“If Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching, and empty too your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ” (1 Cor 15: 14-15).

“Whether Jesus merely was or whether he also is depends on the resurrection” (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 2, Holy Week, p. 242). His resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse but was utterly different, “the breaking out into an entirely new and unheard of form of life, one that opens up a new form of existence,” of being a human being. The Risen Christ was and is now a human being, the “first fruits” of the dead (see ibid, 242-244). The Risen Christ is now the human being we are meant ultimately to be.

The mind-boggling truth is that we have already entered into the new form of being human that the Risen Christ makes possible. We do so when we are baptized and “die” to the old, Adamic man, and through Christ “rise” to this new form of life. Jesus told Nicodemus that for him to have “eternal life” he had to be “reborn,” “regenerated” (John 3), and “Baptism regenerates us in the life of the Son of God, unites us to Christ and to his body, the Church, and anoints us with the Holy Spirit, making us spiritual temples” (Pope John Paul II, Christifideles laici, no. 10). 

We, you and I, and all the baptized are those of whom it is written: "You are my son; this day I have begotten you" (Ps 2.7). Just as Jesus fully shares our humanity, so we who have been engrafted by baptism onto the "vine" which is Christ (see Jn 15.1-11) really share his divinity. In him we are literally divinized. This is the mystery of our divine filiation, which is the basis of our vocation to be saints. Our life in union with Jesus and, in, with, and through him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit will reach its completion only in the world to come, but this divine life, the life of the Risen Christ, is, here and now, our own life. We are, now, God's children: the divine nature has been communicated to us. While always remaining human, we truly share Christ's divinity, just as Christ, while always remaining divine, truly shares our humanity. We are literally "other Christs," his brothers and sisters not only in humanity but also in divinity. "Adopted" into the divine family by being "begotten" anew in baptism, we can now, with Jesus, call God our Father, our "Abba," in a new and utterly profound way. We are, here and now, saints.

We are saints, and our basic imperative is to “Become what we are!” We must integrate into our baptismal commitment to be saints every act of every day. We must become canonizable saints. Mortal sin is totally incompatible with that commitment and destroys divine life in us. But venial sin is in some way compatible with our baptismal commitment and does not deprive us of divine life, although it does not perfectly conform to our baptismal commitment and is incompatible with perfect love of God and neighbor. And we must rid ourselves of venial sin of the little “lies” we tell every day and that led John to write: “if we say that we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8).

Wishing you a all the blessings of Holy Week and the joy of His Resurrection!

(c) William E. May, Ph.D.