– Meditation –
Christ is Risen and nothing else matters!
My Christ is Risen and nothing else deserves my heart’s preoccupation!
My Resurrection and my Life is Risen and has abolished death and the grave within me!
I tear open my chest and let my surveilling eyes gaze deep within. Behold, what makes my chest seem a burial vault—so empty, stone cold, and numb? Why do the Paschal acclamations of, ‘Christ is Risen!’ echo and reverberate as though muffled in an empty cavern within?! Why has the dawn dusked in my heart, no longer laden with the excitement of living hope of the One who is Dawn itself to arise, come forth, and cast light upon the dusk to make it flee away in utter abolishment?!
Behold the grave and understand—it is EMPTY. And then?
Why seek ye the living among the dead?! Why seek ye the Incorrupt amid corruption?!1 Why seek ye your Risen Lord in the dead parts of your soul as though death has the victory?! Why seek ye your old existence, although He signs His countenance upon you in a marvelous new way granting you re-creation and regeneration?! O ye of little faith, rise up!
Your chains He has broken asunder. Your sin He has carried to the grave. Your torment He has abolished forever. Your death He has slain. Rejoice and be radiant—mirror His all-comely Risen nature. Flesh and bones He has,2 yet with radiance transcending temporality. His eternal eyes glisten with ethereal power, with an inviting attraction to dive into the very same realm of resurrectional existence, bearing energy and power divine—that is, to live as one truly Risen from the dead with Him.
What majesty is Thine, O immortal King!
He Who sits in glory on the throne of the Godhead, Jesus, the transcendent God, has come in a light cloud, and by His immaculate hand has saved [me].3
Arise, depart from the tomb! Go forth, awaken the dawn—shake it out of it’s slumber! Go forth to meet your Bridegroom who comes forth as One coming out of the bridal chamber. For He has kissed your soul in the most intimate of chambers—uniting with it there, in its very grave. He has married Himself to you in your death, that you may marry yourself to Him in His life!
Be no longer ashamed of your marriage bed—the hidden crevices of your soul in which you wantonly took pleasure in the corruption of sin. Freed! Seven demons He has freed you from as He approached this defiled marriage bed. He has cast out your old partner Death, and taken His rightful place—for the soul has only one Bridegroom and His name is Messiah—the One Anointed for burial in the tomb of your soul. You broke your flask of love upon His feet,4 now steep in His spices and aloes till you are soaked through and through as a bride adorned for her Husband—as a queen to be married to her King5—for all His garments are scented with myrrh and aloes and cassia,6 the spices intended to hide the stench of one dead and interred in the burial place. Have you soaked in His death? Then rise in His resurrection! The gruesome stench of decaying mortality is destroyed—for the tomb is empty and the King is alive!
So the King will greatly desire your beauty; Because He is your Lord, worship Him.
(Psalms 45:11)
Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth—
For Your love is better than wine.
Because of the fragrance of Your good ointments,
Your Name is ointment poured forth;
Therefore the virgins love You.
The King has brought me into his chambers.
While the King is at his table,
My spikenard sends forth its fragrance.
A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me,
That lies all night between my breasts.
(Song of Songs 1:2–4, 12–13)
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
And He shall stand at last on the earth;
And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God,
Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
(Job 19:25–27)
My Christ is Risen and nothing else matters!
My Anointed One is Risen and I am raised up with Him forevermore!
– Explanation –
Resurrection is a divine rift in time and space which separates all that was past and all that is now the new. After Resurrection, nothing remains ever the same again. Resurrection is the New Day, the total regeneration of mankind and all creation with it.
Yesterday I was buried with Thee, O Christ.
Today I arise with Thee in Thy resurrection.
Yesterday I was crucified with Thee:
Glorify me with Thee, O Savior, in Thy Kingdom7
How easy it is for us to empathize with the pangs of suffering and death—for death has been embedded into our very nature since the fall. Though our spirits may remain numb, our minds may easily, with some effort, at least partially perceive the sorrows which the sins of our lifetime caused to the suffering Lord. At times our hearts may easily grasp at least partially the well-known story of the Lord’s blood-stained path to the cross. All too well we know that stone cold stone vault of dead silence that bears the fetidness of worldly putridity. All too well we know mortality which belongs to this world which is passing away, whose prince is the lover of death.
Resurrection, however, is such a foreign concept to our nature that it is too often dealt with impersonally and rather vaguely. It makes absolutely no sense to our mortality, and it actually utterly defies it. It’s impossible to merely imagine and pretend it. Much easier it is after the festivities of Pascha to revert back to the darkness of the familiar grave, the despair of chronic sin, the hopelessness of sin’s prison. When one’s attitude thus shifts, the dawn in one’s being that had nearly full exploded into a full Resurrection daylight filling all the soul’s crevices is forced to retract itself back into invisibility. Indeed, the personal specific grace of it remains nestled within the burrows of the being—as God is faithful and His gifts are irrevocable8—yet it is buried and covered, being rendered nearly ineffective in one’s life. How many years have gone by in which I’ve allowed my Jesus’ personal Resurrection grace for me retract and be buried within my being—simply because I revert back to the old, familiar grave in lack of faith and hope in its reality and its personal specificity to me?!
MY JESUS IS RISEN WITHIN MY VERY BEING! He has abolished my tomb, He has trampled my death, He has raised me up with Him!
Resurrection is a Person and He wants us to know Him personally. He comes to transcend our knowledge of Him, utterly abolishing how we had ever known Him before. This Jesus, who is Life itself—my Resurrection and my Life—saw my sin and corruption and chose to meet them Himself inside me, take them upon Himself, totally deliver me from slavery to them, and make me His bride—raising me up with Him from they very tomb of my soul.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25–26)
Come to Him, and let Him tell you His Resurrection story which He dictated and made happen within your own soul! May the Risen Beloved Lord Jesus make Himself known to you in His Resurrection, as He did to Mary Magdalene, His beloved followers, and all His apostles in such a personal and intimate, profound way, so as to make a divine rift in your life, dividing all what was past from all what is new in you in Him—forever separating you from death and from the grave!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Christ is Risen and nothing else matters!
My Beloved Anointed One is Risen and nothing else deserves my heart’s preoccupation!
My Resurrection and my Life is Risen and has abolished death and the grave within me!
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