Resurrection

By Brother David

There’s so much that we can say about the Paschal mystery, and all of it is inadequate. In our liturgical tradition, Holy Week is known as the Week of the Passion. We focus on Jesus’ Passion, looking at various parables and readings from Isaiah, Job, other parts of the Old and New Testaments, and, of course, the Gospel accounts. On Thursday, we commemorate Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and the Last Supper—the institution of the Eucharist. On Friday, we commemorate the Crucifixion, and, in the evening, we re-enact Christ’s burial. On Holy Saturday, we rest and keep watch at the tomb, sometimes physically but always in our hearts. It is a heavy week: sad, solemn, and sobering.

Then, on Sunday, we begin in procession, singing:

“Heaven’s angels, Christ our Savior, hymn your Resurrection. Let us here, on earth, praise you with a pure heart.”

And we respond to the proclamation of the Resurrection:

“Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death by death, and on those in the grave bestowing life.”

And the greeting “Christ is Risen” with its response “Truly Risen” will be a staple from now until the Feast of the Ascension.

And perhaps that’s it. Only that simple proclamation, that simple statement of faith, can adequately express the Paschal Mystery: Christ is Risen. No theology or speculation. No questioning the why and whether. No, a simple statement affirming what we experience in our hearts and know in our bones: Christ is Risen.

Jesus, the New Adam with New Life. An Adam who, far from shirking responsibility for his actions, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Gen 3:12), instead embraces sin and death, going so far as to become sin: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). And in this embracing of sin and death, in this handing over to the Father his faith, his hope, his very breath (Jn 19:30), it is not so much that he was nailed to the cross but rather that the cross was nailed to him. He owns death. It is his. It is put into his hands and is subject to him, just as all of creation is subject to him. And he delivers it with his last breath as a gift to the Father, who, being Light, obliterates the darkness of death as the sun obliterates the darkness of night.

With his death, a death endured so thoroughly that it affects all of creation: “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split” (Matt 27:51), even inanimate creation is reborn: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom 8:22). And, in grasping death and holding it tight, he grasps the hands of Adam and Eve, our first parents, and raises them from the dust of death to life in God.

He endures and does all of this as a human being, empowered by the Father, his natures, both human and divine, remaining undiminished, unconfused, undistorted, and undivided, each remaining whole and entire, with all things proper to each preserved intact (Council of Chalcedon). And in doing so as one of us, he calls each of us back to himself, to life himself, even as he called Lazarus back to himself—to life, to that birthright of life in God, fulfilling God’s word: “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness” (Gen 1:26). We are, each of us, raised in Jesus, the Anointed one of God, because each of us dies in Jesus, the Anointed one of God, not because of anything that we do or can do but because in loving the Father with all his heart, all his soul, all his strength, and all his mind, he loves us as himself (Lk 10:27), so that his death and our death are one, and his resurrection and our resurrection are one.

Jesus expresses and incarnates the love of God for us: that the second person of the Trinity should become Un-God, should become human for our sake to show us the meaning of our dignity as sons and daughters of God, who “although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philip 2:7). This is the humility of our God: a God who walks with us in the depths of our sin and weakness, a God who honors and respects us, a God who chose to die for us.

And we cry out with joy: “Lord have mercy!”

And we proclaim with awe: “Christ is Risen!”

And we answer the tidings delivered to us by those first witnesses and by every witness in all of history and all of creation: “Truly Risen!”