On Good Friday he lays hold of the cross with the hands of a lover, takes to his heart all that dire misery, ugliness, brutality, that is the result of sin; even that he transforms. Suddenly, the age-long sorrow, death, becomes potent with life. The seed has fallen into the earth, the great emptiness of the world’s heart is filled with the potency of immortal love.
Easter is Christ risen in us; our life is the risen Christ. Christ will flower in us, will bear fruit in us, will come to harvest in us.
Had he not risen in the flesh, but remained in the tomb, he would have been the prerogative of the devout few. In every age the Magdalenes and the Johns of the world would have come with their precious ointment of love, but the Christian world would have been a world of weeping. Because Christ is risen it is a world of joy, an unassailable kingdom of heaven in the midst to surrounding sorrow.
It is for the ordinary man [sic], the creature of flesh and blood, that Christ has risen; for those who cannot look upon folded hands and still feet and listen to the silence of a heart no longer beating.
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