The Resurrection

By Brian McClire

If a man would put his enemy in prison, the prisoner may escape and go free. If a man would wound his adversary in battle, he may recover and fight again. But if a man would kills his enemy—all is finished. Once death puts his clammy hand on the brow of a man, he will trouble his foes no more. It has always been the instinct of man to kill his enemy. Death conquers all.

When Jesus had raised Lazarus from the grave, some of the Jews who witnessed the miracle reported to the Pharisees this thing which Jesus did. They immediately called a council. These wicked men must pretend to patriotic duty. If they allowed the Galilean to go on, the whole nation would believe in Him and Rome would come down upon their heads and blot them out of the land of the living. This was their pretext, but, in reality, the Pharisees saw that it was either Jesus or themselves. “From that day, therefore, they devised to put Him to death.” It has always been the instinct of men to kill their enemies.

Once the Jewish leaders had made up their minds what to do, it did not take them long to do it. By Friday at three o’clock, Christ was dead. All through the long Sabbath day, his body lay in the tomb. That night, the moon rose high over the Holy City. Some of its beams fingered their way through the trees and did a dance across the face of the rock which sealed off the place where His body lay. In this home of the dead there was no other sign of life.

But with the coming of dawn, the soul of Christ, by divine power and command, returned into that cold body and broke by its heat, the bonds of death. The Savior was alive and risen!

Once death puts his hand on the brow of a man, he will trouble his enemy no more; Unless that man be stronger than death. Unless that man be death’s Master. If He is, then He is also the Master of all those who die, and Master over all the living. Nothing they can do to Him will ever be a permanent triumph.

Man’s most telling blow is the death blow. With the help of Judas, Pilate, and a file of soldiers, the Jewish leaders tried it on Christ. It failed. And just as a wave breaks itself against a rock and in the one mighty thrust loses its force, so, too, the tragedy of Calvary, did all the force of evil break itself against the rock which is Christ. Now we know that Christ is always and forever victorious. He will prevail in what He sets out to do. His work can never be a permanent failure. In this Easter victory, we see the doom of everything that sets itself up against Him.

We rejoice in this personal victory of Our Savior, over those who stand against Him.

But the greatest enemy of Christ was not a man. It was the thing that made His death necessary. It was sin. The resurrection is our guarantee that Jesus Christ has conquered sin. The knowledge that His death has accomplished its purpose in this matter of sin is another reason for our Easter joy.

Looking back to Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we remember that Christ’s death was not just a murder. It was a part of the sacrifice which He offered in atonement for sin. Good Friday was made possible by Holy Thursday for at the Last Supper, Christ the priest put Himself in the state of victim hood, offering Himself in sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Jewish leaders made him out to be a political enemy, and for them His execution was a matter of state done with an appearance of legality, if not with justice. But, in reality, the crucifixion was a matter of religion, and the soldiers put to death not a felon but a victim. For there, on the heights of Calvary, the sacrifice begun the night before was completed. In Christ’s death we find the atonement for sin and the apology for all our transgressions.

There remained for the Father to give us some sign that this apology was accepted. The sign was the resurrection. There in the tomb, God the Father put His hand to the sacred gift which men, through their High Priest, had held out to Him. He put His hand to the gift and it lived. The Father claimed it as His own and took it to heaven. In other words, He accepted the peace offering, the gift of apology. He could not do this without accepting the apology itself. The resurrection is the sign of a friendship restored.

What does the friendship of God mean to us that it should cause so much joy? What does life mean to the deer that he should flee from the hunter? What does water mean to the desert? What does land mean to the sailor lost at sea? What does breath mean to the dying? The wrath of God is a raging fire—but His friendship is life everlasting.

Because Our Savior no longer sleeps with the dead, we know that no more are we the children of wrath but the beloved sons of God. Christ has won this for us by His victory over sin.

For this reason, our joy is warmed by that deeper feeling of gratitude and thanks which is a part of Easter. Our happiness is not the pleasure of a night, which dies away in the echoes of sweet music. Nor is it a thrill like those which flash across our lives now and then, a kind of lightning dying even as it is born. It is rather that abiding peace of soul which comes from the knowledge that we are now secure. The resurrection has rooted us in God’s love, and the only thing that can disturb our peace is the thing which took it away from us in the beginning, Sin. To go back to sin would be spiritual suicide and the basest form of ingratitude to Him who has crushed sin beneath his feet. “If you be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above.”

The words of Saint Paul bring us to the third reason for our Easter joy. The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of our own resurrection. We have in our happy hearts God-given assurance, sealed over the empty tomb which Joseph of Arimathea carved out of the living rock, that not only our souls but also that our bodies will rise, even as Christ rose, glorious and immortal, victorious over death. Here in the empty tomb is the fountain of Christian hope.

The reason for this is plain. Christ came into the world to restore to us what Adam lost. What did Adam lose for us? There was, first of all, the loss of God’s love which is sin, and then the loss of immortality which is death. Adam left us a heritage of sin and death.

If Our Savior did not conquer death as He conquered sin, then the resurrection is the sign of only a half victory and the work of Christ was only half done. This is so true that the Apostle Paul could cry out: “If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again.”

But Christ is risen. And in His rising we rejoice in our resurrection to come. Death for the unbeliever is the end of all life. Death for the Catholic is the beginning of a better life with God. The unbeliever has mistaken the road to life for life itself. So over his grave they build a broken pillar as a symbol of victory and hope. The cross is the gallant emblem of victory over death. From every grave whereon the shadow of that cross falls there rises the triumphant sellout: “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

As we think over these reasons for our Easter happiness, our thoughts naturally turn to the Mother whom the Church calls, in her litany, the Cause of Our Joy. She alone, of all the lovers of the Crucified, seemed to have remembered the words which He said: “On the third day I will rise again.” So she waits, knowing He will come to her.

She is the Mother of Sorrows. Her eyes have wept themselves dry of tears, but she cannot put from her mind what had happened along the Via Dolorosa and on the barren hill beyond the walls. As she thinks, her fingers lovingly caress the thorns which she took from His brow when they put Him in her arms beneath the Cross. There is blood on the thorns. And there is blood on the nails, blood and parts of His flesh dried to the rust of the cold iron.

But now suddenly the blood warms and disappears. There is a hush over her chamber, the silence of mute expectancy. Then from behind her comes the accents of a voice she could never forget. “I am risen and still with thee.” It is the voice of her risen Son. He comes to His Mother resplendent in light, His face like the sun, His great wounds shining like five jewels in His hands and feet and side. He comes, first, to His Mother. He comes to us, too, today in faith and hope, but later in reality. The joy of Mary will one day be ours. For in the resurrection she is our Mother and He is our Brother.

(Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 4/1950)