CHRIST IS RISEN: HIS VICTORY IS OUR VICTORY

Dear Parishioners,

He promised it

They experienced it

We live it!

You might wonder what this “it” could be. It is the resurrection of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, from the dead. Easter is the greatest feast in the Church’s Calendar, because it is the central theme of our profession and proclamation. The resurrection of Christ is the hallmark of our Christian faith. It is fundamental to who we are as a people redeemed and sanctified. As Saint Paul admonishes the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:14), your faith and our preaching would have been in vain had Christ not risen from the dead. We celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death because by dying he destroyed our death and by rising from the dead he has restored our life. As the hymn sings of Christ, “He arose a Victor from the dark domain and He lives forever with His saints to reign…”

Through his once-for-all and unrepeatable sacrifice on the cross, Christ replaced the obsolete sacrifice for sin which was made by the shedding of the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the ashes of heifer (see Hebrew 9:13). The price for our redemption is his imperishable and Divine blood. As we sang in the Easter Proclamation at Easter Vigil, for our sake Christ paid Adam’s debt to our Eternal Father. He paid the price for humanity’s sin to the Father by shedding his own precious blood. Thus, he snatched us from the claws of the infernal beast, and has transported us into the luminous Kingdom of His Father. In the resurrection we see Christ, whom the Devil thought defeated for a little while as he slept in death, rising triumphantly, overturning the power of the grave, of sin and death. 

Christ’s victory is our victory because the fate of the head is the anticipated fate of the body, the Church. Just as Christ rose from the dead and is no longer subject to the power of this world, so are we who believe in his name and are born again in water and the Holy Spirit. This is a cause for great joy. And so, let us rejoice! 

I wish you all a very blessed and joyous Easter celebration. Truly Christ is risen!

May Jesus bless you, and may Our Lady protect you!