Friday, April 17, 2009

The Resurrected Christ : Wellspring & Liturgy

Now, in the hour when the economy of salvation reaches its climax, it is Jesus himself who opens “paradise” (Lk 23:43), the garden of life, to men who are straying far from God. He can do so because the source, the wellspring, is now here.

Christ is risen; he is truly risen! Now everything begins.


On this day of birth the river of life becomes LITURGY as it spreads out from the tomb and reaches us in the incorruptible body of Christ.

[T]he risen Christ [is] the inexhaustible wellspring of the liturgy. […] He is united to the Father and radiates the glory of God from his own body; being united to the wellspring he gives life (see Jn 5:20-21 and 26-27). The river of life can now flow forth from the throne of God and from the throne of the Lamb. The liturgy has been born; the Resurrection of Jesus is its first manifestation.


The Resurrection of Jesus is not in the past, for if it were Jesus would not have conquered our death. […] [T]he death of Jesus was by its nature the death of death. But the event wherein death was put to death cannot belong to the past, for then death would not have been conquered. […] The hour on which the desire of Jesus was focused “has come, and we are in it” forever; the event that is the Cross and Resurrection does not pass away.

More than that, it is the only true event in all of history. All other events are dead and will always be dead; this one alone remains.

The hour in which the Word with a loud cry handed over his Breath of love so that men might live is no longer in the past; it is, it abides, it lives on through history and sustains it.

This unprecedented power that the river of life exercises in the humanity of the risen Christ—that is the liturgy! In it all the promises of the Father find their fulfillment (Acts 13:32). Since that moment the communion of the Blessed Trinity has ceaselessly been spreading throughout our world and flooding our time with its fullness. Henceforth the economy of salvation takes the form of liturgy.

--Fr. Jean Corbon, OP, The Wellspring of Worship

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