T.S.Eliot reports that, in their journey to see the newborn King, one of the the Magi says, "I have seen birth and death, but had thought they were different."Both birth and death are the great mysteries of the human condition into which human consciousness and intellect cannot probe.From the cavern of the womb we emerge, only after a time to return to the cradle of the grave. One can look at this reality with horror and seek to stave off the moment where our grasp of the world fades into the uncertainty of darkness, and our lives end without respect for labour, happiness, love or justice. "At the end of the game, it all goes back into the box."
Or we can look to a one-off event, never repeated, standing so far away in the mists of Time, and see that, just once, just once in the history of humanity, that a man came back from the Dead simply to show us that in Him humanity can be lifted from the c\res of worrying about life's meaning in the face of the blackness of Death. This is the light that shines in that darkness reminding us that,while we are indeed a long time dead, we can be beyond the distinctions of alive and dead by taking into ourselves the life of God.
This is the ransom paid for our redemption, a ransom paid to the frailty of our human condition which without God cannot but die, so that with God's substance in our bodies we cannot but live. The final temptation we fall into is the temptation to think that we are not loved,that we don't matter, that we are destined for a long time dead.
The tomb is empty. He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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