Jesus rose with His wounds; and we, too, rise with our wounds. In repentance, we are able to realize a resurrection of the heart before the final resurrection of the dead. The key to this mystery is given to us at the moment of our baptism, which offers the possibility of repentance and the foretaste of resurrection. Through baptism, we find that our resurrection through repentance is not a denial or a disparagement of our past wounds and vulnerability. It is not a rejection of our own past, no matter how painful and broken this may have been. The resurrection is not an abandonment of the cross, but the reintegration of all our crosses, the reconciliation of all sinners, the incorporation of all suffering into the life-giving death of Christ.
As we open up through repentance to all that has ever happened to us, we know that nothing is finally wasted. Rather than casting aside the unwanted parts of ourselves, we instead discover that childhood pain and adult humiliation, our experiences of sorrow and of joy, our confusion and our many losses all are gathered in and somehow being healed. We feel new life, and see new light – the life and light of the risen Christ. We become enabled to look at our own past with love, not in order to forget our past but in order to measure just how far we have come by God’s grace and to appreciate precisely where we are called to go. Where, before, we could only see a wasteland of pain, we can now witness the crops that have been watered by the grace of God.
In our journey toward resurrection through repentance, we are never left alone. We have our spiritual elder, we have our pastor (who, perhaps in most cases, will be our spiritual father) and, much more, we have one another. Yet, the beginning and the completion of this transformation that we call repentance is God, the God who loves us and delights in us, “in whose light we see light,” who has assumed all the darkness, and pain, and ambiguity, and vulnerability of what it means to be human. This God is closer to us than we could ever imagine. Through Him, all broken relationships are resolved. To repeat the words of St. Paul: “My strength is made perfect in weakness. All the more gladly, therefore, will I render glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (1 Cor. 12:9).
God’s grace is sufficient for us, His mercy infinitely greater than our sin. The light of His resurrection is able to dispel any darkness in our heart and in our world. The power of the resurrection can alone finally change this world. Christ’s resurrection is the seed of new life, of life which is greater than sin, corruption and death. This divine life transfigures all that receive it. It can transform the cosmos into heaven, as well as my heart and yours. Repentance is the beginning.
~John Chryssavgis, Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction
