The Fruit of the Resurrection: Faith
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor 15:55).
The Lamb of God defeats death by death, to the eternal confusion of the powers of darkness and the eternal splendor of the children of light. What looked like an abysmal failure is the greatest triumph in all of human history: The crucifixion and death of the Incarnate God gives way to the glory of the Resurrection!
The fruit of the Resurrection is faith because Our Lord’s victory over the grave confirms His divine identity and the truth of His Gospel. Jesus had said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (Jn 10:18). When Jesus emerges from the tomb and appears to Magdalene and the apostles in His glorified Body, He proves that His words are true. The Person and saving message of Jesus Christ are trustworthy. We can put our faith in Him.
Receiving the gift of faith begins with believing in God—and in all that He has revealed to us and His Church proposes for our belief—because God is Truth itself. Our “yes” to doctrinal truth is critical in an age of unbelief and apostasy. However, as Catholic Christians seeking intimacy with God, this is only where faith begins, not where it ends. We are invited to cultivate a living faith—a faith that transforms everything it touches. It is not enough for us to give an intellectual assent to Catholic truths as objective, impersonal propositions. Those truths must be incarnated in our minds and hearts, alive in us personally. We must believe in the presence and power of Jesus Christ today, with us, in every tiny thread that makes up the fabric of our daily lives. This is so much more than just believing in a general sense of Divine Providence arranging for the world’s salvation. This is believing in Divine Providence in my life, for my salvation: that whatever is happening to me right now has been handpicked by Jesus as the best way to lead me to Heaven. Do you see the difference? The latter is applied faith, and it goes by the name of TRUST. This fullness of Christian faith finds perfect expression in the tagline of the Divine Mercy devotion: “Jesus, I trust in You.”
As we celebrate the Octave of Easter and Feast of Divine Mercy, I invite you to consider this moving passage from St. Faustina’s Diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul:
When I was receiving Holy Communion today, I noticed in the cup a Living Host, which the priest gave to me. When I returned to my place I asked the Lord, “Why was one Host alive, since You are equally alive under each of the species?” The Lord answered me: That is so. I am the same under each of the species, but not every soul receives Me with the same living faith as you do, My daughter, and therefore I cannot act in their souls as I do in yours (no. 1407).
Do we have this living faith? Is Jesus free to act in us? It’s easy for us to trust in the presence and power of Jesus when things are going well: we get the dream job we interviewed for, St. Joseph finds the perfect home for our growing family, Grandma responded better than hoped to treatment and her cancer is in remission, our loved one has returned to the sacraments after decades away from the Church. But what about when life seems to work against us? Do we still believe that this is the best thing for us, that we are swimming in an ocean of Divine Mercy? In His Wisdom, sometimes God permits things to go perfectly wrong from a human point of view, leaving us distressed and confused. In moments like these, trusting in the presence and power of Jesus is very difficult. The natural cry of our hearts is what Jesus prayed from the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1).
I find it striking that the glorified Body of the Redeemer retains the marks of His principal wounds: the holes in His hands, His feet, and His side. These wounds are present in the Divine Mercy image, which shows the Body of Christ as He is in the Eucharist: Crucified and Risen. By these vestiges of the Passion, Jesus reminds us where He has been. Jesus has known humiliation, condemnation, and unbearable pain. He has been dragged through hostile streets and suspended on the Cross… but death didn’t have the final word. It is from that Cross that the living waters of our Redemption poured forth, from that Cross that the grace of our resurrection is released: “O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fountain of Mercy for us, I trust in You.”
With His Resurrection, Jesus challenges us as He challenged the apostles—especially Thomas in his unbelief—to stop looking at events on a merely human plane. Suffering, dying, and rising with Christ; this is the Christian paradigm. God can metamorphosize everything. Even when things seem to work against us, we can have faith that grace is working. In our lives as Catholic Christians, first comes the Cross, then comes the Resurrection, just as it did in the life of our Master. Therefore, we can trust—both in moments of joy and moments of pain—that “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Now that’s a living faith!
