A NEW HEART

With joyous excitement, a friend at Gabriel House said to me, Fr. Frank, I won the biggest lottery! I'm getting a new heart! I have no words to describe how I feel. And to know that someone had to give their life for me to have new life. How can I ever repay them?

My dear friends, We have won the biggest lottery! We have received a heart transplant! We have God's heart...God's spirit within us...to give us new life! He lives...in us! Alleluia!

This is both our conviction of faith and a mystery. Today I'm going to focus on our second reading, St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians, to see what resurrected life is all about. 

I chose this letter because it contains a truth about the Resurrection that you may never have thought of. Not that you've never heard the words before. But sometimes you read a familiar passage, and a light goes on, and you see one of the well-known truths of our faith come alive in a new way. That's what happened to me and I want to share it with you. Here goes.

In his letter, Paul writes, When you were buried with Christ in Baptism, you were also raised with him. Paul doesn't say, You will be raised with Christ at the end of your life. It's in the past tense. You were raised with Christ. 

Now think about that. When Jesus died, God brought him to a new life - a transformed, risen, human life. Paul says that we have received this same life.

There's more. Paul says: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above...for your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, here's the flash of awareness, the good news I want to share. 

v  The resurrection isn't an event that simply happened to Christ.

v  The resurrection isn't something we look forward to when we die.

Paul is saying that the resurrection of Christ gives us new life right now. We are enfolded into the life of the risen Christ...now!

That is what happened at baptism. We didn't simply go into the water to express our intent to die to one way of living, and then come out of the water to express our intent to try to live a good life. There's more to it than that. Christ emerged from the tomb with a transformed, human, risen life. We emerged from baptism with a participation in the same life Christ received when he rose from the dead.

This is the life Christ gives to us: his transformed, human, risen life.

Think about it. This is the life that is nourished within us at every Eucharist. At the Eucharist we join with Christ in his dying and rising during the Eucharistic prayer. And then at Communion we come forward and literally become one with the Risen Christ. We are tangibly, visibly enfolded into Christ and his risen life when we eat the bread and drink the cup.

We become one with him. We are the same, but different. Just as he was the same after the resurrection, but different.

There's one more thing to say about this. I hope it will help us understand it more fully.

One of the things Paul deals with in other parts of this letter is the incorrect teaching of some in the community who said that we have first of all to believe in Jesus Christ, and then we have to earn a place in heaven - eternal life - by living an upright life.

Paul, in today's passage, says it's the other way around. Good behavior doesn't cause God to give the gift of risen life. God's gift of risen life causes me to live a good life. We don't earn a share in the risen life of Christ by "being good". Living a good life is simply a response to the risen life we have already been given. It's a matter of living up to who we are.

When I realize that I actually share in the transformed, human, risen life of Christ, then I want to live a better life. It's like my friend receiving new life through another's heart and act of generous love, and wanting to express her gratitude to her donor through her act of love...and a life of generosity.

Sharing in the risen life of Christ is not a future expectation. It is an accomplished fact. It results in, not simply living the way Christ once lived, but the way Christ is living and thinking now...in us, and through us.

My sisters and brothers, we have received a new heart...new life - from Christ. That is what we celebrate today. That is what impels us to do good and be good. But how we choose to respond to this heart-transplant is up to us. 

Our Church exhorts us, May those reborn in Baptism be one with Christ through their deeds. As we respond at Communion, Amen...Let it be so.

With great joy, I say once more, HAPPY EASTER! ALLELUIA!