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PAGE 5—April 15,1976
Resurrection: Fact Or
BY JOHN CARDINAL WRIGHT
Faith in the fact that Christ rose from the
dead with what Origen (circa 175) called “a
veritable body” has always rested on the same
evidence as that which compelled the belief of
Origen. Rejection of that faith in Christ’s
“veritable” physical resurrection has invariably
been for the reasons of Celsus, with whom
Origen argued. So it was in the beginning; so it
was in the 1910 period, the first rash of what
we now call “modernism.” So it is today,
whatever the rhetoric, show of erudition or
veneer of sophistication.
No one in these last 19 centuries witnessed
the empty tomb, the Risen Christ or the
enthusiasm of the Christian flock caused by
(not the cause of) their joy that Christ had
truly risen, even as He promised He would.
Only a relative few witnessed these realities,
though more than witnessed the events at, say,
Washington’s crossing of the Delaware,
monumentalized dramatically but enormously
less directive of history. The rest of us have
taken the word of those who were present for
both events, as for thousands of others.
By the same token, the rationalizations
undermining faith in the Resurrection are
precisely those of Celsus in the second century
and the responsible political forces in Jerusalem
in the first. True, shortly before the age of
“modernism” outside the Church and among
the “modernists” inside the Church (1910 and
1975) there flourished new and more poetic
discountings of the fact of the Resurrection.
Easter became associated with the inevitable
resurgence of hope and enthusiasm in the
springtime with the return of the flowers, the
warm weather and the rites of spring. But
authentic Christians have continued to believe
in the fact of the “veritable” resurrection even
if they never saw pussy-willows or experienced
spring, whether they lived in the tropics or the
Antarctic. For them, the flowers that bloom in
the springtime, like the Easter eggs and bunnies,
however folkloristic, had nothing to do with
the case. Like Origen in the second century,
like St. Paul in the first, Christians for
centuries, with the grace of God, have believed
credible witnesses, as others believe, though
more critically, one hopes, what they read in
newspapers.
By rising from the dead, Jesus Christ has
made every day an Easter for those who believe
in Him. Even Good Friday looks forward to
Easter. This looking forward to Easter was not
very clear on the first Good Friday because
Jesus had not yet risen from the dead. But
when we commemorate Good Friday now, it is
the first day of the three-day celebration which
ends with Easter. Good Friday is not a day that
stands alone casting a dark shadow into
tomorrow. The germ of Easter is already
sprouting like a seed in the ground, just like
Jesus had said: “If the seed falls into the
ground and dies, it will bear fruit ... If you
lose your life you will find it. . . Die and you
shall live.”
Protestant Churches have their crosses and
some at least explain that Jesus is not on them
because he is risen. It makes some sense,
explaining it that way. Also, there are some
crucifixes now that have the figure of Jesus on
them, not nailed but in the triumphant gesture
of the resurrection. Again there is something to
say for symbolizing the death and resurrection
of Jesus that way.
The fact is: We have been saved by the
miracle and mystery of the dying and rising of
Jesus Christ and He who thinks of only one of
these at a time is thinking only half of the
mystery and the miracle. The two cannot be
separated anymore. That is why the Christian
has a right to be, at all times, a man or woman
of joy. Joy does not mean either laughing or
crying; it exists in the presence of either smiles
or tears. It is the peace of knowing that “For
those who love God all things work out for the
good,” and Jesus is the proof of it.
Many things around us remind us, or can
remind.us, of Easter. We are probably meant to
think in terms of Easter every day. Our every
prayer should have in it an element of Easter
joy: God is in his heaven and Jesus Christ is
risen from the dead and that is why all is right
with the world. So one way of having Easter
even,' day is praying every day. Mass of course
is a celebration of the Easter mystery. That is
why it is such a wonderful thing to go to Mass
St. Paul never saw the physical person of
Jesus, either before the crucifixion or before
the Ascension. His faith in the fact of the Risen
Christ is precisely like ours and so we choose
him as our source and our model in belief. He
speaks for the Church. Our faith in the
Resurrection and our consequent Easter joy is
in the pattern of St. Paul, rather than that of
Mary Magdalen, the Apostles or the more than
500 who, especially St. Thomas, an honest
rationalist who, confronted by evidence, cried
out “My Lord and my God.”
In any consideration of an article of faith, we
are concerned not so much with theological
opinion or exegetical theory as with the answer
of the Church to the catechetical question:
What does the Church propose for our belief on
this point? In the case of the fact of the
Resurrection of Christ, the answer is clear and
constant: He is truly risen, even as He said.
Nothing is more clear in the New Testament;
the witness of the Church has been unbroken
and uncompromising across the centuries.
We have said that, not being ourselves
eye-witnesses, our faith is in the pattern of St.
Paul. Of all the catechisms of the faith one of
the oldest is St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
It is a record of the Church’s belief from the
beginning in the literal Resurrection of Christ.
Paul was writing to the Greeks of Corinth - a
people not disposed, given their philosophical
background, to accept the idea of a resurrection
from the dead. And yet, undaunted by their
preconceptions, Paul teaches the Corinthians
the faith he himself had been taught.
As early at that first generation of believers,
Paul is teaching the Resurrection as part of the
essential Gospel message: “I taught you what I
have been taught myself, namely that Christ
died for our sins, in accordance with the
Scriptures; that He was buried and that He was
raised to life on the third day, in accordance
with the Scriptures” I Cor. 15: 3-14.
The central dogma of Christian catechetics
from the days of the Apostles who looked upon
the face of the Lord is that Jesus rose from the
dead. As we have noted, the Christian teaching
most “explained away,” together with His
Divinity, is that of Christ’s Resurrection. St.
Matthew’s Gospel records the first such effort.
Faced with the fact of an empty tomb, the
every day - or at least every Sunday. It makes
Easter alive in our lives.
Have you ever thought of every day and
night being like an Easter? The sun sets in all its
beauty and so comes the night. Or it sets in a
less beautiful way on a cloudy day and it is
dark. (One day long ago the sun set on Calvary
and it was a deep dark night.) Then comes the
morning once again and the sun rises (as Jesus
rose on Easter morning) and it is a brand new
day. Easter has made a brand new day of every
day and the sun’s rising reminds us, or can
remind us, that every dawn is an Easter dawn.
Lift up your head, O Christian, for your
salvation is as near as every night and morning.
Do you live close to the land? Do you
garden? Have you ever put a seed into the
ground? Very few of us haven’t. Maybe we
didn’t think much of the hope and expectation
we entertained while doing it. It is an act of
faith in the seed’s power of resurrection from
the dead - all the more eventful because Jesus
made use of the seed’s dying and rising to
explain Himself to us. Myself, I love life close
to the land and one of my joys in life is
planting a field of wheat and then watching it, a
miracle each time, sprout up out of the ground
into a mass of green. Who would have thought
that the dry seed slipping through my fingers
could really do a thing like that? And if that
already weren’t enough, comes the cold and the
winter and the snows. The green field lies there
frozen and buried. Then once again the
resurrection in spring.
It was in my mind when I began writing this
article on Easter to quote something I wrote at
an earlier time. I was writing about my father
who, like Christ, died when he was young and
strong, in the spring: “Spring is Christ making
everything green. Spring is Christ going down
into the tomb and pushing life out of the earth.
Spring is the power of Christ let loose in the
world. Christ is a tall tale of love let loose upon
the earth in spring . . . One day the earth was
dark with the last of dead winter, and rain fell
on the tomb. The next day the Easter Christ is
making everything green. I’ve seen it myself.
The grass in the spring and the bursting forth
out of the earth is one great green Alleluia.”
(There Is A Season, p. 25)
F olklore?
enemies of Christ contrived this explanation:
“His disciples came during the night and stole
him away while we were asleep” Matt. 28:13.
Side by side with literal acceptance of the
Resurrection since the first Easter, stand
attempts to “explain away” the Scripture
narrative. The approaches vary. They range
from radical views which reduce the
Resurrection to the result of subjective visions
in the excited or disillusioned minds of the
emotionally frustrated disciples, to the milder
current discussions concerning the nature of an
“historical event” when faith is involved.
St. Paul, confronted with these views -- ever
ancient, never new, like the faith itself --
appealed promptly to the testimony which he
had received from his predecessors. He calls
upon these to be his witnesses and to verify the
truth of what he teaches. “He (Christ) appeared
first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve.
Next He appeared to more than five hundred of
the brothers at the same time, most of whom
are still alive, though some have died; then He
appeared to James and then to all the Apostles;
and last of all He appeared to me, too; it was as
though I was born when no one expected it” I
Cor. 15: 5-8.
St. Paul clearly understood that the Person
to Whom the Church prays and in Whom
Christians believe is Christ the Lord, enthroned
in Great power and majesty, but Paul well knew
that his Lord is the same Jesus of Nazareth Who
was crucified and then rose from the dead in a
manner that compelled faith and convinced
eyewitnesses.
The early followers of Jesus proclaimed Him
Lord even as do we. It is precisely because of
the Resurrection that they did so, as it is
because of the resurrection that we do so. We
cannot make a distinction between the Lord
who is God and Jesus who is Man. The faith of
the Apostles, as ours, says that Jesus, the
Carpenter, is Christ the Risen Lord. He went
into the kingdom of death and emerged again
the same Person, not a phantasm, not a being so
transformed but what He is still identical with
the Jew whose accents Magdalen knew, still
recognized by gestures familiar to His friends,
as, for example, in the breaking of bread (cf.
Luke 24:35). He is God’s Son with new clarity,
but still Mary’s flesh with new claims on our
profession of faith that He is, again in St.
Thomas’ phrase, “my Lord and my God.”
“I have seen the Lord.” Mary Magdalen, in
the garden of the empty tomb, saw the Lord
and so testified to the Apostles and to the early
Church; through them she testifies to all
subsequent Christians. Those five words, the
original good news, contain the essential
message of Christianity. It is this message that
forms and must always mould Catholic
catechetics. It is the source of all human
development, persona! salvation from evil and
eventual release from the woes that follow from
sin. This has been the belief of Christians since
the garden of Easter, since Emmaus, since the
Cenacle, since Pentecost - and all because of
things seen, heard, touched, known with regard
to Jesus Christ, Whose Risen Life they
proclaimed with the same fervor and conviction
as they proclaimed His death. It was not an
abstraction that died on the cross. Nor was it a
ghost that rose from the dead.
A special and frightening solemnity was
attached to the truth of this basic fact by Paul:
“If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ
himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ
has not been raised then our preaching is useless
and your believing it is useless” I Cor. 15:14.
Nothing could be more candid, more clear,
more cogent, more final.
For us the Resurrection is, then, not simply
one among many articles of faith; it is the
heart of the matter, the beginning of the
Christian experience, the cornerstone of the
Christian creed, the central premise of Christian
code and cult. We believe it on the witness of
others, as men do all things that they believe.
But for those chosen in God’s Providence to be
the witnesses whom we believe, the
Resurrection was an objective experience. They
not only believed, they saw the Risen Lord.
Their testimony was to a fact, a fact that gives
origin, purpose and substance to everything we
mean by Christianity and (is the neglect of this
the explanation of our sick society?) to
civilization itself.
And so, despite our sick society, a Happy
Easter to all those who know the grace that is
the secret of Hope and Faith. A Happy Easter
also, and fervently, to those who have almost
settled for the sickness rather than seek the
grace to acknowledge their Risen Lord and
Godi
ST. PAUL, shown in this painting by
Rembrandt, was a man of great faith,
Cardinal John Wright tells us. “Paul
never saw the physical person of Jesus”
so his faith is “precisely like ours and
so we choose him as our model in
belief.” (NC Photo courtesy the
National Gallery of Art)
IF THE RESURRECTION, depicted
in this 19th-century woodcut by
Albrecht Durer, were not a fact, Russell
Shaw writes, “that would call into
BY RUSSELL SHAW
The Resurrection is the cornerstone of our
belief as Christians. St. Paul puts it this way:
“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is
void of content and vour faith is empty too.”
(1 Cor. 15, 14)
Why does the fact that Christ rose from the
dead occupy this central position in our faith?
A number of different considerations have a
bearing on this question.
One is that the Resurrection was also central
to the belief of the early Christian community
in the time of the apostles. St. Paul’s words
make this abundantly clear. If, therefore, the
Resurrection were not a fact, that would call
into question the value of the other elements of
belief held by the early Christians - elements
which we hold to have been transmitted in their
integrity, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
from apostolic times to the present day.
This is a very important consideration, but it
is also a somewhat dry and abstract one. The
Resurrection plays a far more dynamic role in
Christian life than simply legitimizing the
elements of Christian belief.
The Resurrection is also the ultimate
testimony to who Jesus is. If death in fact had
overcome Christ, as it does ordinary human
beings, we might conclude that Jesus -- while
certainly a very remarkable man, a great teacher
and inspiring leader - was in the end no more
than that: a man.
In emerging from the tomb triumphant over
death, however, Jesus testified that He is not
simply a human being - He is also the Son of
God and God Himself. While Christ’s miracles
served many purposes, one of these purposes
was to point to the fact of His divinity. The
Resurrection is the greatest miracle of all, the
one that marks out most dramatically the fact
that Jesus Christ was man and God.
The Resurrection also has a direct,
immediate bearing on our destiny, for it
testifies to the reality of our redemption. It is
true that Christ’s freely accepted death on the
cross was His central, redeeming act. But the
Church has always associated the Resurrection
with the Crucifixion, maintaining that the two
are indissolubly linked.
The Resurrection points clearly to our
redemption because it tells us that Christ has
truly overcome death - not only for Himself
but also for us. Death was perhaps the most
obvious punishment for original sin, humanity’s
primal transgression. But, through the merit of
Christ’s death, we are redeemed from sin, and
in the Resurrection we are assured that death in
fact does not speak the last word either for
Christ or for us.
question the value of the other
elements of belief held by the early
Christians.” (NC Photo courtesy the
National Gallery of Art)
Although the Resurrection is central to our
belief as Christians, it is possible that its
relevance is not immediately apparent to many
people today. In fact, a kind of popular
demythologizing - the explaining-away on
rationalistic grounds of events in the life of
Christ - is commonplace today. It is fair to
suppose that a good number of well meaning
people more or less tacitly place the
Resurrection in the category of a pious myth.
But, for the reasons noted, to make a myth
of the Resurrection is to make nonsense of
Christianity. The late novelist Flannery'
O’Connor once said of the Blessed Sacrament -
in whose reality as the Body and Blood of
Christ she firmly believed -- that if it was only a
symbol, she wanted nothing to do with it. This
was in the same spirit as St. Paul’s words about
the Resurrection: it is a fact or it is nothing -
and our faith as Christians is nothing either.
Why therefore believe in the Resurrection?
Ultimately of course our belief is rooted in the
gift of faith. But we also have good rational
grounds for accepting the Resurrection as
historical fact. Many of the early Christians -
people in the best position to know' the truth
because they were contemporaries of the events
- gave their lives in support of the proposition
that the Resurrection really happened. It is
hard to imagine persons contemporary' with the
events suffering martyrdom for the sake of
what many at least would certainly have known
to be a pious myth.
In offering the guarantee that death is not
the final reality, the Resurrection does
something of enormous importance for us. With
good reason we fear death. But we know now
that life does not culminate in death - it
culminates in more life, a new life
immeasurably better than anything we now
experience or can even imagine. And this is not
to be life as disembodied spirits but life in the
body.
To some of course this is “pie in the sky”
talk - even dangerous talk because, according
to their point of view, it tends to distract
people from the duties and challenges of the
present life. There is, however, simply no
contradiction between belief that we will rise
from the dead and live eternally, and efforts to
work for the realization of God’s kingdom here
and now.
In doing so, we also know that God’s
kingdom will not be fully realized here and
now. The Resurrection is a guarantee that
eventually the kingdom of God will reign in its
fullness among us. But meanwhile we wait and
hope, work and pray, in the confident
expectation that what God has done in and for
Jesus, our risen Savior, He will do also in and
for us.
— \
Know
tour Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1976 by N.C. News Service)
f— — —•—~——— * ^
Every Day
Is Easter Morning
^ ; g * ——. ■ J
BY EUGENE S. GEISSLER
The Meaning
Of The Resurrection