Alleluia, Christ our Lord is risen today, he is risen indeed, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!  Today the world rings out in joy the Easter alleluias in which we proclaim and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, our Lord, and contemplate the hope that is ours that we too might share in the newness that is his risen life.  The resurrection of Jesus signals the beginning of a new life, a life that is not corrupted by sin or compromised by disobedience.  This day is a new day, a day of light and love that will know no darkness and will not be diminished by the shadows of sin and death.  Jesus Christ our Lord has conquered sin and death through the cross and resurrection and has prepared for us this new day of God’s grace and favor.  There is a freshness about this new day as it dawns full of hope and promise.  It is a day unlike any other day for it is a day that does not simply become a part of history but it transcends history and takes us beyond history into the eternal.  This new day, the Eighth Day, is a new creation.  On this day we dare to hope that we also might one day shrug off this body of mortality and put on  a new glorious body of immortality, sharing in the risen life of Christ.  We are reminded of this hope and promise that is ours through baptism.  In the waters of baptism we have “put on Christ” and have clothed ourselves in immortality having been sanctified in his Spirit and prepared for a new  life of grace and holiness.  Now on this day we contemplate what the significance of our baptism is for us and how we can draw our life more fully from the wells of salvation.

     When we speak of our “new” life in Christ we might ask, “What is new about it?”  Is there really something new here or is it just the old that has been cleaned up a bit and is now good for a period of time?  Is life made “new” or is it just restored or reconstituted?  Our faith in the resurrection is not about Jesus’ return to life, to take up his earthly life again, but rather it is something new that has happened and Jesus has been given the gift of this “new” life by the Father.  Jesus appears to this apostles with a new and glorious body.  The presence of the Risen Jesus is a totally new presence, in Spirit and Truth, with new rules that govern his “being with” his disciples.  Not everyone is given the gift of seeing him and recognizing him in his risen body.

     In science fiction stories and movies we have illustrated the hope and desire that it might one day be possible to transcend our existence as we know it and enter into a new way of existing without the limitations of our flesh.  Resurrection life is not exactly like that but it is a new way of life and existence, a life “in the Spirit” rather than “in the flesh”, an immortal life not subject to corruption rather than a mortal life.  Pope Benedict put it this way in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, part two:  “The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience.  They speak of something new, something unprecedented – a new dimension of reality that is revealed.  What already exists is not called into question.  Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known.  Does that contradict science?  Can there really only ever be what there has always been?  Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new?  If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest “evolutionary leap”, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?”

     Our new life is meant to be a life lived in the Spirit, a spiritual life that draws its life from God the Father.  We are still both soul and body, but our risen body is conformed to Christ and raised to immortality and to a share in the divine glory of God.  Easter calls us to a resurrection of our spirit that has died because of sin but can now experience new life in Christ.  God is Spirit and he desires those who will worship him in spirit and truth.  Let us then allow our spirit to be raised up by the Father and begin once again to draw our life from God’s life-giving Spirit. May we all enter into that new dimension of life that is made available to us through the resurrection of Jesus and live a life of love and light.  Happy Easter!!!