He is risen - even in Holy Week!

In the second week of Lent, we heard the Gospel of the Transfiguration – we are reminded of the Divinity of Christ Who, ‘though He was in the form of God,’ humbled Himself taking on the form of a slave, a human. His sacrifice at Calvary was not a passive acceptance of inevitable death, but a deliberate stooping down: ‘And being found in human form He was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.’ On the third Sunday we heard the Gospel of the Samaritan woman, how Jesus reveals Himself as ‘the Messiah’ (the Christ) literally thirsty for our redemption, and therefore for the fulfilment or accomplishment of the Father’s will. On the fourth we heard the Gospel of the healing of the man born blind. Here we are introduced to a sacramental, physical approach – Jesus heals and restores us through the physical realities of our world. The fifth week brought us the account of the raising of Lazarus – we learn that Jesus is ‘‘the Resurrection and the Life’ with mastery even over death itself. Finally, tomorrow we shall hear the Gospel account of His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, He at whose entry ‘even the stones would cry out’ if the people did not.

This then is our backdrop for Holy Week. This same Jesus, true God and true Man, the Messiah Who was foretold, capable of satisfying our deepest need, Who heals the broken and the broken hearted, and has mastery over sin and death – this is the One Whom we hear ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried,’ Who ‘descended into Hell’

We are not left there. In the coming days, the glorious fact of the Resurrection should permeate all our remembrance of His Passion and death. We must, with the bewildered ‘beloved disciple’ who reached the tomb first, see and believe and understand that Jesus must rise from the dead. When I sing or say the Creed, I try to allow myself a moment of pure joy. This comes when we come to the words ‘And rose again on the third day.’  As I have said to children I teach, who usually prefer Christmas, Christmas tells us what happened – that God became a man – and Easter tells us why. As St. Paul says, ‘We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this day he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.’ (Acts 13:32-33.)  Even though we still have to travel in memory and in liturgy through the events of Holy Week, remember throughout, He is risen! Jesus’ Resurrection is ‘the crowning truth of our faith in Christ: ‘Christ is risen from the dead! Dying, he conquered death; To the dead, he has given life.[1]

As Christians we know that Jesus’ resurrection is a real event in history. In about A.D. 56 St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: " Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, … he was buried, …he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and … appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. . .” (I Cor 15:3-4.)  This resurrection is different in character from the raising of Lazarus. Although there are common features in the accounts -the tomb in the rock, the stone to be rolled away, the several days having passed, the grave-clothes – yet the very similarities underline the fundamentally different character of the two events. When Lazarus is raised the stone has to be rolled away from the tomb by human hands, and Lazarus has to be called forth by an external power. When he emerges, he is still bound up in his graveclothes and has to be released. By contrast, the tomb of Christ is empty before the stone is rolled away, the graveclothes are left behind, neatly folded. The women encounter an earthquake and an angel who rolls away the stone, and when Christ meets the women and greets them, He is not coming out from the tomb needing assistance, but already free from the binding restrictions of death and in the bright day. All these things signal a different kind of new life – not a raising to the life of this world, leading inevitably to a later encounter with death, but a Resurrection to a kind of life that is essentially different.

In His risen body He passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space. At Jesus' Resurrection His body is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit: He shares the divine life in his glorious state, so that St. Paul can say that Christ is "the man of heaven". (Cf. 1 Cor 15:35-50.) [2]

At the same time, His Body is a real body – It is seen by very many people – St. Paul speaks of more than five hundred persons to whom Jesus appeared.(I Cor 15:4-8)  The Gospel narratives tell a story of a group of traumatised and confused people, often running, around very demoralised.  The accounts have some of the disciples (not just Thomas) frankly incredulous: ‘The shock provoked by the Passion was so great that at least some of the disciples did not at once believe in the news of the Resurrection… When Jesus reveals himself to the Eleven on Easter evening, "he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.(Mk.16.14)[3]  The apostles came to faith in the Resurrection ‘under the action of divine grace, from their direct experience of the reality of the risen Jesus.’[4]  They saw a real man with a real body, capable of eating and drinking with real flesh and real bones As He says, ‘A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me to have’(Luke 24:39)  At the same time there are strangenesses: The body still bears the scars of the Crucifixion (cf. Jn 20.20), but the wounds seem to not be painful; in other contexts there is a failure to recognise Him – Mary Magdalene thinks He is the gardener and the disciples at Emmaus don’t know Him despite hours of conversation until He is known ‘in the breaking of the bread.  He is not limited by time and space, and seems to be able to be present in more than one place at the same time:  for example, the disciples who saw Him at Emmaus return to hear that Jesus has appeared to Simon. No account is given of the actual moment of Resurrection. It is, the catechism says (647) ‘something that transcends and surpasses history.’

So, what must we believe? The Resurrection is ‘an object of faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God himself in creation and history.’  It is the action of all the Persons of the Trinity:

‘the Father's power "raised up" Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son's humanity, including his body, into the Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as "Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead".’ and this is ‘through the working of the Spirit who gave life to Jesus' dead humanity and called it to the glorious state of Lordship.’[5]

In the accounts of Jesus’ Resurrection appearances there is a constant redescribing of a compassionate and personal approach of Our Saviour to His disciples. Again, and again the utter kindness of Our Saviour shines through, as He shows His wounds, eats, and drinks, settles doubts, and brings peace. It is also ‘mysteriously transcendent as it is the entry of Christ into the glory of God’[6]

Why does it matter? Lazarus or the man from Nain or Jairus’ unnamed daughter do not fundamentally change the course of history in any obvious way, but for us as Christians the truth of the Resurrection is paramount: "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain."(I Cor 15.14). 

It is the continued energy of divine life, which speaks into the hearts of believers in every age and time. The Resurrection confirms all of Christ’s words and works, proves His divine claims, fulfilling the promises given throughout the Scriptures. The Catechism says (CCC653): ‘The Resurrection of the crucified one shows that he was truly "I AM", the Son of God and God himself.’

It matters because His death and rising save us. There is an argument I have had with a fellow Dominican about whether it is His death or His Resurrection that is the important saving action – I want to say it is both: The mystery of His death liberates us from sin, but it is in His Resurrection that we can enter into life, be justified by God and reinstated in grace, ‘so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.’(Cf. Eph 2:4-5; I Pt 1:3.)  We are made just, justified, a victory won over sin, yes, but more importantly the gateway to Life in Christ, divine filiation – we become in Christ the adopted sons and daughters of the Father, with a real share in His life. It is because Christ has risen that we ourselves shall rise. "Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. . . For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.’’ (I Cor 15:20-22.)

Christ’s Resurrection informs us that in the resurrection we shall not be simply disembodied souls, but we shall rise to a glorified body, freed from the corruption of sin and death. Our belief and hope is not for this world, but from this world. At the same time, Christ’s physical presence in flesh on earth, the Incarnation, tells us that what happens here matters, has eternal consequences, shapes the way heaven will be for us. If even He retains the marks of the nails, the earthly means of our salvation we may assume will be in some way visible in the general resurrection. That is, our crosses bravely borne will in some way be gloriously manifested in the life to come.

Christ’s death is ‘the principle of our own resurrection’ both in the wonderful liberation from sin that we experience in the Sacraments and in our capacity to live towards God in this life, but also in the telos, the goal of our lives, which is to be fully and completely at one with God, fully and completely who and what we are meant to be.  Our resurrection like His ‘will be the work of the Most Holy Trinity.’[7]  Thus St Paul says ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.’ 

Amen