Through Suffering and Resurrection Christ presents New Life to us - Part One

Through Suffering and Resurrection Christ presents New Life to us: - Part One

Following the Resurrection of Christ we enter a period of reflection (Mystagogy) pertaining to our evangelical lives; learning and then adherence to spreading the Good News in ways we might not have understood.  

It is not enough to just adhere to the moments we spent from Ash Wednesday to the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday.  There must be an endearing understanding regarding what our individual expectations are since many of us renewed our Baptismal promises.

The Holy Spirit becomes a unifier bringing our understanding of the Paschal Mystery to light.  Perhaps no aspect of the Spirit’s work is more stressed in popular Christian tradition than the Spirit’s role of enlightener and guider.  This dimension is closely related to the role of unifier.  The Spirit having united us with the Lord and others in love now guides us in the way to best express this love.  (taken from a paragraph entitled Spirit as Enlightener; taken from the book “In His Spirit” by Richard J. Hauser, S.J.)

Accepting the role we were asked to undertake, either at our Confirmation or if a recent Catechumen at the Easter vigil, the words of Christ will ring throughout our Christian life as one who has become a disciple of doing God’s will for humanity.

However, lest the suffering that Jesus welcomed and went through for the sake of our eternal salvation was a pre-empted sign just for himself, we need to look a little further into what the plan of God was all about.  It was a guide for each one who praised the Easter message as more than a celebration that ended on Easter night.  

When we say Mystagogy as a mystery we are preparing for what every apostle and martyr went through; intense suffering that becomes a pathway to the cross.  If the thought of now reaching the plateau of success in spiritual achievement because we claim to be his followers, Christ warns his disciples, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.  (Jn 15: 18).  That in itself is a reminder that his rejection by the Pharisees was a preliminary cause of great suffering since the learned leaders of the Jewish community were the first to seek his death.  

But the eyes of faith, penetrate surface understanding.  Christ’s death was not really an end but a beginning, the ultimate achievement of God in his plan of love to unify and divinize man.  Under the dismal sky of Jerusalem, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in the birth-pangs of crucifixion, a community of love was born.  A new covenant was sealed in God’s own blood.  The mysterious plan of God is opened to man.  (Excerpted from a book titled “The Mystery of the Church” by John Powell, S.J,).

As we continue with this Mystagogy we shall follow up with more thoughts and adherences of St. Paul and others who also found the depths of becoming a sacrificial lamb for Christ.  

Ralph B. Hathawa