Fulton J. Sheen: The Eternity of Easter

Inspired by Fulton J. Sheen’s "The Eternity of Easter" Broadcasted, March 27, 1932:

In a world consumed by headlines, crises, and the noise of the moment, Easter calls us back to the only horizon that lasts: eternity. Drawing from Fulton J. Sheen’s 1932 Easter broadcast and St. Paul’s charge in Colossians 3, this reflection invites readers to rediscover the first lesson of Easter morning—lifting our eyes from the temporary to the eternal. Christ’s scars, not His wounds, summon us to step through the empty tomb and live as citizens of Heaven in a world that has forgotten how to look above.

“My Easter wish is that your soul may be flooded with the peace and joy which

comes from the victory of the Risen Christ, who bears now and forevermore

not wounds, but scars as pledges of love and forgiveness.”

~ (Saint) Fulton J. Sheen

Easter always begins here—with a wish, a blessing, a hope that the Resurrection is not merely remembered but received. Fulton Sheen understood that the empty tomb is not an event we admire from a distance; it is a reality meant to break into our lives with the same force that broke into Mary Magdalene’s grief. And yet, like her, we often miss the first lesson of Easter morning.

To Mary, Jesus—the supreme object of faith—could still be touched by fingers; her soul was still governed by time. At the empty tomb she clung to an unfinished work, seeking the Christ she had known rather than the Christ who had risen. “Do not touch Me, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.” In that moment, she heard the truth that He was no longer to be grasped under the form of time and in this world of sensation, but to be known by the soul in the world of eternity.

Thus, the first lesson of Easter morn is the very lesson Mary failed to comprehend: that the Risen Christ draws us out of the temporal into the eternal. St. Paul names that lesson with disarming clarity: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above… set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Colossians 3:1–2)

Sheen insisted that this is not pious embroidery—it is the central reorientation of the Christian life. Easter is not simply God’s victory over death; it is God’s summons to lift our gaze from the temporal to the eternal.

Sheen saw in 1932 what we see even more starkly today: a world that speaks endlessly of time but rarely of eternity. A world that treats citizenship in earthly kingdoms as urgent, and citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven as optional. A world that debates science, politics, economics, wealth, and power with feverish intensity—yet grows indifferent to the One who sits eternally at the right hand of the Father.

Some minds, Sheen warned, have drifted so far from the Gospel of the Resurrection that they treat time—the most fragile of God’s creations—as the very fabric of the universe. Scripture tells us that a moment will come when time itself dissolves into the eternal. But the “unsacred scripture” of our age insists that time is all there is, all there ever will be.

This great truth, which Sheen echoed throughout his teachings, needs to be stressed strongly on this new Easter Day. For when men no longer speak of eternity but only of time, Heaven fades from the Christian imagination. We speak more readily of citizenship in the kingdoms of this world than of citizenship in the Kingdom that has no end. And when eternity is forgotten, the soul becomes trapped in the narrow corridors of the present moment.

Time, Sheen reminds us, is the one thing that makes perfect joy impossible. By its very nature it forbids us to hold many goods together; it grants them only in passing, and always with the quiet warning that they cannot stay. Time gives, but it also takes away.

All things in time are good, yet none can be enjoyed except in their season, and every season ends. The joys of this world are always tinged with the sorrow of their passing. But the joy of the Resurrection is not seasonal—it is eternal. Easter reveals the God who steps into time not only to redeem it, but to draw us beyond it, into the life where nothing good is ever lost.

A Needed Jolt for a Numb Generation

And perhaps this is the real scandal of our age: not that nations argue, legislate, or rearrange their borders, but that Christians have allowed the headlines of the moment to eclipse the horizons of eternity. We rage over the crises of the week while treating the Resurrection as a seasonal ornament. We behave as if the Supreme Court, Parliament, or any earthly authority can settle the questions that only the empty tomb can answer. The world is loud, yes—but the louder tragedy is that believers have forgotten how to listen for the voice that rolled away the stone. When was the last time anyone spoke of the requirements for being a citizen of Heaven?

Your birth right as a citizen of Heaven is to be born anew in Christ—a citizenship granted not by earthly law, but by the Resurrection itself, as St. Paul teaches when he calls us to “put on the new self” (Colossians 3:10).

This is not a call to ignore the world, but a call to stop letting the world define what matters most. Sheen’s point remains painfully relevant: when Christians lose sight of eternity, they lose their balance in time.

The Scars That Reorder the Universe

The Risen Christ does not return with wounds that demand pity, but with scars that demand decision. Scars that testify that divine love has conquered death. Scars that insist that eternity is not a distant abstraction but a present invitation.

Easter is the moment when the eternal God steps into time not only to redeem it, but to relativize it. To show that the passing things of this world—its anxieties, its arguments, its empires—are not the measure of reality. The measure is the Lamb who was slain and now lives forever.

To “seek the things that are above” is not to abandon the world, but to see it rightly. To recognize that the Resurrection is not a seasonal sentiment but the axis on which all of history turns—and for all generations. As Colossians continues, Easter is the wardrobe of the new creation: putting off the old man and putting on the new (Colossians 3:9–10) —a life renewed in the image of the One who created us.

A New Easter, the Same Eternal Call

So yes—this new Easter Day is much like the old. Humanity still hurries, still worries, still waits for the next earthly verdict. But the Risen Christ waits too, with the same gentle insistence:

Lift your eyes.

Lift your heart.

Lift your life into the horizon of eternity.

All Easter people—citizens of Heaven—must pass through the empty tomb, for it is the doorway where time yields to eternity.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” - Matthew 16:24

Author’s Note
This reflection was written in the spirit of Fulton J. Sheen, whose clarity of thought and courage of soul continue to illuminate the Church’s path through every age. His 1932 Easter broadcast—delivered in a world shaken by uncertainty—speaks with even greater urgency today. My hope is that these words help reawaken what Sheen never tired of proclaiming: that the Resurrection is not a memory to admire but a reality to enter.

If this meditation stirs anything in you—an ache for eternity, a longing to lift your eyes above the noise of the age—then let it be a small grace of Easter. May we all learn again to live as citizens of Heaven, walking through the empty tomb with the courage of those who know that Christ’s victory is not only His, but ours.

May the Risen Christ lift your eyes beyond the passing of time, and teach your heart to live from the eternity He has already opened for you.