Going it alone means ending up to be nowhere and no one. Living is sharing one’s life journey.

Life is a gift. But, once received, it becomes an option.

As Easter people, Christians are called to make life a joyful option. Because they love it, they choose it. Because it is fragile, they defend and protect it. Because it is precious, they give it. Because it is eternal they can afford to lose it. Taking this option is indeed living.

The Gospel provides us with a true and reliable blueprint of what living is all about. It is indeed the Word of Life. Jesus described himself as the Life offered and promised to those who freely accept him and his options.

Very briefly, I would like to suggest what this implies in practical day-to-day living, taking the cue from the Gospel accounts of Mary’s encounter with the Risen, Living Christ.

Living is becoming daily a more beautiful gift of love

“On the first day of the week…” (John 20:1).

Life is a never-ending series of firsts: first word, first step as toddlers, first day of school, and so on. Blessed are those who have enough faith and courage to take that first step towards whatever is new and unknown. Life becomes the sacrament of the present moment, whereby the infinite becomes a promise fulfilled in the here and now.

“Mary took the spices…” (Lk 24:1).

When our life’s story becomes too painful, we seek survival by embalming our past joys and comforts. We escape down memory lane, seeking refuge in nostalgic, frozen snapshots of long-lost joys. We transform death into pseudo life.

“The disciples saw that the stone had been removed…” (Lk 24:2).

Life is a series of surprises. It cannot be planned or controlled. It can only be received, accepted and lived. Life is made up of, perhaps, 10 per cent of what happens to us and 90 per cent of what we do with it. Ultimately the key to life remains in our own hands.

“She came running to Peter and the other disciple…”

No one can live life on his own. We need others, we walk and grow with them and thanks to them. Life is never a ‘private property’, even if responsibility for it remains strictly personal. Going it alone means ending up to be nowhere and no one. Living is sharing one’s life journey.

“She said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him…’”

Life is a story to be lived but not to be made up. Much too often we stop living because we prefer the stories we make up to explain life, rather than courageously trust the story as it unveils of its own accord.

Our mistake is to trust ourselves more than we trust life. No wonder we end up living plastic lives, fiction stories conveniently created by ghost illusions.

“The other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first…”

Life proceeds at various speeds for various people. Yet it is the same journey towards the same destiny that we all share. Blessed are those who can journey with different companions, knowing when to wait and when to walk, so that the companionship is never broken. They will live things and marvels that others reveal to them.

“He saw and believed [but] they still did not understand… that Jesus had to rise from the dead…”

Seeing is believing, on one condition: that what is seen is perceived as a sign of the unseen. The essential remains invisible, not because it is hidden, but because it is the deeper reality of what can be seen and touched.

Living needs understanding but can never be subordinate to it. Faith is the deepest form of understanding because it saves mind and reason from themselves.

“They went back to where they were staying…”

Life can only be found at ‘home’. It is in the everyday space where we are planted that we can indeed live, grow and bear fruit. Living is opting to remain joyfully faithful to the simple, ordinary business of becoming daily a more beautiful gift of love.

Meeting the Risen Christ is rejoicing in the gift of life received and freely choosing to embrace it.

pchetcuti@gmail.com

Fr Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.