Toward an Easter person

We are now in the Easter season, extending the happy celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, that tremendous and overwhelming divine gift that re-creates us and reconciles us with God our Father from whom we come and to whom we belong.

We gleefully sing Happy Easter, Rejoice, and Alleluia. But let's not turn a deaf ear to the call of the season. We are asked to become an Easter person. The way is laid open to us to be so. It's for us to take it up and go the distance.

To be an Easter person is first of all a gift from God. It's his divine will for us, since we are his image and likeness, and adopted children of his. For sure, we achieve the fullness of our being Easter persons in heaven. But here on earth, we need to work it out. We have to move toward it.

The grace for this is given to us abundantly. Everything that we need to attain this goal is provided by God's providence. But we have to correspond. New wine requires new wineskins too. And as St. Augustine once said: "He who created us without us, cannot save us without us."

To be an Easter person is for us to realize that as persons we need to unify and integrate all the parts and aspects of our life, with God through Christ in the Spirit as the principle, means and end of such unity and integration. What we should try to avoid being fragmented in these parts and aspects.

That's because, first of all, to be a person is to be one subject of several aspects, foremost of which is our spiritual dimension that makes us rational, capable of knowing, willing and entering into relationships with others.

But we have to contend also with our being material beings, with flesh and blood, and emotions and passions, etc. The most radical unity we ought to have is unity with God by being "another Christ," as the saints have been saying.

This is when we can aspire to achieve the fundamental unity between our body and soul. Then we have to cope with several other elements that we need to unify. We can expect ourselves to be stable and focused amid the different situations and predicaments in our life-whether we are healthy or sick, successful or frustrated, etc.

We have learned to blend our prayer and work, contemplation and action, privacy and social life, etc. We also have to integrate our faith and reason, the theoretical and the practical things in life, etc. Then we need to harmonize the different roles we play as parents, children, professionals, friends, lovers, etc.

To be an Easter person is when we manage somehow to harmonize all these segments and components of our life such that our body, for example, in spite of its numerous modalities and possibilities, can truly reveal the state of our soul. Many times, the soul goes one way, the body the other. It's an anomaly we have to resolve.

This ideal is, of course, easier said than done. There will always be need for effort and struggle. Tension among the different aspects of our life will always be present. We just have to weave a way of finding simplicity amid the complexity of our life.

The end result should be a driving awareness that we are another Christ who know how to look for sanctity and do apostolate in any circumstance of our life. We have to learn how to relate everything to him to get the proper light and impulse on how to go about whatever situation, circumstance, condition or predicament we can be in.

We have to remember that Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the one that gives meaning, direction and fulfilment in any situation we are in. This truth of our faith should not be left in the level of theory and desire. It has to be pursued and acted upon until we can confidently say, "Yes, I am now living with Christ."

This is not presumption, though it can also be if we do not keep our side of the bargain. Christ wants us to pray, to know and love him. "Come, follow me," he said. "If you want to follow me, you have to deny yourself and carry the cross."

Let's remember that to be an Easter person, we must by definition be willing to go through the passion and death of Christ, so we too can resurrect with him!