First Station

This episode speaks about the importance of being reminded of the core of the Christian faith, which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Saint Paul, in the first letter to the Corinthians, reminds the Christians that Christ died for their sins and was raised on the third day by the scriptures. The foundation of the faith is the resurrection of Christ, and it is essential to remember this to avoid being deceived by the devil.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Christ is risen Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Welcome to our luminous path, our luminous journey via Lucis. Today is the first station – the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I would like to start with a text from the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, in which he says:

“Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel.”

Saint Paul would like to remind Christians. Do we need to be reminded? I think a lot of continual reminding of what is the core of our faith, the reminding of our basic stance, is at the very core of who we are. Because unless we have a clear idea of what we believe, we can easily be cheated out of our spiritual inheritance. The devil is an expert at erasing the memorials of God’s work, of making us believe that what we hold dear in terms of faith is just an invention, a myth, a story, an invention of the past. But we need to be clear about what the core of our faith is. In the next few lines, Saint Paul says exactly what the foundation is:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”

Saint Paul starts by saying, “For I delivered to you as of first importance the foundation, the basis.” When we go to see a house, we usually don’t think about the foundations. We look at the walls on the outside, we enter inside, admire different rooms, paintings, and how it’s decorated inside. We don’t pay attention to the idea that there could be a problem with the foundations until there are unexpected cracks on the walls. Something is happening, and an engineer would say that there are issues with the foundations which cannot be fixed in five minutes. Often we find out there are a lot of issues here and there when it comes to our faith, beliefs, and practice. But maybe there is a problem, the foundation is very weak, is not there, and we have not been reminded of it, nor believed in it.

What Saint Paul is saying is that Christ, first of all, died according to the Scriptures, then he was raised from the dead. Christ was raised from the dead. Of all the things that we need to be convinced of, Christ has been raised from the dead. We are meant to be continually reminded. Wait a minute, Lord, you came for the forgiveness of sins. You died for our sins, my sins, my personal sins, not just universal ones, which is true, but specifically for each and every one of us. And he was raised from the dead, but not in the way that Jesus raised Lazarus. I remember once a theologian was saying that when Lazarus was raised from the dead, the first thing he had to do was to take a shower. It was just a way of saying, in a funny way, that he came back to this life. But Jesus Christ was raised to the divine life. He entered into the life of God. Now he can be seen in different places at the same time. He can walk in our lives, as we found out. He can appear to the twelve, he can appear to 500 brothers at the same time. But he can change our lives. As Saint Paul says, at the end, he appeared to me.