Rooted in Faith

At the end of 2017, the Collins English Dictionary announced its annual selection of the Word of the Year. It was actually two words – “fake news”. Those words have taken on a new life of their own in recent years, used not only in political contexts by elected officials but even in media, sports, culture, and daily life. The words “fake news” express quickly and easily something that we are all familiar with – something artificial, mere hype, a story that is a non-story.

But while “fake news” is certainly a thing, sometimes real and important events are discredited in the same way. For example, perhaps no other event in history has been as frequently written off as just “fake news” as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Just like in Jesus’s time, many people today believe the Resurrection didn’t occur – even people who claim to follow Jesus as Christians! They may think the Resurrection story is symbolic or allegorical, some kind of spiritual phenomenon but one that doesn’t involve the Body of Jesus in the Tomb actually being raised from the dead.

But the Resurrection is a real occurrence, something which actually happened: the person Jesus, having suffered and died on the Cross, rose again after three days so that we might share in his eternal life. To believe in that is at the very heart of the Christian faith, and for the last several Sundays, we have been hearing St. Paul speak about exactly that idea in the second reading of the Mass. The readings have come from the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians. The letter we call “the First Letter” is actually at least his second letter to the Corinthians, since he references a previous letter he had written to them. Apparently, they then wrote back with several questions about the meaning of the Christian faith. While we don’t have those original two letters, we do have Paul’s letter which answers those questions they ask – we call that letter “the First Letter” and it is from that which we have been hearing.

The central point of St. Paul in these excerpts is that Jesus’s Resurrection is not just something nice to think about, or something that we hope happened – it is the cornerstone of our entire faith. Jesus rose from the dead and lives still now at the right hand of his Father, and we too can share in his life. We believe in that more fully than we believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning! St. Paul even goes so far as to say that Christian faith has no meaning, no point if Jesus did not really rise; our faith would be totally in vain. But as we profess in faith each Sunday, Jesus really did rise, and so our faith is not in vain. In fact, though it occurred 2000 years ago, the Resurrection is the most important thing that has ever happened, not just in the world’s history, but in each of our lives as well. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, and to us, to explain how the Resurrection changes everything for us. By it, God’s love has triumphed over the power of sin and death, and the victory of Jesus is something that can be extended to us as well. It is the Resurrection which allows us to look at every sorrow, every suffering as impermanent, to even look at something as fearful to all of us as our own death and to turn up our noses at it, to say: “Where, O death, is your victory… your sting?”

The Ecstasy of St. Paul – painted for Paul Scarron (c. 1650) by Nicolas Poussin

If faith in Jesus’s Resurrection should shape how we view our deaths, then it should also shape how we view our lives as well. To have faith in the Resurrection of Jesus means to see every part of our lives in light of the goal of sharing in Christ’s new Risen Life. That is the goal, and Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that those who live with that goal will live differently than others. Each of our lives is like a tree, he says, and we will be judged by the kind of fruit our tree bears. Of course, the good news is that we don’t have to produce good fruit all by ourselves; in fact, we always rely upon God’s grace to produce the good works that he calls us to do. As God draws us to share in the eternal life of his Son, he helps us to begin to live that life even now, allowing us to flourish and to glorify him by the good works that we do. But to bring forth abundant fruit, our tree must be rooted in faith – it must be rooted in a radical dependence on Jesus and on what his Resurrection means for us, not just at the close of our lives but here and now as well.

Friends, in just a few days, we’ll begin the season of Lent once more. The forty days of penance will be a great time for each of us to do a bit of self-examination. What kind of fruit is my life producing? Is my life rooted in faith – in Jesus and in his Resurrection – or in something else? Do I live my life differently because of my faith, in a way that is visible and apparent? The message of Jesus is Good News, not “fake news,” because it is the path to sharing in his Resurrection, the only thing in the end that truly matters. May this Eucharist which we are about to share be a sign and a promise of the Lord’s Risen Life that we hope to share one day.