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| Digital art from the "Cross" series |
The seed of the New Creation is sown in the depths of the earth.
And so, we wait in hope for the fulfillment of that Kingdom which has been inaugurated under the sign of the Cross.
He is the resurrection and the life. The depths of God's love - Absolute Love - are deeper than the darkest of graves, deeper than the whole abyss of death.
Tomorrow we rejoice in the victory of Christ, risen in the flesh. He makes us sons and daughters of His Father in the Spirit, and already in this world we begin to taste the transfigured life that is our destiny, the life of human persons suffused and transformed by Love.
The longer we remain in this world, the clearer it becomes to us that this is not our lasting home. Our loved ones go before us in death, which is still a painful mystery and yet in Christ, in Christ's transforming love, it has become the passage to fulfillment, to eternal life.
He lives. They live in Him. We also live in Him, even in the midst of this world, and so we live in hope. If we groan with sorrow, it is encompassed in the mystery of endurance, of suffering, of solidarity with the whole creation that waits with eager longing to be made new.
Love is breaking the hard ground that holds us, the limits and frustrations of this life that we fear, the sins by which we hold back and refuse to become larger than our own ego with its illusions of control.
Let us go forth without fear. All tombs - the tombs of our loved ones, the tomb where we buried my father recently, our own tombs - are destined to be empty, in the end. This is not our home. We are made for a New Creation.
"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance" (Romans 8:19-25).
