THE BISHOP'S CROZIER: Hope of the Resurrection is found in the Eucharist

By Bishop James R. Golka

He is risen!  After 40 days of prayer and fasting and accompanying the Lord in his passion and death on the cross, the Church rejoices in his glorious Resurrection.

We join with St. Paul in proclaiming, “Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?  But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (1 Cor 15:54-55; 57) 

Jesus Christ has indeed conquered sin and death by the victory of his Resurrection.  The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the full and final manifestation of the Father’s merciful love for us, a love that is greater than our sins, greater than our weaknesses, and even greater than death. Death, which once was the greatest scourge of sin, has now been transformed by Christ to become the door to eternal life and never-ending communion with God. In the Exultet at the Easter Vigil, the Church joyfully exclaims the wonder of God’s merciful love:

O wonder of your humble care for us!

O love, O charity beyond all telling,

to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!

O truly necessary sin of Adam,

destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!

O happy fault

that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

The Church celebrates Easter with even greater joy in this Jubilee Year of Hope.  For the Resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone of our hope, for we shall be raised to new life on the last day.  St. Paul reveals the great hope of the Resurrection: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For as by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”  (1 Cor 15:17-22)

The Resurrection of Jesus is the great hope that has sustained the faith of the Church throughout the centuries. It is the hope that gave courage to the martyrs and sustained the saints through many trials and strengthened them in virtue. It is with this same hope in the Resurrection that we are sent out into the world as joyful witnesses of the Gospel so that many more can come to know the love of the Father through Jesus Christ. 

Our hope is also strengthened in that the Resurrection of Jesus is not just a historical event that happened 2000 years ago, but it is a reality that we experience here and now, especially through the gift of the Eucharist. As I highlighted in my pastoral letter “Christ our Hope,” the Eucharist is the Sacrament of Hope, and “when we participate in the Mass, we are already sharing in Christ’s victory over sin and death — this victory is not a future event but is happening here and now.”

The Eucharist is the pledge of our future glory, and every Mass is a foretaste of heaven and our eternal destiny in Christ with all the angels and saints.  St. John Paul II makes a powerful connection between the Eucharist as the Sacrament of Hope and the Resurrection: “In the Eucharist, everything speaks of confident waiting ‘in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ’.  Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the ‘secret’ of the resurrection. For this reason St. Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as ‘a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death.’” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia,18)

So, as we continue with Resurrection joy in the Jubilee Year of Hope and the final year of the Eucharistic Revival, let us go forth “in joyful hope,” knowing that death does not have the final word, but has become our entrance into eternal life and heavenly glory.  For “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”  (1 Cor 2:9)   Happy Easter!