Death and resurrection. A combination that is certainly surprising because it is outside of our experience. In fact, we know the combination of life and death; yes, we are well aware of that.
We know how life is ineluctably marked by a destiny of death. We are born and already begin to die. It is a fact, even if this conflicts with the deepest desires of our being. In fact, we know what accompanies it about death and we don’t like it at all: the detachment, the breaking of bonds of affection, the frequent failure of our body to suffer, the unknown about what happens afterwards.
Life is perpetually threatened, hanging by a thread, and we know this very well. Although as mysterious as the human heart, these dynamics are not unknown to us. We know the struggle that takes place between life and death, between eros and thanatos, between chaos and order. However, we know nothing about resurrection from the dead.
That’s the point. Knowledge of him is entrusted only to faith. Therefore the Christian announcement that has been piercing the night of the world for two thousand years is truly surprising. It is impossible to get used to this announcement; that is, that of a man who, dead and buried, came back to life to never die again and live a fully human but transfigured and new life.
An even more astonishing announcement because it is not intended to be a symbolic or poetic image to say that that man continued to live in some way, that is, to be present in the hearts of his disciples even after his death; so alive in the memory, as to motivate his missionary impetus throughout the centuries.
The kerygma, that is, the announcement of the death and resurrection of Christ, is the communication of a real and concrete fact: a man who called himself the son of God, who did not stop doing good and loving until the last moment of his life ; that he was nailed to a cross and buried lifeless in a tomb, in that tomb he was no longer found, after three days, as he had predicted. Indeed, that Jesus, even with the signs of passion and death, was seen and touched; we ate and drank with him, we heard him speak, alive more than ever, transfigured into a new and luminous existence.
This is what the incredible Christian announcement tells us. To the joyful greeting, “Christ is risen!” that even today in the churches of the East we exchange each other for Easter, we usually answer: «Yes. He is truly risen! », To underline and underline the reality of the fact. You can accept it by judging it credible or not, considering it a fairy tale. It matters little.
The Easter announcement is that and brings with it a formidable hope: that in the duel always engaged between death and life, it is life that wins while death, that threat that looms over human life, loses its sting.
From threatening she becomes “sister”, as Francis says in the song of Brother Sun. A passage that is always painful and lacerating but a passage, transit, towards a fullness of life; similar to childbirth through which she is born. «Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando», sings an ancient Easter hymn: death and life faced each other in a grandiose and wonderful duel.
«Dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus»: the Lord of life was killed and death seemed to win him forever, in reality he reigns alive, victorious over death. The Easter announcement tells of this unprecedented fact. If it were a lie, if it spoke falsely, there really would be no hope for man. Truly everything would inevitably be destined to perish.
And our always unfulfilled desire for love and life would end up being a tragic deception, a painful illusion. On the contrary, He who died and rose again and who entrusted to his followers the task of spreading this good news, tells us that whoever follows him and opens himself to the generous love of others, already now passes from death to life and beyond death he will experience fullness of joy.
Many believed in him and in his name they flooded the world with love, healing sores and wounds, consoling and reconciling broken and divided hearts. Many even shed all their blood for this, yet they were not defeated.
