June 25, 2005
“Hijos de la muerte ,” “Children of death;” I can still remember the first time I heard that startling Honduran campesino phrase. And, while it might be able to be used to justify a kind of desperate, hopeless lifestyle, there’s still something disquietingly honest about the expression. After all, we are all really going to die some day; it’s inevitable. We are in fact, children of death.
The good news is that that’s not all we are. The death and resurrection of Jesus have radically confronted and dramatically altered human death. Jesus is indeed “the Crucified” (cf. Mt 28:5), but He is also “the Living One,” (Lk 24:5). The irony is that we have to be “children of death” in order to become “children of the resurrection” (Lk 20:36 ), just as Jesus had to become “the Crucified” in order to become “the Risen One.” If we weren’t first “children of death,” we could only later become “children of the elevation” not “of the resurrection,” not like those who have come back from death. In other words, death is a prerequisite for resurrection. The reality and the power of the Resurrection can only be revealed in the midst of death. The Resurrection requires that we pass through death, taste it, experience it. That fact can give a whole new perspective on things. It means that we don’t have to try to escape death, avoid it, hide from it or run away. Rather, in the very midst of “shadow of death” (Lk 1:79), we allow the more powerful and yet more subtle and hidden power of the Resurrection that survives death, transcends and outlasts it, to shine forth in our lives by being indomitable witnesses with inextinguishable hope.
Fr. Herald J. Brock, CFR
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