Why do we commemorate the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ?

On a Good Friday five decades ago, I remember my sister handwashing our clothes. Each of the four of us siblings (we were 6 but number 5 was still a kid and number 6 was not yet born), had his own assignment in the house. I was 14 while my sister was 12. My assignment was to iron clothes on Saturdays and cook dinner on weekends. The assignment of my sister was doing the laundry. The two boys aged 11 and 9 were to scrub the floor and pump water for the family’s needs.

On that particular day, my sister decided to do the laundry. During that time, washing machines were unheard of. We did the laundry manually with detergent and we rinsed them with the help of a wooden thing which we called “palo-palo”. So my sister went out of the house to do the laundry near the “poso”. When a neighbor passed by, seeing what my sister was doing, she angrily said, “bakit mo pinapalo-palo si Kristo”. My sister got angry (she did not show her anger to the neighbor), but she said to us, “siya nga tinatadtad niya si Kristo”. That neighbor used to chop some plants like banana plants to feed her pigs.

Levity aside, we need to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a reminder of what our Lord did more than two thousand years ago. He was born in a manger in Bethlemen, to die 33 years later on the cross of Calvary to pay for the penalty of the sins of everyone. But he did not remain dead in the grave. When He rose from the dead on the third day, He declared victory over death, and anyone who would place his trust in Jesus, genuinely repenting and forsaking his sin, and do God’s will, is assured of a place in heaven.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16