The Easter season - which began on Easter Sunday and continues until Pentecost Sunday - is the perfect time to reflect upon how the death and Resurrection of Jesus (the Paschal Mystery) ought to shape the way Christians live our daily lives. You and I are called not only to believe in what Jesus has done for us, but to enter into the Paschal Mystery. The Catechism says:

521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. "By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man." We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model:

We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus' life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church. . . For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.

St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin (Romans 6:3-6).

What does it mean for you and me to live out the Paschal Mystery - the death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus? I'd like to offer some short biblical reflections.

Crucified with Christ

In some sense, as the above quote from St. Paul indicates, each Christian has already died to sin through the forgiveness that God extends to us in Baptism. As we all know by experience, however, we continue to experience temptations and occasional lapses back into sin after Baptism. A large part of the Christian life, then, is putting our disordered passions to “death” by the grace of Jesus. St. Paul commands, “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Because of these the wrath of God is coming [upon the disobedient]” (Colossians 3:5-6). We must die to our own misguided wills so that God's perfect will can be accomplished within us. This is an ongoing process that continues throughout our lives, until we can say with St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:19-20).

Buried with Christ

After his death on the Cross, Jesus' body was laid in the darkness of the tomb and his soul descended to the realm of the dead. There are times in each Christian life when we, too, may feel like we've been plunged into the tomb with Christ, when all joy seems to have been hidden from our sight. These times of darkness can be purifying for us if we learn to trust in God in the darkness of faith. St. John of the Cross said, “It is fitting that the soul be in this sepulcher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual resurrection for which it hopes.” (Dark Night, Bk. II, ch. 6, no. 1). Even when things are going pretty well in our Christian lives, the things of God are often hidden from our sight, accessible only by faith. Every year on Holy Saturday, the Church, therefore, prays in the Liturgy of the Hours, “Christ, the Good Shepherd, in death you lay hidden with from the world. Teach us to love a life hidden with you in the Father.”

Risen with Christ

Though the Christian life involves following Christ along the Way of the Cross and even into his tomb, the goal is always the Resurrection, which is life saturated with the glory of God's Holy Spirit. This life begins already in Baptism, when God's grace is infused into our souls. “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The seed of this new life of Christ must be nurtured, however, growing within as the weeds of sin are put to death. We must learn to live not by the temptations of our flesh, but by the promptings of the Holy Spirit, until the image of Jesus Christ is reflected as much as possible in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Each Christian ought to be enthralled by the prospect of being radically united to Jesus, even in this life, so that we vibrate at the Spirit's touch in the course of each day and fully live our lives to the glory of God. We ought to yearn for the fullness of this grace-infused life, rather than settling for the mediocrity of a just-barely-Christian existence. The more we allow God's grace to grow within us now, the more we will shine with God's glory in eternity.

As we progress through this Easter season, then, let's ask God for the grace to continue to be conformed to the death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Will we follow Christ along the Way of the Cross to his glory? St. Edith Stein challenges:

The Savior today looks at us, solemnly probing us, and asks each one of us: Will you remain faifhul to the Crucified? Consider carefully!... Just as the Lamb had to be killed to be raised upon the throne of glory, so the path to glory leads through suffering and the cross for everyone chosen to attend the marriage supper of the lamb. All who want to be married to the Lamb must allow themselves to be fastened to the cross with Him. Everyone marked by the blood of the Lamb is called to his, and that means all the baptized. But not everyone understands the call and follows it. (Hidden Life, III.2-3)