In his Urbi et Orbi message for Easter 2009, delivered on Easter Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI recalled the words of Saint Augustine: "the resurrection of the Lord is our hope." He pointed out how important these words are for us in the modern world, because "one of the questions that most preoccupies men and women is this: what is there after death?"
As Christians, we know that death is not the end of life, but the passage from this world, subject to sin and death, into the fullness of life in the next. Christ's Resurrection is proof that this isn't mere theological speculation: "This certainty of ours is based not on simple human reasoning, but on a historical fact of faith: Jesus Christ, crucified and buried, is risen with his glorified body."
In Christ's Resurrection, our own has already begun. We can experience a taste of eternity here in history. "Easter," the Holy Father declared, "does not simply signal a moment in history, but the beginning of a new condition: Jesus is risen not because his memory remains alive in the hearts of his disciples, but because he himself lives in us, and in him we can already savour the joy of eternal life."
In the modern world, in which reason has been reduced to a materialistic parody of itself, Christ's Resurrection draws us beyond the emptiness of a life that ends with our death: "If we take away Christ and his resurrection, there is no escape for man, and every one of his hopes remains an illusion." But our hope is not an illusion, because we know that Christ is risen from the dead, and thus "It is no longer emptiness that envelops all things, but the loving presence of God."
As we progress through the Easter season--50 days of joy that overcomes the sorrows and trials of the 40 days of Lent--let us keep always before our eyes the image of the empty tomb that greeted the women and Peter and John, the tomb that proved that death no longer holds dominion over us. Christ has conquered, and our joy is complete. We live our lives in the glorious light of Easter, which is still only a foretaste of the glories of the world to come.