Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Easter Sermon.
“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it” (psalm 118).
The central claim of the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ transformed the world. How? Although murdered by his enemies and the state, he claimed victory over death by rising from the dead. This is the story of Easter, the belief in the glorification of Jesus Christ by the power of God manifested in his resurrection and final ascension into heaven.
Because the historical person who was Jesus of Nazareth was both fully human and fully divine (his human nature lived as a total unification with the divine nature of the second person of the Holy Trinity that is God) and, because human beings share a single nature, the Son of God’s incarnation into this world is salvation. By taking one human life to himself, God takes every human life to himself since he has grasped at the level of our nature the being of us all.
By living, he lived for us. By suffering, he suffered for us. By dying, he died for us. By rising, he rose for us. And by ascending to the right hand of the eternal Father, as Saint Leo the Great says, he raised human nature above the celestial hierarchy of heaven, above the highest seraphim, to the right hand of the throne of God for us.
This is the incomprehensible mystery of the Christian faith. The preposterous claim made by the first Christians, and by Christians down the centuries. It is the “good news.” It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is also the day that the Lord has made of which Saint Gregory of Nyssa spoke in his Easter sermon more than sixteen centuries ago. A new birth, a new life, a “new world order” of existence has come into history and is offered to all because the destiny of human nature, the reason and meaning of our being, has already been reached. This new creation is living and growing silently within the world right now, as it has been since that first Easter, like yeast leavening bread, in each person who continues to say “Yes” and “Amen” to this gift.
The teachings of the Church, our faith in God, and the virtues we are called upon to cultivate in our lives are meant to help this process of new life germinate and grow in our hearts and minds and deeds. Death will be the final stage of this growth, the clearing-out of the old to make way for the new. That which is most senseless and terrifying in this world has become in Jesus the doorway to God’s kingdom and the holy bliss of his presence, forever.
“Dearly beloved, we are God’s children now. What we shall later be has not yet come to light. We know that when it comes to light, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope keeps himself pure, as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3)
Marana tha. Our Lord, come.
Amen.
