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| Dr. Angelo Coppola |
The Resurrection: It’s Meaning for Me
By Deacon Angelo J. Coppola
St. Thomas Church, Southington, CT
Close your eyes and imagine a man being whipped, lashed, beaten and nailed to a cross where he suffers for hours. The wounds on his back scraping up against the splintered wood of the beam to which he is nailed. Hands and legs exhausted ...holding up his own weight ... they weaken ... can no longer support his body. He slowly suffocates and finely dies. All for something for which he bears no guilt.
Now open your eyes and imagine a much more joyful scene. Three days later. Everything has turned around. The executed man stands alive in an incomprehensible victory over death. The only person from the beginning of the world able to do this.
We are speaking of Jesus Christ, of course, who allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross and executed. Why? So he could accept the blame for every sin and selfish act that you and I and all of mankind have ever committed. Our redemption.
How ugly and repulsive our offenses against God for Him to permit this to happen to His own sinless Son. Jesus' death and resurrection are the singular most important events for Christianity. They are the cornerstone on which our faith is built.
I know the resurrection took place. I know it's truth - the empty tomb to which witnesses testified; the abandoned burial cloths in the tomb. Witnesses gave their lives as martyrs testifying to the scene of the resurrection as foretold in the sacred scriptures centuries before.
The resurrection assures me of my beliefs, confirming my confidence in my own resurrection when I will be raised from the dead, given a new resurrected body.
It gives me hope... someday seeing my own departed family members and friends again. It confirms my life's meaning and purpose in this world and in the next. The resurrection fulfills God's promise in sending a savior into the world to save me. God's love is so great for us that he would offer His own Son to die in my place and yours and allow us to receive His saving grace, be forgiven and be saved. Belief in my forgiving Savior gives me confidence and faith when I am in trouble and comforts me in the promised afterlife now and will again in my final hours. I have been given a mission to be faithful and I have a reason to believe Jesus will come again as He promised.
My faith gives me the power to live a Christian life , a reason to serve God and my fellow man.
Because of the resurrection, I long for the day when I will see Jesus face to face and thank Him personally for what he has so unselfishly done out of love, done for me.
Please scroll down to view parts 1 through 4 in this series.
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