THE RESURRECTION AS A SOCIAL EVENT

 
Traditionally our faith as believers and Christians, specially within the Catholic tradition, is defined and understood as a collective event. The Church, the community, the sacraments are indicators of the importance of the collective character of our faith. Even the hermit has a collective faith: the “Robinson Crusoes of faith” do not exist.     
 
However, when we talk about the resurrection, we tend to strip the faith of its social content and we retreat to a more intimate dimension; the Resurrection seems to be confined to a personal dimension, an individual event inaugurated by Jesus. Beyond theological considerations, the following is a reflection on the meaning of the resurrection from a collective point of view. The purpose of these lines is extremely modest: to see how at a sociological level there is an association between death and resurrection, and to look at what is, then, the meaning of the latest.
 
Jesus’ passion was not only one man’s torture, it was not only the indescribable physical and psychological pain of dying on the cross. The unbearable torment of the cross was also a dramatic collective event. The crucified Jesus was a tragedy with deep social implications. It was precisely from this collective debacle that the nascent, frightened and weak Christian community began to live the experience of the resurrection, to gain awareness, courage, strength, and conviction; It was there that the cross became not only an instrument of torture but a symbol of life, a sign of a common struggle. The passion as a social phenomenon is somehow necessary for the resurrection of a people or a community.
 
In the same way that Jesus made the Passover from death to the life, analogically we can observe how oftentimes a reprehensible and unjustifiable act of violence or a social injustice are capable of bring about new life.
 
We don't have to look very far to find some dramatic examples of this: last February 14, we witnessed a shooting in a USA school, another tragedy to add to the heartbreaking statistic of gun victims in the country. That awful event has started a popular student movement to demand changes in the regulation of the acquisition and possession of weapons.   
 
Another example is the recent announcement by Pope Francis about the canonization of bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, murdered on March 24, 1980 while celebrating the Eucharist. His death helped the growth of popular movements against political and military tyrannies across South America, and elsewhere.
 
Still going back in time, another example was the horrific killing of a young Emmett Till in 1955, in the State of Mississippi. From the pain and rage of this racially motivated crime, African Americans responded with new strength through the Civil Rights movement in the USA.
 
Only five years later, in the Dominican Republic, the Mirabal sisters, three women who dared to confront the tyranny of Trujillo’s regime, were killed: it was November 25th, 1960. To honor them, that date was later chosen to celebrate the International Day for the elimination of Violence Against Women, and since then there is a growing awareness about women’s abuse, becoming, 50 years later, one of the basic demands for women’s right.
 
More examples could be added of people who have led to a collective resurrection through their own passion and sacrifice, such as Mahatma Gandhi, with his non-violent struggle for India’s independence and peaceful co-existence between Hindus and Muslims, or Harvey Milk, assassinated in 1978 for his political activism defending the rights of homosexuals in San Francisco. These are well known examples. There are many anonymous passions, only known and experienced at the local level, or within a group or even in a family. But in any case, they still bring about the mobilization of that group.
 
All these passions, regardless of how well-known they are, raise the conscience of a group or a community. It’s a jolt that wakes up sleeping consciousness, shakes up apathy and takes us out of our comfort zone, and moves us to political or social action (the resurrection). It does not need to be revolutionary or violent. The collective being moves slowly, but the initial spark, the initial movement, it’s almost always traumatic (a passion).
 
All collective passions, like Jesus’, dramatically reveal the cracks of the social structures, that are often hard with the weak and accommodating with the strong.  But through these passions, in turn, there is always the possibility for a new resurrection, a movement of light, of hope and change. The Resurrection of Jesus is a permanent invitation to us to turn social injustice, exclusion and intolerance into life, hope and social integration.