
together in this hymn! Christians of Rome and of the world!
Let us join together in adoration of the paschal victim, in
adoration of the sacrificial lamb, in adoration of the risen
Lord!
“Agnus redemit oves”: “The sheep are ransomed by the
lamb; and Christ, the undefiled, has sinners to his Father
reconciled.” Behold Christ! Behold our Redeemer! The
redeemer of the world! He has given his life for the sheep.
Let us join together in adoration of that death which brings
us life, for love is more powerful than death: See how the
death accepted out of love conquers death! See how the
death accepted out of love reveals God, the lover of life, who
wishes us to have life, and to have it abundantly (cf. Jn
10:10) — to have the same life that is in him. To the paschal
victim all glory and highest praise! In his death there is
reconciliation with the Father. This is the reconciliation of
sinners with God, the reconciliation of man, who because of
sin dies to God and no longer has in himself the life which is
in God and only in God. In God alone. The death of Christ is
a new beginning. The beginning of life which has no end. It
is without end, because it is of God and in God. Although the
creature dies, God lives! When Christ dies, all of creation is
reborn, blessed are you, life-giving death! Blessed is the
day given us by the Lord.
Blessed are you, O Christ, son of the living God! Blessed
are you, Son of Man, son of Mary, blessed, because you
entered the history of man and of the world, even to the
boundaries of death: “Mors et vita duello conflixere miran-
do”: “Death with life contended: Combat strangely ended!
Life’s own champion, slain, yet lives to reign.” Yes, the
history of man and of the world is marked by the mystery of
death, marked with the stamp of dying, from end to end.
You have taken this stamp upon yourself, eternally begot
ten Son, Son consubstantial with the Father: life from life.
I'he Southern Cross
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and you have carried it through the boundaries of death, the
death which oppresses creation, through the boundaries of
our human death, in order to reveal in that death the Spirit
who gives life.
All of us who came into the world bearing death within us,
we who are born of our earthly mothers marked by the in
evitability of dying, live by the power of the Spirit. And in
the power of this Spirit, who is given to us by the Father, by
the power of your death, O Christ, we cross the boundaries
of the death that is in us, and we rise from sin to the life
revealed in your resurrection! You are the Lord of life, you
who are consubstantial with the Father, who is life itself,
together with you, in the Holy Spirit who is love itself — and
truly love is life! In your death, O Christ, death appeared
defenseless before love. And life triumphed. “Mors et vita
duello conflixere mirando dux vitae mortuus, regnat
vivus.”
You who are the risen one and “live to reign” forever, re
main at the side of man, the man of today whom death, with
its dark allure, in a thousand ways tempts and seeks to
ensnare. Grant that man may rediscover life as the gift
which in all its manifestations reveals the Father’s love:
when it is poured into those who are reborn at the baptismal
font, or courses through every fiber of the body that moves,
breathes and rejoices; when it reveals itself in the vast
variety of the animal world or clothes the land with trees,
grass and flowers. Every form of life has in your Father its
inexhaustible source. From him it flows without ceasing,
and to him it inevitably returns: to him, the generous giver
of every perfect gift (cf. Jas 1:17).
In God the life of the human being has its eternal source
in a unique way, the human being whom he himself fashions
in his own image when he quickens in the mother’s womb.
May reverent wonder for the mystery of love that sur
rounds his coming into the world not die out in contem
porary man! We beseech you, Lord of the living! Grant that
the man of the technological age may not reduce himself to
a mere object, but may respect, from its very beginning,
the unrenounceable dignity that is proper to him. Grant
that, in harmony with the divine plan, he may live ac
cording to the only way worthy of him, the way of giving,
from person to person, in a context of love expressed
through the flesh in an act which from the very beginning
God willed as a seal of the giving.
Grant, O Lord, that peopie may always respect the
transcendent dignity of all their fellow human beings,
whether they be poor or hungry, imprisoned, sick, dying,
wounded in body or mind, beset by doubt or tempted to
despair. They always remain children of God, for God’s gift
knows no regrets. Everyone is offered forgiveness and
resurrection. Each one deserves respect and support.
Deserves love.
“Die nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via”: “Tell us, Mary:
Say what you have seen upon the way.” Visiting the tomb at
dawn on the third day, the place where he was buried, tell
us, Mary of Magdala, you who loved so much. Behold, you
found the tomb empty: “Sepulcrum Christi viventis, et
gloriam vidi resurgentis” the Lord lives! I have seen the
Risen One. “Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes.” Who
could testify to this? What human tongue? Only the angels
could explain the meaning of that empty tomb and discard
ed shroud. The Lord lives! I have seen his glory, full of
grace and truth (cf. Jn 1:14). I have seen the glory “Surrex-
it Christus spes mea”: “Christ, my hope, has risen: He
goes before you into Galilee.”
Yes, first of all there, in the land which gave him as Son of
Man. In the land of his infancy and youth. In the land of the
hidden life. First of all there, in Galilee to meet the
apostles. And then... and then, through the testimony of the
apostles, in so many places, among so many nations,
peoples and races! Today the voice of this Easter message,
echoing in Jerusalem at the empty tomb, seeks to reach
everyone: “Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere,”
yes, we are certain of it: Christ is truly risen.
“And you, victorious king, your salvation bring us.”
Amen, alleluia!
PRAYER FOR RENEWAL
Heavenly Father, in the name of your
son Jesus Christ, you sent your Spirit to be
with your church. Pour forth on your peo
ple the fullness of His gifts, so that as we
gather in your name, we may be guided by
the light and power of your gospel. Grant
to us hearts renewed in faith, hope and
love. Renew in our day your wonders, as in
a new Pentecost, so that this community
of your children, prayerfully gathered with
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, may bring to
pass your kingdom of truth and justice, of
love and peace. Amen.