May 9, 2018 - Our change after the Resurrection

May 9, 2018

Our change after the Resurrection

With the Lord’s Crucifixion and Resurrection, everything has changed in the world. Nothing can remain as it was before. In like fashion, we too are called to change.

The first question that arises is what do we have to change? Most people want to improve their living conditions so as to live in comfort, without pain and difficulties. They also want to have good health and, for this reason, they take extreme efforts so as to improve their physical condition.  As significant as these seem to be on a worldly level, they remain inadequate to ensure the change that will bring on the joy of the Resurrection.

The starting point and the end of our change as human beings are not found in one’s individuality, but in our relationship with the Other. Jesus, with His Crucifixion and the Resurrection, invites us to enter into an eternal relationship of love with Him and  wants this relationship to bear fruit within a communal relationship with the entire world. He does not come as a superpower or a lawmaker to enforce change on Mankind. He comes into the world and is “gentile and humble in heart”, full of love and acceptance. He comes to us who are deprived of love and hope and invites us to walk in life with Him, and not only. He asks that fall in love with Him! To reciprocate His love, we will willingly change so as to thank Him. If we change, it will be this relationship, this love that will change us.

It is not easy to change and to be healed from our physical and spiritual pain and to be made whole as persons. In order to change, we must engage into a therapeutic effort that presupposes “ascesis”, patience and commitment. Most people today want to improve their life immediately and become healed without pain and without having to go through any change in their way of living.

Yet, in saying this, we must admit that the therapeutic treatment which is needed to bring about change in our self may provoke fear and uneasiness. For it will turn our life completely around and it will be different from what we know it as being. The therapeutic process  will not allow us remain trapped in an immature illusion regarding our self. It will require us to see ourselves in total truth; to come to know who we are and who we are not; to expel the fears that we have which do  not allow us to love and be loved; to transcend ourselves so as to become meek, humble and accepting like Christ. For this knowledge, acceptance and transcendence will rejuvenate us and we will become a new creation, a true being.

This change in our self, of course, is not exclusively our own achievement. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us; who is the reflection of the Father; who knows the multitude of our sins; who is the Spirit of wisdom and prudence; who, with His straightforwardness, fills our inner world; who, in the midst of the storms of this life, is our calm harbor; who supports us when we slip; who guides us towards our best interest so we can delight in the treasures of the age to come.

+SKK

Library