Easter Sunday 2025

Happy Easter! He is Risen indeed!

Today, we stand upon the very foundation of our faith: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This is no embellishment, no spiritual metaphor, no comforting fiction. It is the event. It is the reason we are here. We are not Christians because Christ gave us a few good moral teachings, nor because we admire a certain lifestyle vaguely called “discipleship.” No, we follow Jesus because He walked out of the tomb.

St. Paul says it with blunt force: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). In other words, if Christ is still dead, then everything we do in His name is a fraud, and we would do well to pack up and go home. But if He is risen—and He is—then nothing is the same.

The Resurrection is not only the anchor of our faith; it is the source of our hope. Faith looks back to Calvary and the empty tomb and says, I believe. Hope looks ahead to the horizon of eternity and says, I trust. Faith tells us that Christ is risen; hope tells us that we shall rise with Him.

But let's pause for a moment and consider—what if there were no Resurrection? What if the story ended at the cross? What if God had not stooped down into our human condition, died for our sins, and triumphed over death? Then suffering would remain senseless, and death would remain sovereign. Life would be a string of passing pleasures shadowed by the inevitability of loss.

But the Resurrection shatters that grim script. It tells us that suffering is not senseless and death is not sovereign. It tells us that the cross was not a tragic mistake, but a divine strategy. The Resurrection is the proof that Christ’s death was no ordinary death—it was the key that unlocked the gates of heaven. Hell may rage, but its walls have been breached. Sin may accuse, but its case has been dismissed.

The early Fathers of the Church were never shy about using vivid imagery. Take St. John Damascene, who compared the cross to a divine hook, baited with the flesh of Christ:

“Death approached, and swallowing up the body as a bait, was transfixed on the hook of divinity… after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, [death] perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he had swallowed.” (An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, XXVII)

Here is the grand irony: the devil, who delights in our pain, was drawn to the suffering of Jesus like a moth to flame. He saw the wounds, but not the trap. He tasted the bait, but missed the hook. And in his hunger to destroy, he was himself destroyed.

So yes, the Resurrection assures us that death is not the end. But more than that, it transforms death itself. It is no longer a punishment, but a passage. A bitter medicine, yes—but one that heals. Christ did not eliminate death; He sanctified it, so that in Him, death becomes a doorway, not a dungeon.

This is the meaning of Easter: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory?” (1 Cor 15:54-55). Light now floods the grave. Despair has been replaced with hope.

And yet—and this is crucial—the Resurrection is not only a promise for the hour of death. It is a power for the present moment. We are not simply waiting around for heaven like passengers in a crowded terminal. We are already being transformed.

St. Paul reminds us: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? … so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3–4).

Already, through Baptism, we have passed through death into life. In Confession, our chains are broken anew. In the Eucharist, we are nourished by the same Body that triumphed over the grave. The Sacraments are not souvenirs from Calvary; they are the means by which we enter the drama of redemption ourselves.

So today, let's not simply admire the empty tomb like tourists admiring a monument. Let us step inside—into the mystery, into the promise. Let us live now as those who will live forever. For if Christ is risen—and He is—then there is nothing left to fear, and everything left to hope.