Editorial: Thoughts on the Resurrection

Thoughts on the Resurrection

The Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday has been viewed throughout all of Catholic tradition as a pledge of our own rising from the dead.

It is a pledge that is guaranteed by Christ Himself. “I am the resurrection and the life … Whoever lives and believes in Me shall not taste death forever.”

The penalty of death is the lot of all mankind as a result of Adam’s sin. It has not been revoked by Christ, not even through His own rising from the dead. It remains, and will continue to remain, for the whole human race until the very end of time when Christ returns to us in His glory.

By His . . .

But through His rising, Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, has made it certain that we, His members, shall one day join Him in His glorified state and share with Him the eternity of His own risen life. It is for this reason that the Apostle St. Paul wrote. “O grave, where is thy victory; O death, where is thy sting?”

But many of us – perhaps even most of us – do not have quite the depth and strength of the faith of St. Paul.  Few of us can be present at the burial of a relative or friend and not feel the pangs of separation and loss that sweep over our frail human nature. Such faith is ardently to be desired and fervently prayed for; but it comes only as a special gift to the greatest of the Saints.

Why Christ did not revoke the penalty of death for the human race is something He never explained to us. Undoubtedly, in His wisdom and goodness, He sees it as a healthy and sanctifying way for us to enter His kingdom and accept the everlasting life that He promised us. Such questions, though, can only lead to idle speculation, for suffering and death are, in the plan of God, necessary for salvation.

. . . Rising

And we know this from the very life of Our Lord here on earth. There were innumerable ways in which He could have redeemed the human race. There was no compelling reason for Him to become one of us in order to bring about our salvation. Nor was there any absolute need for Him to suffer and die on the Cross. He could have admitted us to Paradise with a wave of His hand or a flicker of His eyelid. He could,
had he chosen to do so, have made life on earth, for Himself and for us, a £garden of Eden for all time.

Beyond Death, there is . . .

The fact is, however, that He chose the Way of the Cross for Himself and made that way the redemptive road to Heaven for the human race. There is no salvation without the Cross, without sickness and suffering and death. But beyond death, there is the glory of the Resurrection.

It is the promise that is consoling. but only in the light of faith, the kind of faith that makes us recall that we are indeed members of thc
Body of which He is the Head; and that as the Head rose on Easter Sunday, so too will the members rise one day to join Him in His Resurrection. This is the kind of faith we find in St. Paul and the Apostles, and the kind of faith that we find to an eminently higher degree in our Blessed Lady.

She is often given the title, “Woman of Faith”. A title she deserves more than anyone else. As the Second Vatican Council put it; “The Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the Cross, where she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of His suffering, associated herself with His sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consented to the immolation of this victim which was born of her …”.

. . . the Glory of the Resurrection

Her faith and trust in Christ never wavered, even when she stood at the foot of the Cross. The coming Resurrection of her Son had not been revealed to her as yet. What she saw was only the horrifying truth of His crucifixion. She endured the “intensity of His suffering” and even “lovingly consented” to His immolation.

It is faith like this that makes her the “Woman of Faith,” a model and exemplar for all of us. It is faith like this that justifies our praying to her in the hope that she will grant us the grace to see the Resurrection of her Son as a pledge and guarantee of our own.

The season of Easter, then, is a good opportunity for all of us to deepen out devotion to the “Woman of Faith,” to ask her help so that we too may say with St. Paul;  “O grave, where is thy victory; O death, where is thy sting?”