There may be a few James Bond fans among you.
People who, like me, have no problem watching a film in the series for the third or fourth time… In Skyfall, one of the bad guys asks James Bond what his hobby is.
And the latter responds in a surprising way: resurrection.
« What’s your hobby, James ? » « Resurrection ».
What we are celebrating today is beyond anything we can imagine. Words are always too narrow to express the unspeakable of Easter. To try to put words to their faith in the resurrection, the first Christians borrowed a multitude of varied expressions: glory, recovery, exaltation, awakening… Indeed, have we not already seen people get up, wake up to life, when everything seemed lost? They are no longer where we lock them up. Daring to speak of the resurrection, doesn’t that mean first of all believing in our own, and perhaps seeing it every day around us? How will you tell me?
Let’s understand this: it’s not regarding finding what was lost. The joy of Easter is more than a happy past which resurfaces in our life, or a return to life of old things as in this vintage culture which gives a second life to things past… To speak of the resurrection of Jesus, the gospels never use the term second life. On the contrary, resurrection is the crossing of death, that is to say the arrival of something radically new and unexpected! To experience the resurrection is to grieve fruitfully.
To experience this, we are called to first look at what encloses us, our tombs and our fears. In Greek, it is the same word! And paradoxically see in these places of announcement and promise… It is then a question of accepting certain ruptures in order to no longer cling to one’s own life… Easter, the great passage, invites us thus not seeing the passing of time as a threat, but as the path that God’s eternity takes to reach us.
Because resurrection is not immortality. On the contrary, it is failure experienced, life transfigured in our mortal existence. To experience such a transformation, you must dare to go to your own places of fragility. Experiencing lack and going to the tomb to see that it is empty. And at the same time, like the beloved disciple, believe that this tomb opens a future. That it can become the nursery of a new world. “He saw and he believed”!
Is it not more than a wink to see that it is the women who, in the gospels, are the first to carry, even imperfectly, the announcement of Easter? Is it not precisely because they carry life and give birth to it? Experiencing the great Easter journey does not mean welcoming in us, like them, a gentle interior transformation, which leads to childbirth? Then our mourning will be fruitful. And the resurrection will be experienced daily, in our mothering and maternal gestures. This is why the resurrection is not so much a historical fact as a question posed to our history, to yours: what are these tombs which lock you up, but which can ultimately be places of a promise, of a paradoxical birth? Is this a failure to overcome? A mourning that remains to be done? Misplaced guilt? A depression to go through? A limit that we still have to accept?
To those who see dead ends in their lives, but who also believe in a possible recovery, the crazy hope of Easter says to them: “Move on, there is nothing more to see in your life in that place” . Your life precedes you to Galilee. Die to what you no longer are, in order to be reborn to what you truly are. Leave this project that doesn’t make you grow. Leave this place that is holding you back. Do not define yourself by what you have been, but welcome what you are becoming. No matter how old you are, your future is more real than your past.
Siblings,
In life, there are those who think they know, and who think they have proof and the truth. But there are also those who know how to believe, like the beloved disciple… Those for whom, in front of the tomb, the absence of proof is not proof of absence… Those who see the tomb empty not as the end, but as a place of announcement.
For the true believer, it is not because he sees that he believes. But it is because he believes that he can see everything quite differently. What does this mean, concretely? Aren’t there times in our lives when we are as if we are dead, out of breath? Where do we live out of duty, fear or survival? What we see does not give us the joy of believing and we are as if locked in the tombs of our dreams or our disappointed hopes… But the incredible joy of Easter invites us, like the beloved disciple, to see and to believe: lucidly see our life as it is, without idealizing it. And believe that it can be truly transformed, and remain fertile…
May this joy, this extraordinary promise of Easter accompany us, and bring more life into our mortal existences. May it lift us up, wake us up, recreate us, give birth to us! Amen.
