Christ is risen! This is the cry that echoes throughout all the churches of East and West on this glorious day. It is the reason that Christianity exists in this world, for as St Paul says, if Christ is not risen then our preaching is in vain and your faith is useless and you are still in your sins. But the unchanging testimony of the Church—which goes right back to that first Easter Sunday and the discovery of the empty tomb, to the appearances of the Lord of Glory to his disciples—is that Jesus is indeed risen! Therefore death is conquered and forgiveness of sin is offered to us, for Christ has opened the way for us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven forever.

Easter is considered the greatest of all feast days, not only because rising from the dead is the greatest of divine wonders, but because this mystery expresses the fullness of God’s revelation of Christ in our redemption unto eternal life. That is perhaps why on this feast we don’t simply read one of the accounts of the Resurrection. We read the profound Prologue of the Gospel of St John, because it gives us a panoramic view of the whole of the mystery of God, from the eternal generation of the Son within the Holy Trinity, to his incarnation in the flesh, to the fullness of eternal life in his grace and truth and glory. It is as if to say that the Resurrection of Christ is at the very heart of all that God wanted to say to us and to do for us, all that He wants us to participate in for our eternal happiness and perfect fulfillment.

As soon as St John tells us who the Word of God is, he says, “in him was life.” Jesus Himself made this even more explicit when He was talking to Martha before raising Lazarus from the dead. She thought He was talking more or less abstractly about the general resurrection in some distant future. But Jesus had to correct her by saying: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” This means much more than saying He has the power to raise the dead. That power was something He even gave to his disciples during his earthly ministry. But to say that He is the Resurrection and the Life tells us that this belongs to his very being and identity. It is more even than the assertion that He has been raised from the dead into glory. The very power and meaning of Resurrection is part of his inner constitution; because of it He could give the Holy Spirit to his disciples by merely breathing on them after He returned from the grave. He isn’t the Resurrection because He rose from the dead; He rose from the dead because He is the Resurrection!

In an analogous way, when Our Lady identified herself to St Bernadette at Lourdes, she did not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but rather, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” This inscrutable mystery was not simply something that happened to her; it is something that constitutes her very being and identity. If Mary were not the Immaculate Conception, she would not be at all, for this what God willed for her and how He created her. This was her identity, and it was essential for her mission. Mary had to be utterly immaculate in order to bring God into the world as man. She was thus bonded to the All-holy Trinity in a way no other human being could ever be, because she was chosen from all eternity to give manhood to God, to be the personal instrument of the divine Incarnation, which made possible our salvation.

So when we deal with God, we deal with profound and eternal mysteries, not merely significant historical events. Jesus didn’t simply die and come back to life as one of countless events in human history. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God made man, who is Resurrection and Life, communicated to our fallen nature—through his incarnation, death, and resurrection—the very possibility of living forever and sharing in the life of God. It is only because He is Resurrection and Life that He can give this grace and glory to us. The sheer fact of our existence as human beings does not entitle us to eternal life. The Gospel says that to those who believe in Jesus is given the power to become children of God. Our mortal and contingent nature has to be infused with divine life and the power of resurrection if we are to live forever. This is precisely what Jesus did for us, and we receive it through baptism and faith and the whole sacramental and spiritual life of his Church. So this is what we, members of the Church and therefore children of God, joyfully celebrate today.

When St John says that in Him was life, he goes on to say that the life was the light of mankind. So Christ is not only that mysterious, hidden power of resurrection that abides in the depths of our souls, He is also the Light of grace and truth that guides along the path to salvation and eternal life. St John emphasizes the fact that Jesus is the true light that enlightens us. He had to say that because there are false lights in this world, and, as St Paul says, even the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light.

There’s a lot of talk in new-age circles about the “light,” but that is a false light, one that is used by evil spirits to deceive gullible and undiscerning souls. So let’s be clear about this: Jesus Christ is the only True Light there is in this world. He alone is the Resurrection, as well as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. St John makes it clear in the Gospel when he distinguishes between those who knew Him not and received Him not, and those who did receive Him and believe in Him. Only the latter were granted the grace to become children of God and thus to enter the mystery of resurrection and eternal life. This is also why the Church takes such great care to declare what is true and what is false, what is of God and what is not, what is genuine life in Jesus Christ and what is not. When we live in the Church and according to her teachings, we know we have the Life that is the True Light which enlightens all. The only other alternative is to embrace the darkness, which so many unfortunately do, although often unwittingly.

As for us, we have much cause for rejoicing, not only because we have the true light, but because the grace and inner dynamism of resurrection, which is of the very nature and person of Christ, is communicated to us anew today as we celebrate the manifestation of his glorious life in our midst today.

The Gospel says that we have beheld his glory. Certainly the author of the Gospel did so with his own eyes, but we do so with the eyes of faith and love. Even if we don’t see his glory, we can still perceive it, through the proclamation of the Gospel and our meditation upon it, through our contemplative prayer and through communion in the precious Body and Blood of our risen Lord Jesus. St John invites us in his Gospel to perceive the glory of the Lord even in the depths of his agony on the Cross, for in his theological vision this constitutes the beginning of Jesus’ glorification.

Yet the emphasis today is on that dynamic power of resurrection and eternal life. Even though the Byzantine Liturgy celebrates deeply and extensively the mystery of Jesus’ passion and death, it doesn’t invite us to dwell very long on Jesus as being dead. Once He dies, and we lament for a while with his sorrowful Mother, our attention is immediately directed to the soul of Christ descending to Hades to proclaim his victory over death and to release all the just from all ages who were waiting for their divine Liberator and Redeemer. That is because we know Jesus to be the Resurrection and the Life, and it is his divine, eternal, irrepressible, super-abundant, unconquerable life that we celebrate today, and we rejoice exceedingly because Jesus gives this same life to us! “Because I live,” He declared to his apostles, “you will live also”(Jn. 14:19). Because Jesus lives, because He has risen from the dead, manifesting Himself as the Resurrection and the Life, we will live also, and we will live forever.

So we celebrate the Resurrection, not as one mystery among the many great mysteries of the life of Christ, but in a sense as the sum of them all, as their crowning and their goal, as that which gives meaning and direction to everything that the Lord has ever said or done. The grace of this feast not only enables us to stand in awe and wonder at the power and love and goodness of the Lord, but it seizes us—if we allow it—and situates us in the Heart of God, lifting the veil on the meaning of our life and destiny. Through our worthy celebration of this feast, the Lord communicates to us not only the power to live as children of God, but also, as St Paul so eloquently said: “…the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which He accomplished in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made Him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places…” (Eph. 1:17-20).

We heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (1:1-9), that Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection over the course of 40 days, speaking to them of the Kingdom of God. Today is the beginning of that special 40-day period of the extraordinary presence of Christ in our midst, who desires that we perceive his glory as He manifests it to each of us uniquely. Let us open our hearts to hear Him speaking of the Kingdom of God and inviting us to a deeper share in his divine life, which overflows in grace and truth, in mercy and everlasting love. And, like the radiant, joyful angels at the empty tomb, let us always have these words in our hearts and on our lips: Christ is risen!