Tag: new life

Easter 2026

There is darkness and light.
Evil and righteousness.
Injustice and justice.
Discord and harmony.
Emptiness and fullness.
Death and life.

There is light overcoming the darkness.
Righteousness displacing evil.
Justice defeating injustice.
Harmony replacing discord.
Being filling emptiness.
Resurrection to new life.

We experience darkness and death all around us and in us. Wherever there is oppression, injustice, and evil of all kinds there is death—death to compassion, humility, hope, peace and joy; death to our humanity. Wherever there is war taken up as an answer to our problems; wherever the enemy is identified as outside us, as if the enemy does not also exist within; wherever we see need and pass by as if it had nothing to do with us; wherever we refuse to love, there is darkness and death and the need for resurrection to new life.

Scriptures of various spiritual traditions call us to die in order to live. We must let go of our lives, relinquish ourselves in order to find our true selves made in the image of God. Jesus tells us to lose our lives in order to find them. Die to life lived on our own terms in order to receive our true selves which flow from our Creator.

Saint Paul views the gift of Christ as the gift of dying and rising:

“Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)

The key to it all is being “in Christ,” or in other words, coming to be conformed to our true humanity in union with God.

Filed under: Hope, Humanity, Liberation, Salvation, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Where Is The Resurrected Life Found?

A reflection on Acts 10

Peter, a Jew, found it in a Roman soldier, who, as a soldier, represented the oppression of the Roman empire.

It took a vision and the leading of the Spirit to bring Peter to the point where he invited three Gentiles sent by a Roman centurion named Cornelius into his house and “gave them lodging.” And then went with them and entered into the home of Cornelius.

Peter shared with Cornelius the change he underwent: “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

The distance Peter traveled could hardly have been greater: He was in the house of a Gentile, a soldier (in Christ, Peter had become a man of peace) and a Roman who represented the occupying power of Rome. Because the distance was religious as well as political in nature, it was a longer way to travel than that of a progressive ideologue sitting down with a conservative ideologue.

What made it possible was a spirituality that recognized the humanity in all. Peter had his eyes openned by the power of the Spirit. He had died to the old way of seeing others and made alive to what God was doing in places where he had not expected to see the resurrected life. The new life that he had found was not far from anyone, if they would turn to receive it.

Peter shared with Cornelius and his household what he had come to see: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

Peter speaks of “what is right” as a sign of God’s work in a person’s life. He also refers to the fear of God. But here it is not a slavish fear of punishment, but rather fear understood as taking God seriously, having reverence. The “fear of God” in Cornelius was seen in his life of prayer and care for the poor. This was a man who was open to what Peter had to share concerning Jesus of Nazareth who “God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Where is the resurrected life found?

It is found where love is practiced, where there is goodness and healing. Peter says nothing about what Cornelius believed but about what he did. The resurrected life is not, first of all, about beliefs or a particular Christian theology. It is about the lived life. Above all, it is about openness. One who thinks of themself as an atheist but is implicitly open to Incomprehensible Mystery and to our true humanity is closer to God than a Christian who has a well-worn Christian ideology, but whose heart is closed to others, particularly to others very different from themselves.

We have seen Christian ideologues operate by falsehood and manipulation, who live for power and are far from “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” for “doing good and healing all who were oppressed.”

Resurrection to new life is open to all who will receive, wherever and whoever they are. It is not far away. As with the reign of God, new life is near.

Filed under: Grace, Humanity, SpiritualityTagged with: , ,