23 March 2008

El Señor Resucitó

Easter Sunday

When I was a young boy living in a Polish Catholic neighborhood in Chicago we would greet each other on Easter Sunday morning with the words “Chrystus Zmartwychwstał! Wesołego Alleluja!”. Here where I live in Mexico we greet each other with the words “¡El Señor Resucitó, Alleluja!”. The meaning is the same in any language…“Rejoice for He has risen!”. My friend and mentor Armando Fuentes Aguirre (better known as Catón), who writes a popular syndicated column that can be found on the editorial pages of newspapers all over Mexico, put it this way, “Si no creemos en la Resurrección, perdimos somos. Si no existió la Resurrección, la muerte existe, y así quedamos condenados a la nada”, or, “If we don’t believe in the Resurrection we are lost. If the Resurrection did not exist, then death exists, and we end up being condemned to nothingness”. He goes on to say that if the Resurrection doesn’t exist then there is no difference between good and bad, love and hate, or lies and the truth. What makes us human is the hope, even if it is only a faint intuition, that our life doesn’t truly end with our death. We don’t know, nor can we know what lies beyond this Earthly life but neither can a fetus know what life is like outside of the womb. Like the unborn fetus we are ignorant about what our existence will be like after we die. In any case, most of us totally reject the notion that death is the complete end to our existence. God is Life. Today, the day of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, we celebrate the hope of our own resurrection and our eternal life. May God bless my friends and family and anyone who reads these words and this message of hope. In the words of poet Eliza E. Hewitt who wrote the words to one of my favorite hymns;

When we all get to Heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!”


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I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. I have been living in Mexico since January 6th, 1999. I am continually studying to improve my knowledge of the Spanish language and Mexican history and culture. I am also a student of Mandarin Chinese.