Variety: 1 Corinthians 13v13
Richard Rohr describes how it’s possible to experience resurrection through experiencing God’s love:
We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, we are resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, or hopeless, we are experiencing the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.
The resurrection is not Jesus’s private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.
The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: All are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility. Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity, but most of us walk around operating in a world of scarcity.
And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life—to ourselves. We hoard grace and we hoard mercy. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world. Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—or any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. If we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death and contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even the oppression of other races and religions.
I believe the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus is summed up in the climactic line from the Song of Songs: “Love is stronger than death” (8:6). In Christian art, the risen Christ often holds a blank, white banner; if that banner should say anything, it should say: “Love will win!” Love is all that remains. Love and life are finally the same thing, and we know that for ourselves once we have walked through death.
Remember, Love has you. Love is you. Love alone, and your deep need for love, recognizes love everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear “that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd” (Romans 3:3), says Paul. Love has finally overcome fear, and your house is being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there, but it took you a long time to find it, for “It is love alone that lasts” (1 Corinthians 13:13). All you have loved in your life and been loved by is eternal and true. [2]
Center for Action and Contemplation