Bishop Kemme: Christ’s tomb is our door to a new life
Bishop Carl A. Kemme prepares the Paschal Candle during the Easter vigil in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita. (Advance photo)
The fundamental meaning of Easter Sunday is found in an ancient hymn, Bishop Carl A. Kemme told those attending the Easter Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita.
“Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!” he said. “It seems to me that there are no better words to encapsulate the very meaning of our great solemnity today as we recall the resurrection of Christ from the dead.”
Christ conquers, our minds, our hearts, our world, in the most absolute of ways, Bishop Kemme said. “Christ conquers the tomb, the grave that once held his lifeless body, the very tomb in Jerusalem where millions go each year – as I have been so blessed to do myself – to pray and reflect on the one whose body once occupied it, but does so no longer.”
The tomb is a gateway
The grave is a sign of defeat, a curse, a place for one’s final and unchangeable end, the bishop said from the ambo.
“For believers, the tomb is now the gateway, the door to a new beginning, to a new life that makes our current one pale in comparison,” he said. “Because Christ conquered the grave on that first Easter Sunday, which we celebrate today throughout the whole world, we who believe in him and his resurrection will one day be called from our tombs to take our place in the new creation. All because Christus vincit, Christ conquers.”
Christ reigns over the world and all that is in it, but this world is passing away, the bishop said.
“He truly reigns over the Kingdom of God established and ratified by his ‘Passover’ from death to life. Coming forth from the grave, he goes ahead of us to that eternal dwelling, a state of being we call heaven, which was closed to us due to Adam and Eve’s sin but because of his saving death and resurrection has now been reopened to God’s children. There he has been appointed by the Father as eternal judge of both the living and the dead.”
Christ commands!
Bishop Kemme said that is why each Sunday the faithful profess in the creed: “On the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. Christus regnat! Christ reigns and his kingdom will have no end.”
In closing the bishop said: Christus imperat! Christ commands! “He leads us, God’s pilgrim people, by and through the church, his mystical body on earth. He commands us to live righteous and holy lives. He commands us to be his witnesses in the world so that others, like us, will be members of his eternal kingdom, that their hearts and minds, like ours, will be conquered by Christ’s redeeming love, that their graves will be opened one day, and the dead in them will rise to eternal life.”
Christ commands us at each Mass to go forth and announce the Gospel of the Lord, Bishop Kemme said, so that all those who have yet to hear and to believe will be made partakers of the life Christ has won for all.
“Let us, dearest friends, rejoice today and always that God has loved us so much to give us his only begotten Son, who suffered the passion for us, who died for us on the cross, who was buried in the tomb and who at God’s command rose triumphantly from the grave, for Christ truly conquers, Christ lovingly reigns and Christ powerfully commands, now and forever and ever. Amen.”