By Sr. Veronica Skillin, SNDdeN
Easter time is upon us, and we are surrounded by familiar signs and symbols of renewed life: tree branches dotted with graceful blossoms, fragile tender shoots peeking through dark soil, baby birds pecking their way through protective shells.
Sunlight increases; delicate colors surround us. Indeed, all creation seems to throb with emerging life. We cannot but respond to this splendor. Our world at this moment reflects the beauty, the joy, the freshness of Jesus' renewed life, his resurrection.
But there is another way to look at resurrection. The word itself can be traced back to Old French. It comes from the same root as the word for surge — and there is little delicacy, little gentleness, in this definition.
Instead, surge evokes power, force — the surge of the ocean's waves, the surge of life's blood through our veins. Surge is not what we usually associate with the resurrection. And yet, nothing in Jesus' life is one-dimensional. So in the resurrection we recognize him as the force, the power of life surging within us.
This balance, this unity, of these characteristics — delicacy with power and fragility with force — is what we see in Jesus. He stands before us truly resurrected, uniting these two disparate facets of our reality.
Once again Jesus brings unity, cohesion, balance to our humanness. And in his resurrection makes all things one.