The resurrection of our Blessed Lord from the grave has been regarded as the central mystery of the Catholic faith. Certainly from apostolic times it has been held to be the pivot round which revolved and on which depended the arguments of Christian theology. For while the death of Christ might be taken to imply that He was in no way different from other men, His triumph over death could have no other meaning than the significant challenge of His claim to unique divinity. To die in defence of one's belief is evidence, indeed, of sincerity, but it cannot demonstrate the authenticity of that conviction, since men have died for contradictory beliefs. That Christ was sincere cannot be denied; the conclusion that He was therefore divine is also itself paradoxically logical; for one who sincerely believes Himself to be God and dies to prove it, must either be hopelessly insane or really divine. But the final touch is given to the argument, and all the proof rendered irresistible when to it is added the reappearance of the dead Christ, clothed and habited in a human body. The argument may be put thus: Our Lord claimed to be God, died to attest the sincerity of His claim, was raised up by His own divine power to life again in testimony of the truth of His doctrine. The author of life and death has therefore added His own witness to the witness of Christ. God has sealed by His power the declaration of His Son. If Christ were not God, God Himself would have been a party to the deceit.
Saint Paul is so persuaded of the efficacy of this retort that he seems to be content to base the whole argument of Christianity upon it; for he says expressly that if it be not a fact that Christ has risen for the dead, then is our faith vain. For him it is no question of spiritual experience of a risen master, but he is convinced of the bodily life of the man Christ. He proceeds, in fact, in the epistle to the Corinthians to arrange with scientific procedure those who had been witnesses of the fact of Christ's reappearance. He puts them in some sort of chronological order. The only two whom he mentions by name, Peter and James, are the very two of whom he tells us in another place that he had personal relations with in Jerusalem, Nor was there evidently any expectation in the minds of those who saw Him buried that Christ would break through the portals of the tomb. Looking back they might remember the hints He had made about a three days sojourn in the grave; but the holy women set out on the first Easter morning to anoint a body that was presumably dead, and thus preserve it from ensuing corruption. The account, too, of the disciples who were on their way to Emmaus when our Lord Himself met them, points in the same direction. They were actually going away from Jerusalem, though they had heard the report of the women that an angel had told them of the resurrection of the Master, so unprepared were they for any vision of Him. Even when the rest had seen Him, Saint Thomas could continue to doubt, confident in the unexpectedness of the event. The resurrection, then, is to be accounted a fact, not of hysteria, but of history.
For me, therefore, the historic side of the mystery must never become obscure. Undoubtedly there is a mystical meaning that lies hid within the truth. The new birth, the rising sap of spring, the feeling of hope that the very season of the year brings with it, are all contained in the notion of Easter and its festive interpretation. But beneath all that, and giving it the value which it bears for me in life, is the underlying occurrence which was witnessed to by so many: "He rose again according to the Scriptures." No hallucination will account for it, for they felt His hands and feet, and put their fingers into the print of the nails and into the open wound of the spear. By the lake-side He ate with them. In the room He appeared when not expected, was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once. This shows no sense of visionary excitement, but a fact vouched for by as good evidence as any other fact in history. On this fact our faith rests, in the sense that it testifies to the Divinity of Christ. As such the Jews demanded it, the Pharisees understood it and prepared for it, our Lord promised it; and to it the apostles confidently appealed. For me, then, it is the earnest of my own resurrection. It tells me that as He triumphed over death, so must I triumph. It bids me look forward to the new life, not back to the wasted and fallen years. It comes, indeed, as the basis of faith, but also as pointing the lesson of hopefulness, for the actions of Christ are not merely the examples that I must strive to copy, but they are still more importantly the very power by which I get grace to overcome and to attain my final reward.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.