In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes, after meeting the Risen Lord in a vision, "I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 3:8).
Paul encountered the risen Jesus Christ, and in light of that knowledge, everything else in his life seemed like rubbish, like a total loss. Paul became elevated to a new life, a new vision, a new pitch of existence. All his accomplishments and the great things he inherited seemed like nothing compared to this life that was opened to him in the resurrection from the dead.
What does the Resurrection mean? It means the elevation of this life to a new pitch, a new perfection, a new beauty that we can't even imagine.
Imagine a fish who spent his entire life under the sea, and then is hooked by a fisherman. He's pulled up out of the water and for one moment he glimpses this world of light and color that he had never imagined possible. Then he wriggles off the hook and falls back into the water.
"I saw that world up there," he would tell his fish friends, "which I never knew existed! Yet now, compared to that, this ordinary world seems like nothing to me."
That's what Paul is communicating to the Philippians in his letter. And that's the new vision, the new pitch of existence, we're moving toward this season of Lent.
"What does the Resurrection mean? It means the elevation of this life to a new pitch, a new perfection, a new beauty that we can't even imagine."
- Father Robert Barron
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