Transformed by Easter

By Richard Rohr, O.F.M.

Christian history reaches its crescendo point in the Resurrection of Jesus. The risen Jesus is the final revelation of the heart of God-a God who teaches love rather than hate, forgiveness rather than blame, nonviolence rather than violence.

Recall Jesus’ encounters with his disciples after his Resurrection. He comes to the circle of followers with whom he had spent three years, the people closest to him who had nevertheless rejected, betrayed and abandoned him. Following his Resurrection Jesus has the opportunity to chastise them. And yet, in all four Gospel accounts of the risen Christ we see that Jesus neither berates nor blames his disciples. Indeed, Peter, who had betrayed him three times, is given three chances to say “I love you” to his Master.

There is nothing to be afraid of in the risen Jesus. We have in him the perfect icon of a God who is safe and a universe that is safe. We have a God who does not blame, does not punish, does not threaten, does not dominate. We have a God who breathes forgiveness. The whole biblical tradition has been moving to this moment where God is identified with universal forgiveness.

The Resurrection of Jesus tells us that there is no victory through domination. There is no such thing as triumph by force. By his life, death and resurrection Jesus stops the cycle of violence and challenges the notion of dominating power. He invites us to relational or spiritual power, where we are not just changed but transformed. And not transformed from the top down but from the bottom up, not from the outside in but from the inside out. Transformed into God.

Redemptive Forgiveness

Many of us identify more easily with the judging God we may have encountered in childhood: the one who knows our every sin and metes out punishments, the one we must attempt to placate and please. Often, we are more comfortable living with a fearsome God than a God whose love knows no bounds. But by his life, death and resurrection Jesus challenges us to new heights through redemptive forgiveness.

Most of us cannot go for long without thinking a judgmental or accusatory thought about others. So often, there is someone we’re judging, accusing, blaming. To live in the good, to live in the love, to live without a need to judge or accuse-this is major surgery! None of us gets to that point by a nonstop flight early in life. But when we’re there, we know we’re transformed. We’re free. We are at one with the risen Jesus.

Once we have a personal experience in our own life of the risen Christ upholding us, naming us, loving us, freeing us, then we have nothing to fear. That’s how secure Christ makes us-because we have a reference point, we have a center point. We have received the gift of the Spirit.

‘Divine Lure’

During a retreat I made some years ago, my fellow retreatants and I were asked to list the adjectives each of us would use to describe Jesus. My list included words such as compassionate, self-confident, humble, forgiving. When our retreat leader brought us back together as a group she suggested that the qualities we had each identified represented not so much what Jesus was like but what each of us wanted to be ourselves. Jesus is the divine lure who invites us forward in our humanity, who entices us into these very virtues by his own full living of them. The qualities I had on my list are indeed qualities Jesus possessed. But the reason we want to embrace them is because Jesus has set the standard, the goal and the ideal for our humanity.

In Jesus we see the divine being who is also the perfect human being. Jesus comes in a human body to show us the face of God, who is eternally compassionate and eternally joyous, who stands with us in our sufferings and our joys. As Christians, our vocation is to unite with Christ crucified and Christ risen.

RICHARD ROHR, a Franciscan priest from Our Lady of Guadalupe Province in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. His newest book is Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony Messenger Press).