The risen Christ is the hope of Christians
From a letter by Saint Braulio, bishop of Saragossa (d. 651)
The risen Christ is the hope of all Christians
Lazarus our friend is sleeping. In saying this, Christ, who is the hope of all believers refers to the departed as those who are asleep. By no means does he regard them as dead.
Paul the apostle does not want us to grieve about those who have fallen asleep. Our faith tells us that all who believe in Christ will never die; indeed faith assures us that Christ is not dead, nor shall we die.
The Lord himself will come down from heaven and there will be the command of the archangel’s voice and the sound of the trumpet; then those who were united with Christ in death will rise.
Let the hope of resurrection encourage us, then, because we shall see again those whom we lose here below. Of course we must continue to obey his commandments. His power is so great that it is easier for him to raise the dead to life than it is for us to arouse those who are sleeping. As we are saying all these things some unknown feeling causes us to burst into tears; some hidden feeling discourages the mind which tries to trust and to hope. Such is the sad human condition; without Christ all life is utter emptiness.
O death! You separate those who are joined to each other in marriage. You harshly and cruelly divide those whom friendship unites. But your power is broken. Your heinous yoke has been destroyed by the One who sternly threatened you when Hosea cried out: O Death! I shall be your death. And with the words of the apostle we, too, deride you: O death! Where is your victory? O death! Where is your sting!
Your conqueror redeemed us. He handed himself over to wicked men so that he could transform the wicked into persons who were truly dear to him. It would take too long to narrate all the consolations intended for our benefit in the Scriptures. But by focusing our attention upon the glory of our Redeemer there is sufficient hope for our resurrection. Through faith we know that we are already risen from the dead. The Apostle writes: If we have died with Christ, we believe that we are at the same time living with him.
We do not really belong to ourselves; we belong to the One who redeemed us. Our will should always depend on his. For this reason we say in the Lord’s Prayer: Your will be done. Confronted with death, the sentiments of Job should be our own: The Lord gave and the Lord took away. May his name be blessed! Let us repeat here and now what Job said, lest we turn out to be unlike him, when our time comes!
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings