Daily Reading for April 25 • Monday in Easter Week

Alleluia! Praise the Lord. The Lord has done great things for us. I would like to make some very simple remarks about the Resurrection. This is at the centre of our faith: without resurrection, our faith is vain. If we have believed for this life only, we are the most wretched of men. But what is the Resurrection for me?

The Resurrection is repose after the painful tension of the Passion, it is the stone rolled away from the tomb, it is the joyful cry of Mary Magdalene, it is the other side of death, become luminous. It is the certainty that life is already triumphant and that it will triumph in the end: the fundamental force that sustains the world and history is love, and love is stronger than death. It is only in the light of the Resurrection that I understand what life is.

From “Alleluia!” in From Advent to Pentecost: Carthusian Novice Conferences by a Carthusian, translated by Carmel Brett (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1999).