Saint Gertrude Parish - Lasne

20. Jesus, who died and rose again, is the heart of our faith. Saint Paul, by stating this in few words—with only four verbs—transmits to us the “core” of our hope: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve” (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Christ died, was buried, rose again, and appeared. He endured the drama of death for us. The Father’s love raised him from the dead in the power of the Spirit, making his humanity the firstfruits of eternity for our salvation. Christian hope consists precisely in this: faced with death, where everything seems to end, we receive the certainty that, thanks to Christ, through his grace communicated to us in Baptism, “life is not destroyed, it is transformed” [15] forever. In Baptism, in fact, buried with Christ, we receive in him, risen from the dead, the gift of a new life that breaks down the wall of death and makes it a passage to eternity.