HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MONS. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
SUNDAY OF RESURRECTION

Sunday, April 8^th of 2007
A NEW WORLD HAS BEGUN

MY BROTHERS, CHRIST HAS RAISED!
ALLELUIA!   PRAISE YAHWEH!  PRAISE THE LORD, OUR GOD!

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is an historical event that, although today it can not be verified, the Church (from the beginning) affirms it as the apostle Saint Peter indicates in the first reading, when he said to us that Jesus granted to see him next to a group of witnesses that He chose and with whom He ate and drank after he raised from the death.

In the Gospel, Saint John also relates to us how Mary Magdalene went to announce to the apostles that the body was not there where He had been buried. Sain John with Saint Peter affirm this event that they saw and believed, because until that moment they had not understood the Scriptures which had announced that He had to raise from the death.

Brothers, from the beginning, the Church announces as the good news, the passion, the death and the resurrection of Christ. Thus the readings testify it, readings that we are going to listen througout the paschal time in the acts of the apostles. Saint Paul invites us, in the second reading, to live according to this mystery in which we were inserted by the Baptism, looking for the goods of heaven.

These goods from heaven  are goods that here down (in the reality of our present world) we can already make reality thanks to our condition of raised people.

When a good person passes near to us, she or he makes us feel a pacifying and stimulating sensation. Why will not be multiplied these people and these steps? They are the ten just men of  whom the Bible speaks. They are the ones who reconcile us with the man. (people that justify the world, that help to live with only their presence) (A. Camus).

God approaches us in each one of these steps. But, when the right time arrived, It was God who wanted to passes between us. (“God comes in person to rescue them”) (Is 35, 4). Nobody could suspect that this prophetic announcement was fulfilled literally. Because if God comes in person, everything will have to change: “Thus, the eyes of the blind will open themselves and also the ears of the deaf, the lame will leap like a deer, the tongue of the dumb will sing. 

The evangelists prove to us that all these wonders were made by Jesus. When Peter gives testimony of Jesus, he summarizes: He passed doing good and healing everyone who was under the power of the devil, because God was with Him. Jesus was the God´s step by our Land, and when he passed, he covered everything of  blessing and grace.

But the decisive step was the one from death to life. Passing from death to the biological life, yes, but from all the deaths to all the lifes. These are radical steps that the man needs to take to achieve his freedom and his salvation. He had to pass from pride to humility, from abuse to service, from greed to solidarity, from violence to sweetness, and from hatred to love. All this is to pass from death to life. All this means resurrection.

The biological resurrection is a consequence of these spiritual resurrections. The things that really enslave and kill man and the humanity are the tenebrous forces, truly demoniac, that live in his heart. The victory over these forces is the thing that will fill the man with light, and the world with beauty. The man kills and he dies when he hates, pressses and monopolizes. The man lives and makes live when he respects, helps, shares, and loves. The Easter, the vivifying step, all the liberating steps are the triumph of love.

For that reason my loved brothers:

Let us look for the alive Jesus in the things in which He is interested: peace, concord, justice and mercy with all those that inside or outside of the church work for a better world. Let us walk in the joy and the certainty that the faith gives us when we follow permanently Jesus to announce Him with gladness to the whole world. Let us live helping each other (without fears), even to the ones who think diffent from us. Let us learn to live with Him through our encounter with the poorest, the marginalized ones, the despised ones of this world.

Allow our heart to burn with his faithful, close and alive presence through our brothers, especially in our Eucharistic celebrations. Let us listen with attention to those who truly follow the living Jesus as disciples; also to those who with their brave testimony, that is filled with love, are ready to forgive instead of those who persecute Him. Follow the footsteps of the risen Christ. We have to be ready; we have to trust in the author of life, to defend it in all its stages, from its conception to the natural death; because the glory of God is the live man (saint Ireneo) who is alive in fullness.

My brothers, these and many others would be the best proof of our present life in a live Christ. May the God Father grant us with the intercession and the loving company of our little girl and little mother; the sweet Lady of the Tepeyac, Holy Mary of Guadalupe.

Amen.