This should be the basis of faith, but many believers forget about it. Priest: It’s not obvious at all

I now propose in the following chapters to deal with the themes of joy that arise from the essence of the Christian experience. I will try to arrange them somewhat hierarchically and somewhat in the order of the logic of revelation. The first position “does not forgive”: if we talk about joy from a Christian point of view, we must start from the resurrection. Even if the texts devoted to the resurrection themselves rarely mention joy directly – although, for example, Saint John clearly describes that the disciples were happy when they saw the Lord when he showed them his hands and side, thanks to which they were sure that he was not a ghost – and joy in biblical descriptions is most often suggested or implied, there is no need to explain that the experience of the joy of resurrection is the very center of Christianity.

I would like to draw attention to several levels of experiencing this joy. Personally, I am a bit angry with the order of things that the first, most direct level of experiencing the joy of resurrection is not given to us. Such an experience was shared by Jesus’ disciples and I think it cannot be translated into anything else, because they first experienced His death. They survived this whole tragedy. They lost their Master. Their hopes have been disappointed, in fact they have already said goodbye to these hopes, as we see, for example, in the disciples going to Emmaus – and then they meet Jesus, who has risen from the dead. And that’s something we probably can’t replicate in any of our experiences. We already know about the resurrection, we are “forewarned” about it, so – even if we deeply celebrate Good Friday – we do not experience the same trauma associated with the Master’s departure as the first disciples. Even if we experience a similar experience of disappointed hopes, it is probably different in essence. We can only be a little jealous that this wasn’t given to us, but what can we do – it’s just the way it is.

‘Exercises for Joy’ – book by Fr. Grzegorz Strzelczyk Znak Publishing House

“It’s not that obvious at all”

However, what is to some extent similar in our experiences and those of Jesus’ direct disciples is the moment when they realize what is happening and they have to take a step of faith – believe that Christ actually rose from the dead. This act of faith is actually the main driving force behind their joy. And not only can we identify with this, but it is (or should be) the axis of our experience. Faith that Jesus is risen and lives.

The question I want to propose to you is this: how consciously do I return to this faith? Not to believe in God in general, not to believe in various things that the Church “proposes belief”, but only to believe that Jesus is risen and lives and that this is the axis of all other things.

My experience as a pastor shows that it is not so obvious – that the resurrection is indeed the point from which everything begins and to which everything goes. And this is where the focus of our joy is supposed to be! And when Saint Paul in the Letter to the Corinthians talks about faith in the resurrection with often quoted words: “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:17), he points to this axis, but also immediately emphasizes that which is closely related to the resurrection. Namely: “…your faith is vain, and you remain in your sins to this day.” First of all, it is about the experience of Jesus, who was dead and is now alive, but then comes the awareness of the consequences, because the resurrection of Jesus did something to the world, something to me and to my relationship with God. It is in the resurrection that what we call “salvation” happens, i.e. a radical repair of what sin has corrupted, and thus a chance for the forgiveness of my sins.

Celebrating this during the Easter Night, we sing the call to joy: “Rejoice now, you hosts of angels in heaven…” I managed to avoid singing this message for a very long time – it is simply vocally difficult – until I became a parish priest and was alone in the parish; then there was no one to push it to. So I sang the Exsultet for the first time after quite twenty years of being a priest, and let me tell you, it sent shivers down my spine! It was one of my coolest experiences. Now I blame myself for having pushed it away before, because it turned out to be It turns out that it’s wonderful: to stand in front of your community and sing to them about resurrection. I recommend it, I checked it. It’s an amazing moment when we realize how much happened there: that indeed “the King so great wins the victory”, and it is a victory over death , sin and everything that takes our lives away. Through connection with the Living One, joy ceases to be something only declared, commanded or something that is the subject of hope, and can become a real experience.

This should be the basis of faith, but many believers forget about it Photo Piotr Skornicki / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

In soteriology (i.e. the theological science of salvation), we talk about “objective salvation”, that is, what the Son of God did through his incarnation, death and resurrection, and what concerns everyone. He overcame death, opened the prospect of resurrection and forgiveness of sins to people. But this is said at a high level of abstraction. I don’t know if you have the ability to enjoy abstract realities – some people probably do. But rather, real joy comes from the second dimension of salvation, from what we call “subjective salvation”: that is, from here that what Christ objectively accomplished becomes my share at a specific moment. Not only is forgiveness of sins given to the world, but I am the one whose sins are forgiven. If Christ has risen, then my sin has been overcome, removed. I was given a new life. I think this is crucial in our experience of faith – awareness of the connection between Christ’s resurrection and my own life. I understand “Life” here mainly biblically, that is, as the perspective of union with God, ultimate, up to divinization. We will also talk more about this.

“I saw this man’s joy”

We were probably all baptized as children – such a presumption is still justified in Poland – and we have a certain problem here. Potentially the most joyful moment of our lives, immersion in the death and resurrection of Christ, we experienced when we were too small to enjoy it properly! This came to me most clearly when, as a parish priest, I prepared the first adult for baptism in my parish and then baptized him during the Easter Vigil. I saw the joy of this man who experienced it in real time: he does not have to recall something that he does not remember, he just experiences this moment of immersion with the awareness of what is happening inside him, that all the sins of his thirty-something life are actually real to him at this moment. forgiven. During an adult’s baptism, there is a moment when you can look him in the eye, and it was a sight I will never forget. Baptism is absolutely free – you don’t even confess your sins! – which we sometimes lose sight of. This first immersion, forgiveness is completely free and nothing but faith is needed, and there is no repentance. This is the reason for my serious jealousy. Our parents had the foresight to take us to baptism, confess it for us, and then pass on the faith, but at the same time we did not have the opportunity to experience such a thing.

If you accompany such a person all the way to baptism, you will experience the Easter Vigil and the renewal of baptismal faith during the liturgy differently. (Formally it is called “renewal of baptismal promises”, but this is not a particularly accurate name. There are no promises there, it is simply a profession of faith and a renunciation of evil.) When have you ever seen the joy of someone who, as an adult, enters into death and resurrection of Christ, and comes out as a new man (the external expression of this is putting on a white robe), then one always remembers this flash of joy of the new man who was raised from sin in Christ. At least this is my experience and it is very strong.