The Resurrection: Eyes on Jesus

Excerpts from the gospel reading for the day is one of the most excellent:

That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?”  They stopped, looking downcast.

One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?”

And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”

They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.  But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place.  Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his Body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.  Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.”

And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”  Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.  As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther.

But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”  So he went in to stay with them.  And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.  With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.  Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”  So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the Eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”  Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Luke 24:13-35

In his homily, Monsignor made a couple astounding points.  "[The disciples'] eyes were prevented from recognizing him," Monsignor conjectured, because they were "downcast."  The disciples were not looking for Jesus in those darkest days of human history; they were looking at the ground.  They thought that He was done and that they were abandoned.  We must not focus so much on ourselves and on our own problems that we miss Jesus even while He is there with us, teaching us, and setting our hearts aflame - if only we will look to Him and listen.

 

I would like to point out that the disciples actually recognized Jesus for who He is in "the breaking of the bread," the Eucharist.  Hearing the Word of God explained to them prepared them to receive the Word of God into their fellowship and into their very bodies.  I would also like to point out that the disciples conversed with Jesus, frankly expressing their troubles and their doubts to Him.  That honesty is part of sincere faith for those who have troubles and doubts.

If we bring our even our dashed dreams and deepest despair to Jesus, who knows what he might make of them?  Keep praying.  After you have said your peace, listen in prayer.  Speak with other disciples.  Read the scriptures.  Confess your sins, if needs be.  Visit the Eucharist at church, hear Mass, receive communion.  Don't give up on Jesus, and try not to be downcast, but fix your eyes on Him and look for Him.  He is risen!

(Lastly, here's a link to the Men of Emmaus, a Catholic fellowship for men based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, for those of you who might be looking for fellow disciples and who live in the area.)

The Resurrection: Not Just for Jesus

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:52

An odd but often unconsidered or even unknown teaching of Holy Church is that not just Jesus, but every human being who has ever lived will be resurrected on the Last Day, at the very End of all things.

 

We gloss over it in the Nicene creed every week at Mass:

...We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.  Amen.

 So what does this mean for us as human beings?  It means a few things, right off the top of my head:

1. Heaven will not be just a spiritual place - but will be a material place as well, because material bodies need a material place to be;
2. Our bodies, though very material, will be transformed into something very new, something not seen since Jesus ascended into heaven;
3. St. Paul calls these "spiritual bodies," (1 Cor 15:44) in contrast to "physical bodies," which can be confusing, because a body is physical, but it helps to be aware that physis in Greek does not mean material or corporeal, but rather, natural, so St. Paul almost certainly intended to contrast "spiritual" bodies with merely natural bodies;
4. Our bodies, then, though material, will not be natural, but supernatural or spiritual, as Jesus Christ's was after His resurrection;
5. These bodies, far from constraining, will liberate the soul;
6. We see examples of this liberation in accounts of Jesus' resurrection - how he could eat (Lk 21:41-3) and cook fish (Jn 21:13), and so was definitely material, and yet walk through doors (Jn 20:19), so definitely was not bound by time and space as normal matter is.

Suffice it to say that in the resurrection we shall not be zombies.  We shall be changed (1 Cor 15:52).  We will be the inhabitants of a new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pt 3:13) in which heaven has come down to earth and God will make His dwelling, once and for all, among His people (Rev 21:1-5).
More than being pie in the sky, this knowledge, once firmly ingrained in our hearts, should transform how we do everything.  Merely passing concerns must yield to more eternal ones, practical questions to questions of our standing before God, lower things to the higher.  With this knowledge, we are encouraged to reject sin even if it kills us.  What does death matter when it will be followed by a new sort of life, a life that never dies?  The Maccabees were inspired because their confidence in God's justice convinced them that He must have some means - even after death - of rewarding those who sacrificed their bodies for His sake (2 Mac 7).  Have we, who have heard of a Man actually rising from the dead, who have experienced the power of the resurrection to some extent in our own lives, any excuse for being less brave in the face of life or death?

Easter: Notes on Its Historicity

In honor of Easter, I am going to be posting a series of articles and excepts about the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and on its significance for us.
Here's the first, some brief notes about the historicity and materiality of the resurrection, i.e., that Jesus of Nazareth, truly a man like us all in every way but sin, actually returned to life after having become completely dead.  I'll start with an excerpt from Veselin Kesich's The First Day of the New Creation: The Resurrection and the Christian Faith, an excellent book that I read for class while in seminary.  Parts of it are hard, but most are fairly accessible.

The basic agreement among the evangelists in their accounts of what happened on the first Easter morning is more significant than certain discrepancies in those accounts.  All four evangelists bear witness to the empty tomb, either stating this explicitly or, like St Mark, clearly implying it.  The variations in the accounts actually testify to their authenticity and serve as an important indicator that the story of the empty tomb belongs to the most primitive gospel tradition.  It is highly unlikely that the empty tomb stories could be legendary embellishments of a later period in the life of the Church, for if the Church had fabricated them, we should expect the Christian community to have created a harmonious account.  The Church did not try to harmonize the accounts, but instead faithfully transmitted the traditions that were received, (Kesich, 71).

The question of whether a dead man could really rise from the dead is not a new one.  The Acts of the Apostles describes the rejection of his message of the ressurection of Jesus Christ (Acts 17:32).  Later, St. Paul writes his letters, he adamantly defends the resurrection as an actual, material event in 1 Corinithians, implying that the essential doctrine of Christianity was being called into question then as well.  In fact, St. Paul asserts that the event was not only material and historical, but publicly witnesses as well.  He writes:

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast -- unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

1 Corinthians 15:1-8

In the later New Testament writings, the generic terminology of the "exaltation" of Jesus is replaced with the more specific term "resurrection," also alerting to the likelihood that clarification of the authors' intent was felt to be important (Kesich, 81).

A great volume, monstrously long and detailed, is N. T. Wright's book The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3).  The book is really stupendous, but I warn you: at 740 pages it is the sort of text that most people will want to take a few pages at a time and just be content to let it take a year or two!

Whether a skeptic, ancient or modern, wants to reject the accounts of the resurrection out of hand as impossible within the framework of their materialist conception, there can be in any event no doubt about what the apostles intended.  They believed and taught from the very first day that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

The Empty Tomb and the Power of the Resurrection

The deacon read this gospel passage at the Vigil last night at St. Matthew's Cathedral:

Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Mag'dalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre.  And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.  His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.  And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.  But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you."  So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

Matthew 28:1-8

Here's my thought.  Most of us Christians live in this the morning of the first day.  By that I mean this: we Christians understand, mostly, that Jesus is risen from the dead.  We even understand that we are (supposed to be) somehow united to him in some way.  But we do not really understand what this all means.  It makes us happy, kinda; it makes a little afraid, too.  We are like the women, or Peter and the Beloved Disciple after them, staring into the empty tomb, confused and dazzled by the sunlight on the dawn of this new day in Christ.  Everything is different now.  We as individuals haven't all figured that out.  Some among us have.  Most of us kinda know things are supposed to be different now, but can't quite figure out what it means for our lives.  My hunch is that we, as a whole Church, are somewhere along these lines.  Among us there are some saints, radically transformed by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in everything they do.  There are others, who are bumbling about as if nothing happened, or worse, who have missed the point of God's love and are hanging themselves alongside Judas Iscariot.  Mostly, we are in the middle somewhere.  We are yearning for a new life that we have begun to live but to which we have not quite given ourselves over yet.
Jesus Christ has triumphed over death!  The very worst thing that the powers of this world can do to their victims, their most very potent weapon, has been neutralized.

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?

1 Corinthians 15:55

Jesus Christ is the "first fruits" (1 Cor 15:23) of the resurrection.  We will be the harvest.
The power of God has been fully unleashed in the resurrection of the Son of God.  Now the tide is turned.  Sin obstructs and obscures it, but only like a sandcastle obstructs the ocean: for a few minutes, and then the jig is up.  Death's last blow will have been struck, and it will itself be dealt a death blow:

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53

But what does all this mean for us here and now?  What does the resurrection of Christ mean in the life of a Christian?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:3-5

It is not only at the End, at the Resurrection of the Dead, that we shall be raised, but even here and now!  Here and now if we live in Christ and let Him live in us, we can have His kind of life, a life that bears immense fruit - here and now:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing... By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends...  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.  This I command you, to love one another.

John 15:1-17

How are we to live in Christ and let Him live in us?

Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world."

They said to him, "Lord, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.  But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.  All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.  For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven."  They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, `I have come down from heaven'?"

Jesus answered them, "Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, `And they shall all be taught by God.' Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;  he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever."

John 6:32-58

We need to eat His flesh and drink His blood.  But how can we do that ?

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body."  And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins..."

Matthew 26:26-28

Baptism introduces us into the death and resurrection of Christ so that we can share in His life.  The Eucharist brings us into the fullness of His life.  It brings His life into us.  This mystery is the great source of power of the Christian life.  Never underestimate its power.  By it, tyrants have been humbled, janitors have been made into great heroes, kingdoms of darkness have been made into harbors of peace, and martyrs have smiled at death.  So brothers and sisters in Christ, let us not be afraid or confused by dazzling sunlight of the dawn of this, the First Day of a New Week.  Instead, let us put on Christ, live His kind of life, and show the world a sort of love that transforms life, that is "stronger than death," (Song of Songs 8:6).

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

Another beautiful piece of postmodern poetry by the late e. e. cummings.

The Fulcrum of Reality

Our Lord was raised bodily from the dead, but we must not make the mistake of thinking that he was some sort of zombie. What Jesus underwent was not a mere resuscitation, although resuscitation was involved in a sense. The empty tomb is mentioned in all the gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in St. Paul's writings. It was an important fact, and it cannot be minimized that a real, material body got up and left the tomb. The risen body was the same body that died, but now, at the resurrection, it was transformed into something new, a new kind of body. St. Paul calls this a spiritual body, writing, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body," (1 Cor 15:44). But we must not make the mistake of thinking that our Lord was a ghost of some sort, or that his body wasn't material. The word translated here as physical is psychikon in Greek, which normally refers to a human life, mind, or soul. The word rendered spiritual is pneumatikon in Greek, always refering in the New Testament to supernatural power - the life of God Himself. The sentence might be rendered better as "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a supernatural body." Evidence of this interpretation abounds in the resurrection accounts of the gospels. In John 20:19, we are told that, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." A few verses later, St. John tells us that Jesus appears again and charbroils real fish, and with his hands breaks real bread (John 21:13-14). Ghosts cannot do that.

Jesus' body after the resurrection, we begin to sense, is not less real than our own, but more real, because even his body is no longer merely material. We experience our bodies as limiting factors, especially in childhood and in old age. A little kid reaches up to grab something on a counter that is hopelessly too high, and that the child simply cannot reach. An old person finds that his body doesn't work as fast as his mind does anymore, and that he cannot run or swim as he would like. Even in the flush of virile manhood, some things are simply beyond reach, and one's appetites and bodily urges often overrule, or at least interfere, with one's better intentions. Jesus, on the other hand, after the resurrection no longer experiences limitations on his body. And that makes sense - God did not give us our body to trap us in death, but as a beautiful way of living life. Sin and death intervene and interfere, but in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, sin is vanquished and death is slain: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (1 Cor 15:55). Time and space, dimensions that arise to accomodate our bodies, no longer bind our bodies or dominate them. In the body of Jesus of Nazareth, all that we "know" to be real is set aside, when it comes to "life" and "the way things really are," from unruly urges to hopelessness to death. Jesus of Nazareth changes all of that, and so we recognize Him as the Christ.

But Jesus wants to live with us, and knows we need to live with him, like we live with our family and neighbors and roommates. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me," (Jn 15:4). Now Jesus did not come to be with us just to be with us, or rather them (the Apostles) for a few years and then to split, but to abide with us. Our God is NOT a deadbeat dad. Our God is a loving Father, more loving than any of us has experienced in human flesh. And he's not going anywhere, either. Jesus says to us, "I am with you always, to the close of the age," (Mt 28:20).

But how so. He certainly seems to have split, to have left the building, so to speak. Indeed.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:23-26).

Already in just the decade following that in which our Lord suffered and died, St. Paul is reminding the early Christians in Corinth about the Lord's words. Jesus has left us his presence, not only spiritual, but physical as well, which is fitting, since he made us to be not only spiritual beings, but physical beings as well. We need both sorts of presence from the people that love us, and need to give both sorts to the people that we love. Nothing else will satisfy our whole person.

This explains the meaning of John 6. In that passage, Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes to feed the masses. They want to make him king, because, hey, he can get the economy going again, right? Free food for everyone. You'll never have to work again. "Ugh," Jesus must have thought, and then set out to correct their mistake. He does not want to nourish them with ordinary bread. They can do that themselves. He wants to nourish them with himself. He wants to BE their bread. Think about it, our God loves us so much that he wants not only to be with us, but to be in us, to be united to us in every way - spirit and body. This is the manner in which he wants to abide with us for eternity. But how can that happen?

The resurrection provides the missing key. Because at the resurrection Jesus becomes unbounded from the normal rules of reality, time, space, and all that, Jesus can be anywhere and everywhere, all at once. Jesus can physically be in me, in you, and in the golden box on the altar, and sitting on a throne of glory in a realm we cannot attain by our own strength and senses - all at once. This is weird, and outside of our immediate experience, but it makes sense. Why should we expect the ordinary conditions of time and space to limit the Almighty who made them, or the weaknesses of a human body to cage him in, when even the tomb could not?

At the Eucharist, in the act of praising and loving God, those baptized into his body receive his body, and the new, spiritual sort of body is planted in us anew, and the new sort of life grows stronger and more vibrant in us, bit by bit, hindered only by our own willfulness and sin. Our ability to attain heaven, the life of God in perfect bliss, will not come in this life by the removal of exterior obstacles, but by the removal of the interior obstacles that prevent us from handling them in peace. The spiritual life begun in us by baptism will be awakened as we embrace it and make a concerted effort to learn to live it. On the cross, Jesus defied death to its face, and at the resurrection he overcame it. In the sacraments, Jesus has transmitted to us in bodily form this way of sharing in his bodily resurrection. The resurrection is the fulcrum on which the old "reality" is lifted and overturned, and the new one set in its place.

A New Conception of Humanity

We shouldn't think that any of the graces given to the Blessed Virgin Mary are weird, or out of place, even if they are singular and just for her. Everything that God has done for the Blessed Virgin in a particular way, He wants to do for us in a general way; everything for her in a miraculous way, for us in a progressive, natural way.

The Immaculate Conception is a perfect example of a grace that we shouldn't find odd. He spared her from the curse of Original Sin and all its effects from the moment of her (immaculate) conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. By our baptism he cleanses us of all sin, including original sin, the sin we inherit from our origins, and its effects upon us are loosened for now, and eventually, at the resurrection, obliterated entirely. Mary was granted the particular grace of the Immaculate Conception so that she would be a fitting mother to bear God into the world. We are baptized so to receive God when He comes to us, and by virtue of our baptism, are able to bear Him to others in the world. God gave Mary the grace never to go near death. He gives us daily the grace to walk away from it.

Because of her Immaculate Conception she never needed, nor ever did, taste death. She was a living challenge to sin and death, just by her manner of living and being. As the culmination to a sinless life, she was brought bodily into the realms of light before death yet scarred her. We who, unlike the Virgin of Virgins, are born into the sinfulness of the human family, taste death in our daily life - anger, hatred, mockery, violence, malice, sickness, suffering, warfare - and will finally taste death in its fullness; but not in its finality. By living a life structured by the sacraments and soaked in the Sacred Scriptures, in unity with our Christian brethren, and in as nearly constant prayerful union as we can manage, we ourselves will push back the domain of sin wherever we go, undoing hatred, suffering, and even death. Since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a hope that the world just doesn't get, doesn't understand - the hope of resurrection for ourselves. Because of this great hope, we can even freely embrace life's sufferings and so will not be cowed by them into sinning. Death, which does us in, is undone by Christ. This process begins for each human in baptism; it begins for humanity in the Immaculate Conception.

Don't forget that today is a Holy Day of Obligation. Yes, you just went to Mass yesterday. Sweet! We all get to go again, and praise and worship God at the Sacrifice of His Son, today for the great gift He has given us in His Mother.

Whither, the Christian Paradox

This past Sunday's readings (V Sunday of Eastertide; Act 6:1-7; Ps 33; 1 Pt 2:4-9; Jn 14:1-12) present a few interesting themes that could be discussed for some time. I am not here going to discuss them, but rather a little point buried in the St. John's gospel reading for the day.

After Jesus says, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way."

I think St. Thomas must have had a special place in our Lord's heart because of the special invitation our Lord extended to him alone, to put his hands into those Sacred Wounds. St. Thomas is accused of skepticism, but I think that isn't the case. I think that he is simply very practical. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, or an architect of sorts perhaps, like our Lord himself. Carpenters and architects DON'T DO the impossible, because when they try, houses fall down on people's heads. Yet St. Thomas was willing to believe - he just needed a little convincing. That's sound. Here we see something of the same cautiousness:

"Master," Thomas asks, "We do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"

Very sensible question, St. Thomas. Very sensible indeed. You see, generally speaking, before we can plot out a course, we need to know our destination. That's common sense. The goal, though it comes after the process, must in a certain sense - in our mind - come before it. Here, St. Thomas merely points that out. Now, the Apostles did not yet understand exactly how Jesus of Nazareth, their rabbi who made increasingly grand claims about himself, fit into God's ongoing plan for the Jewish people and for the world. We have the vantage point of the Resurrection and Pentecost. They didn't.

Even for us now, though, St. Thomas' concern should resonate if we are paying attention. We know that the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, the New Heavens and New Earth are to be our true and final home, but what that entails, exactly, who can say? St. Paul reminds us in 1 Cor 2:9, "But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,nor the heart of man conceived,what God has prepared for those who love him."

Whither is an archaic English word that means "to where," or "to what point/purpose," and it is the Christian paradox. The whole rest of the world thinks they know what they are working for, whither they work: a big house, peace and quiet, "true love," a fancy vacation, or what have you. They spend a great deal of time planning and scrambling trying to attain the goal they think clear. When one way doesn't work, they try another way. When one career doesn't do it, they try another; when careers don't seem likely, they try the lottery. When one relationship breaks down, they try another; when relationships seem unlike, perhaps they try a shrink or medication. In reality they do not understand that what they truly seek, the answer to all their heart's longing, is Jesus Christ.

We Christians, on the other hand, don't really know what we are working toward, but in a different way. Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of His Father is our goal, the new life we seek, but what exactly that new life will look like, we cannot even really imagine because it is, in one sense, so fundamentally different than anything we've ever experienced. We know, but not really, whither we go.

But we do know the exact way to get there, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" Union with Christ in our Father's House is our goal, the new life we seek, whatever it will be. Jesus Christ is the way to get there, and he is the truth, the reality check about where we are actually at. The Second Vatican Council teaches us this: "Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear," (Gaudium et Spes, #22). It is not quite like being given a map, but rather instructions about what-to-do-if. "If any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," (Mt 5:39) and the list goes on throughout the Gospel. It is like giving an explorer or pilgrim instructions rather than a map: "If you come to moutains, use your rope to climb over them; if you come to a river, use your rope to ford it. Eventually you will get to where you are supposed to be, wherever that is." Only our instructions more or less boil down to this:

"And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?" (Mt 6:28-30). As we explore on this pilgrimage, we must ask our Father for humility so that we can continue to trust Him through whatever hair-raising adventures our continued conversion requires.

You might say, loosely, that our instructions are, "If you are tempted by sin, trust in your Heavenly Father. If you are worried about taking care of your children, trust in your Heavenly Father. If people hate you, trust in your Heavenly Father. If you get to thinking that you have to do something bad to get by, or to get ahead, trust in your Heavenly Father."

So we Christians know exactly how we are to go. It is whither that we know only dimly. On that deepest level, we Christians are working for the same goal as all the world, for an eternal happiness, for the joy and love that never end. But woe to us if our goals don't look different than the worldlings' on another level. We might just end up going where many of them may if we don't show them a better way to get to our true and final home. St. Thomas, supposedly faithless and doubting, went all the way to India to show people the way to their unknown destination. So much for "faithless" and "doubting." And he did it without a map.

The Real Scandal

Christ is risen, alleluia!

The real scandal of Christianity, it's real shocker, isn't that Jesus died on a cross. Please don't understand me here to mean that Paul was mistaken to call the cross a scandal. Not at all. It's just that the Romans crucified people all the time. That's no secret, nor is it a shock.

The real scandal is that God loves us that much. The idea that the Force behind the Universe is really a Being - that much can be accepted by almost all. That the Being behind the Universe is really a Person - that too, can be accepted by almost all. That the Person loves us, so much that He entered into our pitiful condition - that is something many of us, even practicing Christians, don't really buy very easily. And even if we buy it, we usually brush over it. We think we "get it," when we've only just begun to fathom what that means.

The Resurrection of our Blessed Lord, which we celebrate this Easter Week, is a direct consequence of God's immense love. In the words of the Song of Songs, "Love is strong as death," (Sng 8:6). The same Love that brought the Son of God to take on human flesh led the Son of God to die for the sake of that human flesh. The same Love that brought the Son of God to die for the sake of that human flesh overpowered death in all of its manifestations and implications (disease, suffering, hatred, etc.) and conquered the grave. That Love restored the Son to His Father, and bound to Him in that Love we now have the hope of being restored to the Father as well. Christ is risen, alleluia!

We need to be clear what is meant by "Resurrection" because there has been renewed confusion about it in recent years. Four major points need to be laid out that come to us from the Scriptures and the Gospel Tradition.

1. The resurrection is historical.
2. The resurrection is witnessed.
3. The resurrection is bodily.
4. The resurrection is supernatural.

The articles that follow over the next few days will address these points, each in turn. In doing so, the articles will lay out a brief apologetic regarding each point. Finally, the last article will be devoted to drawing out some basic implications of the Resurrection of Jesus. In the meantime, rejoice, for Christ is truly risen, alleluia!