There’s no doubt about it: the pivotal event of the Christian faith is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All four of the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – tell about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Not all four have an account of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem – only two, Matthew and Luke have infancy narratives. But all four tell of Jesus’ death – and even more important than that, of his rising from the dead. The Easter event of the empty tomb and Jesus rising to life again is undoubtedly more significant than anything else about our faith.

Once risen from the tomb, Jesus appears to many people, beginning with a small group of women. In Matthew’s account, this is only Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”, who in Mark’s Gospel is identified as the mother of James. This is followed very quickly by his appearing to the apostles. In the course of the following days, Jesus appears to many more. And what is the common reaction to these appearances and the news of them? Unbelief, of course. They can’t believe it. There are many people in history and even our own day who have come close to death, what we now call “near-death experiences”, whose death we would say seemed certain, but they came back to life and are able to tell what they experienced before coming back to life. You may have seen the movie “Heaven Is For Real”, the true story of a young boy with acute appendicitis, Colton Burpo, who died while on the operating table, but came back to life. Did he really die? Or did he simply come out of a heavy anesthetic, or a coma of sorts? We might be inclined to draw that conclusion. But Colton came back with the knowledge of things that he did not and could not have known. It is always hard to believe that anyone could really come back from the dead -- so hard, in fact, that most just cannot accept it. Little wonder that Thomas needed to be able to touch Jesus’ wounds before he would believe. In Jesus’ case, there is no doubt whatever that he had died. And shy of divine intervention, death is so definitive that nobody survives death. We have a saying, don’t we, that “seeing is believing.” “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Perhaps the saying should be “I’ll see it when I believe it.” Faith precedes sight, not the other way around.

Many people struggle with faith. This is not just a modern phenomenon. People throughout the ages have struggled to believe in God, or to believe what the Church teaches. They experience faith as a crisis. Although they may have been raised by believing parents, they themselves come to a point of repudiating the faith in which they were raised. At the same time, we also see many who come to faith in Jesus and His Church, or return to the faith that they once claimed as theirs, but which they fell away from or had claimed no longer to be theirs. The resurrection of Jesus is central to our faith and trust in Jesus. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14, if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. In the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, the baptism and reception of adults into the Body of Christ has become a significant experience. Not only do we rejoice that Christ has died and now is risen from the dead, but we also celebrate with great joy the baptism of adults who have been in the catechumenate during the past several months. Jesus is born anew; so also are these catechumens. If we are fortunate enough to hear the stories of coming to faith by these adults, it is all very moving. They will often say, coming to faith is like being born again. They were dead, in a sense, but now they feel alive as never before.

More than we would ever do with infants at their baptism – here the adults are often fully immersed in the baptismal water. Not only once, but three times, the priest or deacon will immerse the candidate, affirming each time, “I baptize you in the name of the Father” (under the water he goes), “and of the Son” (under he goes again), and of the Holy Spirit” (he is immersed a third time). What is implied here is that the act of dying and coming again to life with Jesus happens not only once, but many times; it becomes a pattern for your life as a Christian. We die many times, for the sake of the life of others and of the community, and we also come to new life again. Every time in your life that you give yourself away, you die and rise to new life. When you fall in love with the person that you want to marry, you die to yourself, and give your life to your spouse. This is a death and resurrection, in a way.

Each time you give life to a newborn child, you die to yourself and experience new life in your child. Every time you make a sacrifice, be it small or significant in the life of your children, you are dying to yourself and finding new life in them. Whenever you decide to join a charitable organization or venture, and make the requested sacrifices for the good of the poor and needy, you are dying again and finding life in others.

When I, for instance, became a Redemptorist and a priest, I was called to die to myself and give life and hope to others. When I make a sacrificial gift for the benefit of the needy and hungry of this world, I’m dying to myself and giving new life to others.

For a Christian, dying and rising is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It happens often, and becomes almost commonplace, so that I’m no longer surprised or reluctant to enter into this mystery. When the time comes for my final death to this life, I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised to realize that my “time” has come. Baptism has become the pattern of my whole life. Death and resurrection.

Is it any wonder, then, that Christmas and Easter are the two hinges and highlights that hold the liturgical year in place? The rising of Jesus to new life has had the greatest impact on the faith and the life of each one of us. Jesus is the Lord of life. So strong is this life that not even death, which looks like an end of life, is not what it seems to be, but is our entry into eternal life with God. Amen? Amen!