Empty tomb (Luke 24:1–10)
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| William Bouguereau - The Three Marys at the Tomb. He is not here. He has risen (1876) |
1 But at daybreak on the first day of the week they took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb;
3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.
5 They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, "Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
6 He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee,
7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day."
8 And they remembered his words.
9 Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others.
10
The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James;
the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles,
All
the accounts agree that it was early morning. Matthew 28:1 and Mark
16:2 refer to the dawn or early morning, while John 20:1 notes that it
was still dark when they started their journey.
The
four canonical gospels all agree that "Mary" visited Jesus' tomb, though
they differ on which Mary and whether she was on her own. The gospel
according to Luke relates that the women who had come with Jesus from
Galilee followed Joseph of Arimathea and "saw the tomb and how his body
was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes.
But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
All
four canonical gospels report the incident with slight variations.
Jesus' body was laid out in the tomb after crucifixion and death. All
the gospels report that women were the first to discover the
Resurrection of Jesus. The first hint that something had happened was
the rolled-away stone. This stone, as was typical of ancient tombs, had
covered the entrance. They found the tomb to be empty, the body gone,
and a young man or angel(s) within the tomb tells the women that Jesus
has risen.
According to Luke, Jesus had been wrapped
in a shroud, and this became the traditional view. What became of the
grave clothes after the disciples have seen them is not described in the
Bible, though some works of the New Testament apocrypha do make mention
of it.
A Roman Catholic tradition describes the shroud as being taken
to Turin, becoming the Turin Shroud. John gospel additionally describes
the presence of a soudarion, for the head, that was set apart. A
soudarion is literally a sweat rag; more specifically it was a piece of
cloth used to wipe away sweat, but in the context of dead bodies, most
scholars believe it was used to keep the jaw closed.
Tradition holds
that the Sudarion was a turban, and that it later found its way to
Oviedo in Spain, becoming the Sudarium of Oviedo.
[
Jesus’ Death as Reconciliation (Atonement) and Salvation, comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
The
early Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, slowly penetrated
more deeply into the truth of the Cross, in order to grasp at least
remotely why and for what purpose it happened. One thing was
astonishingly clear from the outset: with the Cross of Christ, the old
Temple sacrifices were definitively surpassed. Something new had
happened.
The expectations expressed in the Prophets’ critique of
Temple worship, and particularly in the Psalms, were now fulfilled: God
did not want to be glorified through the sacrifices of bulls and goats,
whose blood is powerless to purify and make atonement for men. The
long-awaited but as yet undefined new worship had become a reality. In
the Cross of Jesus, what the animal sacrifices had sought in vain to
achieve actually occurred: atonement was made for the world. The “Lamb
of God” took upon himself the sins of the world and wiped them away.
God’s relationship to the world, formerly distorted by sin, was now
renewed. Reconciliation had been accomplished.
Paul provides a
synthesis of the Christ-event, the new message of Jesus Christ, in these
words: “
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not
counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message
of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ,God making his
appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”
(2 Cor 5:19-20). It is principally in Saint Paul’s letters that we read
of the sharp disagreements in the early Church over the question of the
continuing validity of the Mosaic Law for Christians. This makes it all
the more remarkable, then, that on one matter—as we have seen—there was
agreement from the outset: the Temple sacrifices, the cultic heart of
the Torah, were a thing of the past. Christ had taken their place. The
Temple remained a venerable place of prayer and proclamation. Its
sacrifices, though, were no longer relevant for Christians.
In
Jesus’ Passion, all the filth of the world touches the infinitely pure
one, the soul of Jesus Christ and, hence, the Son of God himself. While
it is usually the case that anything unclean touching something clean
renders it unclean, here it is the other way around: when the world,
with all the injustice and cruelty that make it unclean, comes into
contact with the infinitely pure one—then he, the pure one, is the
stronger. Through this contact, the filth of the world is truly
absorbed, wiped out, and transformed in the pain of infinite love.
Because infinite good is now at hand in the man Jesus, the counterweight
to all wickedness is present and active within world history, and the
good is always infinitely greater than the vast mass of evil, however
terrible it may be.
If we reflect more deeply on this insight, we
find the answer to an objection that is often raised against the idea
of atonement. Again and again people say: It must be a cruel God who
demands infinite atonement. Is this not a notion unworthy of God? Must
we not give up the idea of atonement in order to maintain the purity of
our image of God? In the use of the term “hilasterion” with reference to
Jesus, it becomes evident that the real forgiveness accomplished on the
Cross functions in exactly the opposite direction. The reality of evil
and injustice that disfigures the world and at the same time distorts
the image of God—this reality exists, through our sin. It cannot simply
be ignored; it must be addressed. But here it is not a case of a cruel
God demanding the infinite. It is exactly the opposite:
God himself
becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes
the suffering upon himself. God himself grants his infinite purity to
the world. God himself “drinks the cup” of every horror to the dregs and
thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which,
through suffering, transforms the darkness.
As it happens, these
very ideas are explored in Saint John’s Gospel (especially through the
theology of the high-priestly prayer) and in the Letter to the Hebrews. According
to rabbinic theology, the idea of the covenant—the idea of establishing
a holy people to be an interlocutor for God in union with him—is prior
to the idea of the creation of the world and supplies its inner motive.
The cosmos was created, not that there might be manifold things in
heaven and earth, but that there might be a space for the “covenant”,
for the loving “yes” between God and his human respondent. Each year the
Feast of Atonement restores this harmony, this inner meaning of the
world that is constantly disrupted by sin, and it therefore marks the
high point of the liturgical year.
One of the principal liturgical feasts of Israel, held annually on the
tenth day of the seventh month (Lev 16:1-34) is the Day of Atonement,
known today in Hebrew as Yom Kippur. In ancient Israel, its purpose was
twofold: to cleanse the sanctuary from ritual impurity and to atone for
the sins of the priests and people accumulated throughout the preceding
year. The latter is linked with the rite of the scapegoat, by which the
sins of Israel were “offloaded” onto a goat that symbolically bore them
away into the wilderness (Lev 16:20-22). Christians see in Jesus’ death
the accomplishment for mankind of what the Day of Atonement represents. The ritual of the Feast of
Atonement is described in Leviticus 16 and 23:26-32. On this day, the
high priest is required, through the appropriate sacrifice (two male
goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering, a young
animal: cf. 16:5-6.), to make atonement, first for himself, then for
“his house”, in other words, for the priestly clan of Israel in general,
and finally for the whole community of Israel (cf. 16:17). “
Thus he
shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleannesses of
the sons of Israel, and because of their transgressions, all their
sins; and so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which abides with them
in the midst of their uncleannesses” (16:16).
The object of the
Day of Atonement is to restore to Israel, after the misdeeds of the
previous year, its character as a “holy people”, to lead it back once
more to its designated position as God’s people in the midst of the
world.
In the theology of the high-priestly prayer (Jn 17:1-26)
in John’s Gospel, just as the high priest makes atonement for himself,
for the priestly clan, and for the whole community of Israel, so
Jesus
prays for himself, for the Apostles, and finally for all who will come
to believe in him through their word—for the Church of all times (cf. Jn
17:20).
1 When Jesus had said this, he raised his
eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your
son, so that your son may glorify you,
2 just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him.
3 Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
4 I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
5 Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
6
"I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They
belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
7 Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
8
because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they
accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have
believed that you sent me.
9 I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours,
10 and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them.
11
And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world,
while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you
have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.
12 When I was
with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded
them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order
that the scripture might be fulfilled.
13 But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.
14 I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.
16 They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
17 Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
18 As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
19 And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.
20 "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
21
so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent
me.
22 And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,
23
I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even
as you loved me.
24 Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that
where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you
gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
25 Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
26
I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love
with which you loved me may be in them and I in them."
The
structure of the ritual described in Leviticus 16 is reproduced exactly
in Jesus’ prayer: He sanctifies “himself”, and he obtains the
sanctification of those who are his. In verse 3, he described "This is
eternal life". “Eternal life” is not—as the modern reader might
immediately assume—life after death, in contrast to this present life,
which is transient and not eternal. “Eternal life” is life itself, real
life, which can also be lived in the present age and is no longer
challenged by physical death.
This is the point: to seize “life” here
and now, real life that can no longer be destroyed by anything or
anyone. “
Because I live, you will live also”, says Jesus to his
disciples at the Last Supper (Jn 14:19), and he thereby reveals once
again that a distinguishing feature of the disciple of Jesus is the fact
that he “lives”: beyond the mere fact of existing, he has found and
embraced the real life that everyone is seeking. “Eternal life” is
gained through “recognition”, presupposing here the Old Testament
concept of recognition: recognizing creates communion; it is union of
being with the one recognized. But of course the key to life is not any
kind of recognition, but to “
know you the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom you have sent” (17:3). This is a kind of summary creedal
formula expressing the essential content of the decision to be a
Christian—the recognition granted to us by faith. The Christian does not
believe in a multiplicity of things. Ultimately he believes, quite
simply, in God: he believes that there is only one true God.
“Eternal
life” is thus a relational event. Man did not acquire it from himself
or for himself alone. Through relationship with the one who is himself
life, man too comes alive. Man has found life when he adheres to him
who is himself Life. Then much that pertains to him can be destroyed.
Death may remove him from the biosphere, but the life that reaches
beyond it—real life—remains.
This life, which John calls zoe as opposed
to bios, is man’s goal. The relationship to God in Jesus Christ is the
source of a life that no death can take away.
His Cross and his
exaltation is the Day of Atonement for the world, in which the whole of
world history—in the face of all human sin and its destructive
consequences—finds its meaning and is aligned with its true purpose and
destiny.
In this sense, the theology of John 17 corresponds
exactly to the ideas that are worked out in detail in the Letter to the
Hebrews. The interpretation put forward there of Old Testament worship
in the light of Jesus Christ is what lies at the heart of the prayer of
John 17. But Saint Paul’s theology also converges on this center, as we
see from his dramatic plea in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “
We
beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (5:20).
Jesus’
high-priestly prayer is the consummation of the Day of Atonement, the
eternally accessible feast, as it were, of God’s reconciliation with
men.
In the words addressed by Jesus to the Father, the ritual of
the Day of Atonement is transformed into prayer. Here we find a
concrete example of that cultic renewal toward which the cleansing of
the Temple and Jesus’ interpretation of it were pointing. Sacrificial
animals are a thing of the past. In their place are what the Greek
Fathers called thysÃa logike—spiritual sacrifices [literally: sacrifices
after the manner of the word]—and what Paul described in similar terms
as logike latreÃa, that is, worship shaped by the word, structured on
reason (Rom 12:1).
With the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus
transforms his cruel death into “word”, into the radical expression of
his love, his self-giving to the point of death. So he himself becomes
the “Temple”. Insofar as the high-priestly prayer forms the consummation
of Jesus’ self-gift, it represents the new worship and has a deep inner
connection with the Eucharist: when we consider the institution of the
Eucharist, we shall return to this.
From the great riches
contained in the Letter to the Hebrews I would like to propose just one
fundamental text for our reflection, Hebrews 10:1-7.
1
Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the
very image of them, it can never make perfect those who come to worship
by the same sacrifices that they offer continually each year.
2
Otherwise, would not the sacrifices have ceased to be offered, since the
worshipers, once cleansed, would no longer have had any consciousness
of sins?
3 But in those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins,
4 for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins.
5
For this reason, when he came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and
offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;
6 holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in.
7 Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'"
The
author describes Old Testament worship as a “shadow” (10:1) and gives
this as his reason: “It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats
should take away sins” (10:4).
He then quotes Psalm 40:6-8 and
interprets these psalm verses as a dialogue between the Son and the
Father in which the Incarnation is accomplished and at the same time the
new worship of God is established: “
Sacrifices and offerings you have
not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and
sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have
come to do your will, O God,’ as it is written of me in the roll of the
book” (Heb 10:5-7; cf. Ps 40:6-8).
In this brief psalm quotation,
there is an important modification of the original text, which
represents the conclusion of a threefold development in the theology of
worship. Whereas in the Letter to the Hebrews we read; “a body have you
prepared for me”, the psalmist had said: “but you have given me an open
ear.” Obedience had already replaced the Temple sacrifices here: living
within and on the basis of God’s word had been recognized as the right
way to worship God. In this respect, the psalm was reflecting a strand
of Greek thought from the period immediately prior to the birth of
Christ: the Greek world also sensed more and more acutely the inadequacy
of animal sacrifices, which God does not require and in which man does
not give God what he might expect from man.
The version given in
the Letter to the Hebrews of these verses from Psalm 40 contains the
answer to this longing: the longing that God will one day be given what
we cannot give him, and yet that it should still be our gift, is now
fulfilled. The psalmist had prayed: “
Sacrifice and offering you do not
desire; but you have given me an open ear.” The true Logos, the Son,
says to the Father:
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a
body have you prepared for me.” The Logos himself, the Son, becomes
flesh; he takes on a human body. In this way a new obedience becomes
possible, an obedience that surpasses all human fulfillment of the
commandments. The Son becomes man and in his body bears the whole of
humanity back to God. Only the incarnate Word, whose love is fulfilled
on the Cross, is perfect obedience. In him not only does the critique of
the Temple sacrifices become definitive, but whatever longing still
remains is also fulfilled: his incarnate obedience is the new sacrifice,
and in this obedience he draws us all with him and at the same time
wipes away all our disobedience through his love.
To put it yet
another way: our own morality is insufficient for the proper worship of
God. This Saint Paul stated quite emphatically in the dispute over
justification. Yet the Son, the Incarnate One, bears us all within
himself, and in this way he gives what we ourselves would not be able to
give.
Central to the Christian life, then, are both the sacrament of
Baptism, by which we are taken up into Christ’s obedience, and also the
Eucharist, in which the Lord’s obedience on the Cross embraces us all,
purifies us, and draws us into the perfect worship offered by Jesus
Christ.
In all that we have said so far, it is clear that not
only has a theological interpretation of the Cross been given, together
with an interpretation, based on the Cross, of the fundamental Christian
sacraments and Christian worship, but also that the existential
dimension is involved: What does this mean for me? What does it mean for
my path as a human being? The incarnate obedience of Christ is
presented as an open space into which we are admitted and through which
our own lives find a new context. The mystery of the Cross does not
simply confront us; rather, it draws us in and gives a new value to our
life.
This existential aspect of the new concept of worship and
sacrifice appears with particular clarity in the twelfth chapter of the
Letter to the Romans: “
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [word-like] worship” (v. 1).
Entering
into the mystery of the Cross must constitute the heart of the
apostolic ministry, the heart of the proclamation of the Gospel designed
to lead people to faith. If on this basis we may identify the central
focus of Christian worship as the celebration of the Eucharist, the
constantly renewed participation in the priestly mystery of Jesus
Christ, at the same time the full scope of that worship must always be
kept in mind: it is always a matter of drawing every individual person,
indeed, the whole of the world, into Christ’s love in such a way that
everyone together with him becomes an offering that is “
acceptable,
sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:16).
]
Peter found the empty tomb as well (Luke 24:11-12)
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| Carl Heinrich Bloch - The Resurrection (1873) |
11 but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.
12
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial
cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.
[In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene alone finds Jesus at the empty tomb, and he
tells her not to touch him because he has not yet ascended to the
Father:
11 But Mary (Magdalene) stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
12 and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been.
13
And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them,
"They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him."
14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.
15
Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking
for?" She thought it was the gardener and said to him, "Sir, if you
carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him."
16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni," which means Teacher.
17 Jesus said to her, "Stop holding on to me ("Noli me tangere"),
for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and
tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.'"
St. John Chrysostom wrote:
It seems to me that she wished to enjoy His presence still, in the same way as before, and because of her joy at seeing Him, had no realization of His greatness, even though He had become much more excellent in bodily appearance. Thus, to lead her to abandon this notion and to refrain from addressing Him too familiarly, . . . He elevated her thoughts so that she would treat Him with a more reverential attitude. Accordingly, if He had said: “
Do not touch me as you did before, because things are not the same now, and I will not associate with you in [the] future in the same way as before,” it would seem somewhat harsh and boastful. But when he said: “
I have not yet ascended to my Father,” even though the words were without offense, they meant the same thing.
commentary by
Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
The risen Jesus opens her eyes to the reality of his resurrection when he speaks her name, Mary! Jesus pronounces Mary’s name just as the good shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (10:3). As the sheep respond to the shepherd, Mary, a faithful disciple, recognizes his voice (see 10:4), and addresses him as Rabbouni, “my Teacher and master” Mary now believes that Jesus is no longer dead but truly alive. Her sadness has become joy (16:20). However, Mary thinks her relationship with Jesus is the just same as it was before he died, for she addresses him with the title “Rabbi” or “Teacher” (1:38, 49; 3:2).
But the resurrection of Jesus has changed absolutely everything, including the relationship between him and his followers. The disciples, such as Mary, can relate to him no longer as an earthly teacher but as the risen Lord. Jesus’ order, Stop holding on to me, is meant in a figurative sense: Mary can no longer hold on to her past notions of discipleship.
His explanation, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, speaks of this new state of affairs. The exaltation of the risen Jesus at the Father’s right hand, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, completes the Father’s saving work. It marks the entrance of Jesus’ glorified humanity into God’s own life and thus gives humanity access to communion with the Father, the purpose for which Jesus came. Jesus precedes his disciples to glorified life with the Father, opens the way to the Father, and enables them to follow (13:36).
The risen Jesus now gives Mary a mission, and his instructions have great theological depth: Go to my brothers and tell them, “
I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Jesus’ death and resurrection has radically changed the relationship between human beings and God. By completing the Father’s saving work, Jesus gives his disciples a share in his own relationship with the Father—his sonship—by making them God’s children (1:12-13). For the first time, Jesus speaks of the disciples as “brothers” because, on account of Jesus’ saving act of love, they now share the same Father (see Rom 8:14-17). The risen Jesus has opened the way to eternal communion with God.
Mary fulfills her role as “apostle to the apostles” by declaring, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her. John expresses Mary’s proclamation of faith in the perfect tense to indicate her complete transformation to mature faith in the risen Jesus. Mary has progressed from being “in the dark,” fixated on the reality of Jesus’ death, to belief that Jesus has been raised. And the risen Jesus has brought her to a higher level of relationship, for his disciples can relate to him no longer only as teacher but also as the Lord himself, who is simultaneously their “brother.”
Mary gives a saintly example of the intense love that must animate every disciple’s search for the Lord. She seeks Jesus with the intensity of the beloved in the Song of Songs: “
I sought him / whom my heart loves— / I sought him but I did not find him” (3:1). When the risen Jesus reveals himself to Mary, she “
held him and would not let him go” (Song 3:4). But Mary had to let go of the past and allow the risen Jesus to transform her life. Having encountered the risen Lord, she was given a mission to bear witness to the reality of his resurrection: “
I have seen the Lord”
]
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and
another Mary at his empty tomb.
comments by Dr.
Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Every Sunday, Catholics and many other Christians profess our faith in "the resurrection of the body" as we recite the creed. Yet how many are fully aware of this truth and all that it implies? Paul, whose teaching on this topic was rooted in his own encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, explains that our resurrected bodies will be radiant with divine glory (see Rom 8:18-23; 1 Cor 15:42-44). No longer will there be any sickness, pain, or disability. John affirms that we shall be like God, "for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We will share in the very life of God, the eternal exchange of love within the Holy Trinity (see 2 Pet 1:4).
comments by Pope
Benedict XVI (JN):
Jesus traveled the path of death right to the bitter and seemingly hopeless end in the tomb. Jesus’ tomb was evidently known. And here the question naturally arises: Did he remain in the tomb? Or was it empty after he had risen?
In modern theology this question has been extensively debated. Most commentators come to the conclusion that an empty tomb would not be enough to prove the Resurrection. If the tomb were indeed empty, there could be some other explanation for it. On this basis, the commentators conclude that the question of the empty tomb is immaterial and can therefore be ignored, which tends also to mean that it probably was not empty anyway, so at least a dispute with modern science over the possibility of bodily resurrection can be avoided. But at the basis of all this lies a distorted way of posing the question.
Naturally, the empty tomb as such does not prove the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene, in John’s account, found it empty and assumed that someone must have taken Jesus’ body away. The empty tomb is no proof of the Resurrection, that much is undeniable. Conversely, though, one might ask: Is the Resurrection compatible with the body remaining in the tomb? Can Jesus be risen if he is still lying in the tomb? What kind of resurrection would that be? Today, notions of resurrection have been developed for which the fate of the corpse is of no consequence. Yet the content of the Resurrection becomes so vague in the process that one must ask with what kind of reality we are dealing in this form of Christianity.
Be that as it may: Thomas Söding, Ulrich Wilckens, and others rightly point out that in Jerusalem at the time, the proclamation of the Resurrection would have been completely impossible if anyone had been able to point to a body lying in the tomb. To this extent, for the sake of posing the question correctly, we have to say that the empty tomb as such, while it cannot prove the Resurrection, is nevertheless a necessary condition for Resurrection faith, which was specifically concerned with the body and, consequently, with the whole of the person.
If in the early creedal formula from Jerusalem, transmitted by Saint Paul, it is stated that Jesus rose according to the Scriptures, then surely Psalm 16 must have been seen as key scriptural evidence for the early Church:
“.
. . my flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life” (Acts 2:26-28).
Here they found a clear statement that Christ, the definitive David, will not see corruption—that he must truly have risen.
“Not to see corruption”: this is virtually a definition of resurrection. Only with corruption was death regarded as definitive. Once the body had decomposed, once it had broken down into its elements—marking man’s dissolution and return to dust—then death had conquered. From now on this man no longer exists as a man—only a shadow may remain in the underworld. From this point of view, it was fundamental for the early Church that Jesus’ body did not decompose. Only then could it be maintained that he did not remain in death, that in him life truly conquered death.
What the early Church deduced from the Septuagint version of Psalm 16:10 also determined the viewpoint of the entire patristic period. Resurrection essentially implies that Jesus’ body was not subject to corruption. In this sense, the empty tomb is a strongly scriptural element of the Resurrection proclamation. Theological speculations arguing that Jesus’ decomposition and Resurrection could be mutually compatible belong to modern thinking and stand in clear contradiction of the biblical vision. On this basis, too, we have further confirmation that a Resurrection proclamation would have been impossible if Jesus’ body had been lying in the grave.
Resurrection appearance of Jesus to two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32)
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| Carl Heinrich Bloch - Supper at Emmaus (1870) |
13 Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus,
14 and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred.
15 And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them,
16 but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
17 He asked them, "What are you discussing as you walk along?" They stopped, looking downcast.
18
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?"
19 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,
20 how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.
21
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.
22 Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning
23
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.
24 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."
25 And he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"
27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther.
29 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.
30 And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.
31 With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.
32
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?"
In
the Gospel of Luke, Jesus appears to the disciples and eats with them,
demonstrating that he is flesh and bones, not a ghost. He tells them to
wait in Jerusalem for the start of their mission to the world.
The Emmaus pattern of opening the Scriptures followed by the breaking of
the bread is repeated in every Mass, with the Liturgy of the Word
leading to the Liturgy of the Eucharist (Catechism 1346-47). Pope
Benedict XVI explains:
"
Luke’s account of the disciples on the
way to Emmaus enables us to reflect further on this link between the
hearing of the word and the breaking of the bread. . . . The presence of
Jesus, first with his words and then with the act of breaking bread,
made it possible for the disciples to recognize him. . . . From these
accounts it is clear that Scripture itself points us towards an
appreciation of its own unbreakable bond with the Eucharist. . . . Word
and Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one
without the other: the word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the
event of the Eucharist. The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of
Scripture, just as Scripture for its part illumines and explains the
mystery of the Eucharist".
commentary by
Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
Whereas previously “
their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” (24:16), now their eyes were opened. This exact expression (of three consecutive words in Greek) occurs elsewhere in Scripture only in the account of the fall in Genesis, which similarly occurs during a meal involving taking and giving and results in the recognition of a hidden reality: “
The eyes of the two were opened, and they knew . . . ” (Gen 3:7 NETS) St. Leo the Great comments that “
the eyes of these men were opened far more happily when the glorification of their own nature was revealed to them, than the eyes of those first parents of our race on whom the confusion of their own transgression was inflicted.” Through this allusion, Jesus is presented once again as the new Adam (see Luke 3:38; 4:1-13; 22:44; 23:43) who here gives the food that brings not death but life. “
This meal at Emmaus is the first meal of the new creation.”
Then the two report their own encounter with Jesus and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. The phrase “
breaking of bread” is shorthand for the four actions occurring at the feeding of the five thousand, the Last Supper, and Emmaus—he took bread, blessed or gave thanks, broke, and gave. In Acts, Luke uses this phrase to refer to the celebration of the Eucharist (Acts 2:42; 20:7, n). Jesus continues to make himself known to his disciples in the Eucharist, where they can recognize him. As St. Augustine says: “
Where did the Lord wish to be recognized? In the breaking of bread. ... It was for our sakes that he didn’t want to be recognized . . . because we weren’t going to see him in the flesh, and yet we were going to eat his flesh. So if you’re a believer . . . you may take comfort in the breaking of bread. The Lord’s absence is not an absence. Have faith, and the one you cannot see is with you.”
Their response is one of joy (John 20:20), yet in a sense they are still incredulous (literally, “
disbelieving” [NRSV]). It all seems too good to believe! Clearly, belief in Jesus’ risen body was not something contrived and then spread among a group of gullible individuals. However, their doubts help the faith of future generations of Christians, as St. Augustine says: “
It was incredible, and they had to be persuaded of the truth of it, not only by their eyes but by their hands too, so that through the bodily senses faith might come down into the heart, and faith coming down into the heart might be preached throughout the world, to people who neither saw nor touched, and yet believed ”.
You are witnesses: The apostles carried out their mission, “with great power” bearing “witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4:33). However, all Christians are entrusted with the apostolate in one way or another (Catechism 900). In other words, we are called to be witnesses to Jesus in our lives and thus advance his mission. “
Clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49)—the power of the Holy Spirit received through baptism and confirmation—we can bear witness to Jesus by our deeds and by our words. This is what the early Christians did, and thus the faith spread quickly, despite persecution, to every part of society. This is what Christians today can and ought to do, joyfully sharing their faith with family members, friends, and coworkers.
comments by
order of Carmelites (Lectio divina):
Luke writes in the year 80 for the communities of Greece, which for the most part were made up of converted Gentiles. The years 60’s and 70’s had been most difficult ones. There had been the great persecution of Nero in the year 64. Six years later, in the year 70, Jerusalem was completely destroyed by the Romans. In the year 72, in Masada, in the desert of Judah, there was the massacre of the last rebellious Jews. In those years, the Apostles, witnesses of the Resurrection, disappeared gradually. People began to feel tired on the journey. From where could they draw the strength so as not to get discouraged? How to discover the presence of Jesus in such a difficult situation? The story of the apparition of Jesus to the disciples at Emmaus tries to give a response to all these anguishing questions.
Luke wants to teach the communities how to interpret Scripture in order to be able to rediscover the presence of Jesus in life.
Jesus meets the two friends in a situation of fear and lack of faith. The force of death, the cross, had killed the hope in them. This was the situation of many people at the time of Luke, and is also the predicament of many people today. Jesus gets close to them and walks by their side. He listens to their conversation and asks, “What are all these things that you are discussing as you walk along?” The dominant ideology of the government and of the official religion of the time prevent them from seeing. -> The first step is this one:
get close to the people, listen to their reality, feel their problems: be capable of asking questions which will help the people to look at reality from a more critical perspective.
Jesus uses the Bible and the history of people to illuminate the problem which made the two friends suffer, and to clarify the situation in which they are living. He also uses it to place them in the whole plan of God which came from Moses and the prophets. Thus, He indicates that history had not escaped from God’s hand. Jesus uses the Bible not as a doctor who knows everything, but rather like a companion who comes to help friends and to remind them of what they had forgotten. Jesus tries to awaken their memory: “
Foolish and slow to believe all that the prophets have said! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer before entering into His glory?” -> This is the second step:
With the Bible, help people to discover the wisdom which already exists in them, and transform the cross, a sign of death, into a sign of life and of hope. What prevented them from walking now becomes for them strength and light on the journey. How can we do this today?
The Bible in itself does not open their eyes. It only makes their heart burn. What opens the eyes and makes them see is the breaking of the bread, the communal gesture of sharing, and the celebration of the Supper. At the moment in which both recognize Jesus, they are born anew, and Jesus disappears. Jesus does not take possession of his friends’ road. He is not paternalistic. Risen, the disciples are capable of walking alone -> The third step is the following:
to know how to create a fraternal environment of faith, of celebration and of sharing, where the Holy Spirit can act. It is He who makes us discover and experience the Word of God in life, which leads us to understand the meaning of the words of Jesus (Jn 14:26; 16:13).
The two of them, courageously, get back on the road to go to Jerusalem, where the same forces of death, which had killed Jesus and had killed their hope, continue to be active. But, now everything has changed. If Jesus is alive, then there is in Him and with Him a stronger power than that which killed Him. This experience makes them resurrect! Truly, everything has changed. There is return and not flight! Faith and not unbelief! Hope and not despair! Critical conscience and not fatalism in the face of power! Liberty and not oppression! In one word: life and not death! Instead of the bad news of the death of Jesus, the Good News of his Resurrection! Both of them experience life and life in abundance! (Jn 10:10). This is a sign that the Spirit of Jesus is acting in them!
Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples in Jerusalem (Luke 24:33-48)
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Caravaggio - The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1600) . Thomas refused to believe that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles, until he could see and feel the wounds received by Jesus on the cross (John 20:24–29)
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33 So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them
34 who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!"
35 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.
36 While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."
37 But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
38 Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?
39
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see,
because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."
40 And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
41 While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, "Have you anything here to eat?"
42 They gave him a piece of baked fish;
43 he took it and ate it in front of them.
44
He said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was
still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and
in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled."
45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.
46 And he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day
47 and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
48 You are witnesses of these things.
Jesus appears to the Eleven and demonstrates that he is "flesh and bones".
The Catechism demonstrates the Scriptural basis for belief
in the resurrection of the body and that this has been the belief of the Church
from the start. That is not to say that the resurrected body is identical to
the mortal body; rather, the risen body will far transcend that or our present
condition, when corruption will give way to incorruptibility.
“The death of the
person is a single event, consisting in the total disintegration of that unitary
and integrated whole that is the personal self. It results from the separation
of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person.” –
JPII, 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society
What the Catechism says?
1007 Death is the end of earthly life. Our lives are
measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all
living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of
death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize
that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment.
1008 Death is a consequence of sin. The Church's
Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and
Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of man's sin. Even though man's nature is mortal God had
destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the
Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. "Bodily death, from which man would have been
immune had he not sinned" is thus "the last enemy" of man left to be conquered
1018 As a consequence of original sin, man must suffer
"bodily death, from which man would
have been immune had he not sinned" (GS § 18).
How do the dead rise?
997 What is "rising"? In death, the separation of
the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God,
while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power,
will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with
our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection. Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so
all of us will rise at the last day.
998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, "those who
have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to
the resurrection of judgment." Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his
glorious body," into a "spiritual body":
1 Cor
15:35-37,42,52,53. But someone will ask, "How are the dead
raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish man! What you
sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body
which is to be, but a bare kernel. . . . What is sown is perishable, what is
raised is imperishable. . . . The dead will be raised imperishable. . . . For
this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature
must put on immortality.
1009 Death is transformed by Christ. Jesus, the Son of God,
also himself suffered the death that is part of the human condition. Yet,
despite his anguish as he faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and
free submission to his Father's will. The obedience of Jesus has transformed
the curse of death into a blessing
1013 Death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage, of the
time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life
in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When
"the single course of our earthly life" is completed, we shall not
return to other earthly lives: "It is appointed for men to die once."
There is no "reincarnation" after death.
1014 The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the
hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has
us pray: "From a sudden and
unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord"; to ask the Mother of God to
intercede for us "at the hour of our
death" in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the
patron of a happy death.
Every action of yours,
every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out.
Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. . . .
Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you
aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. . . .
996 From the beginning, Christian faith in the resurrection
has met with incomprehension and opposition. "On no point does the
Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body.”
It is very commonly
accepted that the life of the human person continues in a spiritual fashion
after death. But how can we believe that this body, so clearly mortal, could
rise to everlasting life? St. Augustine, En. in Ps. 88,5:PL 37,1134.
Acts 17,32 When they
heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said,
"We should like to hear you on this some other time."
The Pope John Paul II carefully clarified When Christ says
we will be "like angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30) he does not mean that
we will be dis-incarnated or otherwise dehumanized. The context in which Christ
is speaking, John Paul says, "indicates clearly that man will keep in
'that age' his own human psychosomatic nature. If it were otherwise, it would
be meaning-less to speak of the resurrection. Unfortunately, Plato's belief
that the body is the earthly prison of the soul has significantly influenced the
thinking of some Christian. As the Pope insists, The truth about the
resurrection clearly affirms, in fact, that the escathological perfection and
happiness of man cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated
(according to Plato: liberated) from the body." This idea is essentially
alien to Orthodox Christianity. Instead, man's ultimate beautitude "must
be understood as the state of man definitevely and perfectly integrated through
such a union of the soul and the body, which qualifies and definitely ensure
this perfect.
We are spiritualized matter. The soul separated from the body means death. We can’t live a spiritual life away from our body.
What will the body be like in Heaven though? Clearly here on Earth many of us have imperfect bodies, we will die at various ages, and our earthy physical bodies will decay. How does that all translate after the resurrection?
Even the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus’s resurrected body. By that we learn that we will still have our bodies, but they will be different than now. How exactly, we don’t know, but “perfected” is one word that comes to mind.
We know we won’t have pain or disfigurement. Jesus was able to go through walls in His resurrected body, yet He still ate food and was able to be touched. Clearly a body, but different.
The Bible is very clear that the spirit can live outside the body. Angels can and do function outside a body and yet, they can also function within a body. We see they can possess people and actually there can be more than one spirit or fallen angels inside a body. Although this alone does not make a strong case for a continuation of an afterlife, it does show that a spirit can operate and function outside the body.
There are numerous passages that teach that humans are conscious after their death, so let's look at a few. Matt. 17:1-8 and Luke 9:28-36 are just a few of the passages on the transfiguration where we find Moses and Elijah appearing on the Mount with Jesus and a few of His disciples. Elijah was taken to heaven alive while Moses died a physical death, yet, Moses is consciously alive just like Elijah. Moses couldn't have been resurrected because Christ is to be the firstfruits of the resurrection and he had risen yet. While Christ raised may from the dead they were people that recently died
In Heb. 9:27 we find after death, the judgment, in other words one goes either to heaven or to hell, and it is determined at death, not afterwards. So we go to rewards, to rest, or to punishment and eternal separation. Death is not a cessation of existence, but a separation of existence. We have choices to make now that will effect our eternal destiny. Jesus knew very well of this and he warned of it constantly.
Our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ’s transfiguration of our bodies: “Just as bread that comes from the earth, after God’s blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection” (St Irenaeus).
comments by
Francis Martin, president of Father Francis Martin Ministries (FFMM), "commentary on the Gospel of John":
On the Gospel of John, Thomas refused to believe that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles, until he could see and feel the wounds received by Jesus on the cross. This has coined the term "A doubting Thomas" who is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience
24 Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
26 Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."
27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
28 Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."
Since ancient Greek manuscripts do not use punctuation marks, it is not clear whether Jesus’ words to Thomas in 20:29a are a question or a statement. If it as a question,
Have you come to believe because you have seen me?, hints at disapproval because Thomas needed tangible proof to believe. However, it is also possible to translate it as a statement, “
You have believed because you have seen me,” in which case Jesus does not disapprove of Thomas faith but simply declares that Thomas has arrived at full Easter faith because of the tangible proof that has been given him.
The beatitude "
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed",moves the attention to later generations of disciples, including the Gospels readers, who have not encountered the risen Jesus in the same way as those first disciples did on Easter. But the fact that later generations of disciples did not see the Lord firsthand does not make their faith in the risen Jesus any less genuine. The Gospel stresses the importance of the apostolic witness to Jesus (19:35; 21:24) by the disciples who received tangible proof of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus prayed for later generations of believers “
who will believe in me through their word"(17:20)
On the Gospel of John, Jesus asked Simon three times if he loves Him:
15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
16 He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
17 He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.
18 Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."
19 He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, "Follow me."
This exchange between Jesus and Peter provides much food for thought about the ministry of the pope and basic aspects of the Christian life, such as sin, repentance, and discipleship. When Peter denied Jesus three times (Luke 22:54-62), he rejected his relationship with Jesus. In this scene, which recalls Peter’s denials, we see the tremendous love and mercy of Jesus for Peter. Jesus makes the first move and initiates the conversation with Peter. He invites Peter to repent and return to him by professing his love. With Peters threefold profession of love, his threefold denial is undone, and Jesus restores the relationship between them. Jesus’ mercy is so complete that he does not hold Peter’s past sins against him. Instead, Jesus gives Peter the honor and responsibility of serving as the delegated shepherd of his sheep.
The same dynamics of repentance and forgiveness apply to all disciples, for Peter is still a sheep in relation to Jesus. No matter how serious or how many the sins we have committed (Peter’s were very serious), the love and mercy of Jesus is infinitely greater. He seeks us out and invites us to return to him. This scene should give us confidence that when we seek reconciliation with Jesus, he forgives us completely and forever. As Pope Francis has beautifully taught, God “
does not tire of forgiving us if we are able to return to him with a contrite heart”.
The phrase "stretch out your hands" refers to crucifixion, and Peter was martyred by crucifixion during the persecution of Christians in in Rome around AD 65. The Evangelist clarifies that Jesus has been talking about peter death by which he would glorify God. Peter, therefore will bear witness to the Lord by serving as the leader of Christ of Christ's disciples and by laying down his life as a martyr — recall that the term “martyr” is from the greek word for "witness"
With the command "
Follow me", Jesus emphasizes that Peter's own relationship with him as a disciple lies at the heart of his role as shepherd. When speaking about his own death, Jesus said, “
Whoever serves me must follow me, and where l am, there also will my servant be” (12:26). For Peter to serve as the shepherd of Jesus’sheep, he must follow Jesus completely, even to the point of laying down hislife (13:37). He must carry out his role as shepherd by imitating Christ the good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep (10:15) and thus performs the greatest act of love (15:13).
comments by Pope
Benedict XVI (JN):
It must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed. The miracle of a resuscitated corpse would indicate that Jesus’ Resurrection was equivalent to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:22-24, 35-43 and parallel passages), and Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44). After a more or less short period, these individuals returned to their former lives, and then at a later point they died definitively.
The New Testament testimonies leave us in no doubt that what happened in the “Resurrection of the Son of Man” was utterly different. Jesus’
Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it—a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence. Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an “evolutionary leap” (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood). In Jesus’ Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.
On this basis we can understand the unique character of this New Testament testimony. Jesus has not returned to a normal human life in this world like Lazarus and the others whom Jesus raised from the dead. He has entered upon a different life, a new life—he has entered the vast breadth of God himself, and it is from there that he reveals himself to his followers.
For the disciples, too, this was something utterly unexpected, to which they were only slowly able to adjust. Jewish faith did indeed know of a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. New life was linked to the inbreaking of a new world and thus made complete sense. If there is a new world, then there is also a new mode of life there. But a resurrection into definitive otherness in the midst of the continuing old world was not foreseen and therefore at first made no sense. So the promise of resurrection remained initially unintelligible to the disciples.
The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented—a new dimension of reality that is revealed. What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known. Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new? If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest “evolutionary leap”, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?
Two different types of Resurrection Testimony:
a) The confessional tradition:
The confessional tradition crystallizes the essentials in short phrases
that establish the kernel of what took place. They are an expression of
Christian identity, a “confession” indeed, by which Christians recognize
one another, by which they identify themselves before God and man. Let's look at the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Romans: “
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9). In this example—as also in the account of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi (cf. Mt 16:13-16)—there are two elements to the confession: it is said that Jesus is “Lord”, which in terms of the Old Testament meaning of the word refers to his divinity. Then comes the confession of the fundamental historical event: God raised him from the dead.
This already makes clear what the significance of the confession is for Christians: it brings salvation. It leads us to the truth that is salvation. We have here a prototype of the confessional formulae used in Baptism, which always link Christ’s lordship to the story of his life, death, and Resurrection. In Baptism man hands himself over to the new life of the Risen One. Confession becomes life.
By far the most important of the Easter confessions is found in the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians. As with the account of the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23-26), Paul emphasizes strongly that he is not speaking on his own initiative here: “
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (15:3). Paul deliberately takes his place within the chain of reception and transmission. Here, regarding the essential content on which everything depends, what is demanded above all is fidelity. And Paul, who characteristically places so much emphasis on his personal witness of the Risen One and on the apostolate that he received directly from the Lord, insists here with great emphasis on literal fidelity in the transmission of what has been received, on the common tradition of the Church from her beginnings.
The Gospel of which Paul speaks is the foundation “i
n which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it [that is, the word, the literal formulation] fast” that “I preached to you” (15:1-2). In this central message, what matters is not only the content, but also the literal formulation, which must be preserved intact. This link with the very earliest tradition is the source of both the unity of the faith and its universally binding nature. “
Whether then it was I or they [the others who proclaimed it]: so we preach and so you believed” (15:11). In its nucleus the faith, even down to its literal formulation, is one—it binds all Christians.
The text handed down in the First Letter to the Corinthians has been extended by Paul, inasmuch as he has added, among others, his own encounter with the risen Lord. For Saint Paul’s self-understanding and for the faith of the early Church I find it significant that Paul felt entitled to add on to the original confession, with equally binding character, the risen Lord’s appearance to him and the apostolic mission that came with it. He was evidently convinced that this revelation of the risen Lord to him was still a central part of the emerging creedal formula, that it belonged to the faith of the universal Church as an essential element intended for all.
Let us listen now to the whole text, as Paul presents it:
“
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. . . . Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor 15:3-8).
“
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” The fact
of his death is qualified by two additional expressions: “for our sins”
and “in accordance with the Scriptures”. Christ died “for our sins”.
Because his death has to do with the word of God, it has to do with us,
it is a dying “for”.
At the end of the Emmaus story, the two disciples find the eleven
Apostles assembled in Jerusalem and are greeted with these words: “
The
Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” (Lk 24:34). In its
context, this functions as a brief narrative, but it also serves as a
formula of acclamation and confession, in which the essential is
proclaimed: the event itself and the witness who testifies to it.
What
the risen Lord taught the disciples on the road to Emmaus now becomes
the basic method for understanding the figure of Jesus: everything that
happened to him is fulfillment of the “Scriptures”. Only on the basis of
the “Scriptures”, the Old Testament, can he be understood at all. With
reference to Jesus’ death on the Cross, this means that his death is no
coincidence. It belongs in the context of God’s ongoing relationship
with his people, from which it receives its inner logic and its meaning.
It is an event in which the words of Scripture are fulfilled; it bears
within itself Logos, or logic; it proceeds from the word and returns to
the word; it surrounds the word and fulfills it.
Insofar as Jesus’ death can be located
within this context of God’s word and God’s love, it is differentiated
from the kind of death resulting from man’s original sin as a
consequence of his presumption in seeking to be like God, a presumption
that could only lead to man’s plunge into wretchedness, into the destiny
of death.
Jesus’ death is of another kind: it is occasioned, not
by the presumption of men, but by the humility of God. It is not the
inevitable consequence of a false hubris, but the fulfillment of a love
in which God himself comes down to us, so as to draw us back up to
himself. Jesus’ death is rooted, not in the sentence of expulsion from
Paradise, but in the Suffering Servant Songs. It is a death in the
context of his service of expiation—a death that achieves reconciliation
and becomes a light for the nations.
“
He was buried.”
This makes it clear that Jesus really was dead, that he
fully participated in the human destiny of death. Jesus traveled the
path of death right to the bitter and seemingly hopeless end in the
tomb.
The third day:
“He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4). “In accordance with the Scriptures” applies to the entire phrase, not specifically to the third day, although this is included. The essential point is that the Resurrection itself is in accordance with the Scriptures—that it forms part of the whole promise that in Jesus became, not just word, but reality. So for scriptural background we could certainly look to Psalm 16:10, but also to basic promise texts like Isaiah 53. There is no direct scriptural testimony pointing to the “third day”.
Ignatius of Antioch (late first century, early second century), provides evidence, as we saw earlier, that for Christians Sunday had already supplanted the Jewish Sabbath culture: “
We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the Sabbath and now order their lives by the Lord’s day instead (the day when life first dawned for us, thanks to him and his death)” (Ad Magn., 9:1).
If we bear in mind the immense importance attached to the Sabbath in the Old Testament tradition on the basis of the Creation account and the Decalogue, then it is clear that only an event of extraordinary impact could have led to the abandonment of the Sabbath and its replacement by the first day of the week. Only an event that marked souls indelibly could bring about such a profound realignment in the religious culture of the week. Mere theological speculations could not have achieved this. For me, the celebration of the Lord’s day, which was characteristic of the Christian community from the outset, is one of the most convincing proofs that something extraordinary happened that day—the discovery of the empty tomb and the encounter with the risen Lord.
The witnesses:
1 Cor 15:5 “
He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve”, it states succinctly. If we regard this verse as the conclusion of the original Jerusalem formula, then this indication of names carries particular theological weight: it reveals the very foundation of the Church’s faith.
On the one hand, “the Twelve” remain the actual foundation stone of the Church, the permanent point of reference. On the other hand, the special task given to Peter is underlined here, the commission that was first assigned to him at Caesarea Philippi and then confirmed during the Last Supper (Lk 22:32), when Peter was, as it were, introduced into the Church’s eucharistic structure. Now, after the Resurrection, the Lord appears first to him, before appearing to the Twelve, and thus once again renews Peter’s particular mission.
b) The Narrative Tradition:
Every reader will be struck immediately by the differences between the Resurrection accounts of the four Gospels. Matthew, apart from the risen Lord’s appearance to the women at the empty tomb, gives only one other appearance—in Galilee to the Eleven. Luke gives only Jerusalem traditions. John tells of appearances in both Jerusalem and Galilee. None of the evangelists recounts Jesus’ Resurrection itself. It is an event taking place within the mystery of God between Jesus and the Father, which for us defies description: by its very nature it lies outside human experience.
The narrative tradition tells of encounters with the risen Lord and the words spoken by him on those occasions; the confessional tradition merely establishes the key facts that serve to confirm the faith: this is another way of describing the essential difference between the two types of tradition. One initial difference is that in the confessional tradition only men are named as witnesses, whereas in the narrative tradition women play a key role, indeed they take precedence over the men. This may be linked to the fact that in the Jewish tradition only men could be admitted as witnesses in court—the testimony of women was considered unreliable. So the “official” tradition, which is, so to speak, addressing the court of Israel and the court of the world, has to observe this norm if it is to prevail in what we might describe as Jesus’ ongoing trial.
Jesus’ appearances to Paul:
A second important difference, by which the narrative tradition completes the creedal formulae, lies in the fact that the risen Lord’s appearances are not only confessed but described in a certain amount of detail. How are we to picture to ourselves the appearances of the Risen One, who had not returned to normal human life, but had passed over into a new manner of human existence?
To begin with, there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, the appearance of the risen Jesus to Paul, described in the Acts of the Apostles, and, on the other hand, the Gospel narratives concerning the encounters of the Apostles and the women with the living Lord.
According to all three accounts of Saint Paul’s conversion in the Acts of the Apostles, there were two elements to his encounter with the risen Christ: a light that shone “
brighter than the sun” (26:13) together with a voice that spoke to Saul “
in the Hebrew language” (26:14). Whereas the first account says that the people accompanying Saul could hear the voice but “
[saw] no one” (9:7), the second account says, conversely, that they “
saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me” (22:9). The third account says of the people accompanying Saul
"only that they all fell to the ground with him" (cf. 26:14).
This much is clear: there was a difference between what was perceived by the people accompanying Saul and what Saul himself perceived. Only he was the direct recipient of a message involving a mission, but the people with him were also in some sense witnesses of an extraordinary event.
“
Rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:16-18).
Despite all the differences between the three accounts, it is still clear that the apparition (light) and the word belong together. The risen Lord, whose essence is light, speaks as a man with Paul in Paul’s own language. His words serve, on the one hand, as self-identification, and this includes his identification with the persecuted Church, and, on the other hand, they serve to communicate a mission, whose content will be further explained in what follows.
The appearances of Jesus in the Gospels:
The appearances that we read of in the Gospels are manifestly different. On the one hand, the Lord appears as a man like other men: he walks alongside the Emmaus disciples; he invites Thomas to touch his wounds, and in Luke’s account he even asks for a piece of fish to eat, in order to prove his real bodily presence. And yet
these narratives do not present him simply as a man who has come back from death in the same condition as before.
One thing that strikes us straightaway is that the disciples do not recognize him at first. This is true not only of the two in the Emmaus story, but also of Mary Magdalene and then again at the Lake of Gennesaret: “
Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus” (Jn 21:4). Only after the Lord has instructed them to set out once again does the beloved disciple recognize him: “
That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!‘ “ (21:7). It is, as it were, an inward recognition, which nevertheless remains shrouded in mystery. For after the catch of fish, when Jesus invites them to eat, there is still a strange quality about him. “
None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord” (21:12). They knew from within, not from observing the Lord’s outward appearance.
This dialectic of recognition and non-recognition corresponds to the manner of the apparitions.
Jesus comes through closed doors; he suddenly stands in their midst. And in the same way he suddenly withdraws again, as at the end of the Emmaus encounter.
His presence is entirely physical, yet he is not bound by physical laws, by the laws of space and time. In this remarkable dialectic of identity and otherness, of real physicality and freedom from the constraints of the body, we see the special mysterious nature of the risen Lord’s new existence.
Both elements apply here: he is the same embodied man, and he is the new man, having entered upon a different manner of existence. The dialectic, which pertains to the nature of the Risen One, is presented quite clumsily in the narratives, and it is this that manifests their veracity. Had it been necessary to invent the Resurrection, then all the emphasis would have been placed on full physicality, on immediate recognizability, and perhaps, too, some special power would have been thought up as a distinguishing feature of the risen Lord. But in the internal contradictions characteristic of all the accounts of what the disciples experienced, in the mysterious combination of otherness and identity, we see reflected a new form of encounter, one that from an apologetic standpoint may seem rather awkward but that is all the more credible as a record of the experience.
Two qualifications are important. On the one hand, Jesus has not returned to the empirical existence that is subject to the law of death, but he lives anew in fellowship with God, permanently beyond the reach of death. On the other hand, it is important that the encounters with the risen Lord are not just interior events or mystical experiences—they are real encounters with the living one who is now embodied in a new way and remains embodied. Luke emphasizes this very strongly:
Jesus is not, as the disciples initially feared, a “ghost” or a “spirit”: he has “flesh and bones” (Lk 24:36-43).
What a ghost is, what is meant by the apparition of a “spirit” as opposed to the apparition of the risen Lord, can best be seen in the biblical account of the medium at Endor, who at Saul’s behest conjures up the spirit of Samuel from the underworld (cf. 1 Sam 28:7-19). The “spirit” that she calls forth is a dead man dwelling among the shadows in the underworld, who from time to time can be summoned forth, only to return to the realm of the dead.
Jesus, however, does not come from the realm of the dead, which he has definitively left behind: on the contrary, he comes from the realm of pure life, from God; he comes as the one who is truly alive, who is himself the source of life. Luke underlines quite dramatically how different the risen Lord is from a mere “spirit” by recounting that Jesus asked the still fearful disciples for something to eat and then ate a piece of grilled fish before their eyes.
Most exegetes take the view that Luke is exaggerating here in his apologetic zeal, that a statement of this kind seems to draw Jesus back into the empirical physicality that had been transcended by the Resurrection. Thus Luke ends up contradicting his own narrative, in which Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of the disciples in a physicality that is no longer subject to the laws of space and time.
Summary:
Let us ask once more, by way of summary, what it was like to encounter the risen Lord. The following distinctions are important:
—
Jesus did not simply return to normal biological life as one who, by the laws of biology, would eventually have to die again.
—
Jesus is not a ghost (“spirit”). In other words, he does not belong to the realm of the dead but is somehow able to reveal himself in the realm of the living.
— Nevertheless,
the encounters with the risen Lord are not the same as mystical experiences, in which the human spirit is momentarily drawn aloft out of itself and perceives the realm of the divine and eternal, only to return then to the normal horizon of its existence. Mystical experience is a temporary removal of the soul’s spatial and cognitive limitations. But it is not an encounter with a person coming toward me from without.
Saint Paul clearly distinguished his mystical experiences, such as his elevation to the third heaven described in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, from his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, which was a historical event—an encounter with a living person.
On the basis of all this biblical evidence, what are we now in a position to say about the true nature of Christ’s Resurrection?
It is a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it. we could regard the Resurrection as something akin to a radical “evolutionary leap”, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence.
Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, “spirit and blood” have a place within God (cf. De Resurrect. Mort. 51:3, CCSL II, 994). Even if man by his nature is created for immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul can find its “space”, its “bodiliness”, in which immortality takes on its meaning as communion with God and with the whole of reconciled mankind. This is what is meant by those passages in Saint Paul’s prison letters (cf. Col 1:12-23 and Eph 1:3-23) that speak of the cosmic body of Christ, indicating thereby that
Christ’s transformed body is also the place where men enter into communion with God and with one another and are thus able to live definitively in the fullness of indestructible life. Since we ourselves have no experience of such a renewed and transformed type of matter, or such a renewed and transformed kind of life, it is not surprising that it oversteps the boundaries of what we are able to conceive.
Essential, then, is the fact that Jesus’ Resurrection was not just about some deceased individual coming back to life at a certain point, but that an ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.
Indeed,
the apostolic preaching with all its boldness and passion would be unthinkable unless the witnesses had experienced a real encounter, coming to them from outside, with something entirely new and unforeseen, namely, the self-revelation and verbal communication of the risen Christ.
Only a real event of a radically new quality could possibly have given rise to the apostolic preaching, which cannot be explained on the basis of speculations or inner, mystical experiences. In all its boldness and originality, it draws life from the impact of an event that no one had invented, an event that surpassed all that could be imagined.
To conclude, all of us are constantly inclined to ask the question that Saint Jude Thaddaeus put to Jesus during the Last Supper: “
Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (Jn 14:22). Why, indeed, did you not forcefully resist your enemies who brought you to the Cross?—we might well ask. Why did you not show them with incontrovertible power that you are the living one, the Lord of life and death? Why did you reveal yourself only to a small flock of disciples, upon whose testimony we must now rely?
The question applies not only to the Resurrection, but to the whole manner of God’s revelation in the world. Why only to Abraham and not to the mighty of the world? Why only to Israel and not irrefutably to all the peoples of the earth?
It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the powers that shape history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him.
And yet—is not this the truly divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love. And if we really think about it, is it not what seems so small that is truly great? Does not a ray of light issue from Jesus, growing brighter across the centuries, that could not come from any mere man and through which the light of God truly shines into the world?
Could the apostolic preaching have found faith and built up a worldwide community unless the power of truth had been at work within it?
If we attend to the witnesses with listening hearts and open ourselves to the signs by which the Lord again and again authenticates both them and himself, then we know that he is truly risen. He is alive. Let us entrust ourselves to him, knowing that we are on the right path. With Thomas let us place our hands into Jesus’ pierced side and confess: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).
Great Commission and Ascension (Luke 24:49–53)
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| Juan de Flandes - Ascension of Jesus (1518) |
49
And (behold) I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay
in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."
50 Then he led them (out) as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them.
51 As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.
52 They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
53 and they were continually in the temple praising God.
The
Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons
or hypostases: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit; "
one
God in three persons".
The three persons are distinct, yet are one
"substance, essence or nature". In Trinitarian doctrine, God exists as
three persons or hypostases, but is one being, having a single divine
nature. The members of the Trinity are co-equal and co-eternal, one in
essence, nature, power, action, and will.
As stated in the Athanasian
Creed, the Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy
Spirit is uncreated, and all three are eternal with no beginning. "The
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" are not names for different
parts of God, but one name for God because three persons exist in God
as one entity. They cannot be separate from one another. Each person is
understood as having the identical essence or nature, not merely similar
natures. In Christian tradition the Trinity is a mystery of faith
revealed in
scripture, beyond human understanding. Theological explanations thus
tend to lack or avoid a logical or philosophical foundation.
The participation of the Holy Spirit in the tripartite nature of
conversion is apparent in Jesus' final post-Resurrection instruction to
his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew (28:19): "
make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Since the first century,
Christians have also called upon God with the name "
Father, Son and Holy
Spirit" in prayer, absolution and benediction.
The New
Testament details a close relationship between the Holy Spirit
and Jesus during his earthly life and ministry. The Gospels of Luke and
Matthew and the Nicene Creed state that Jesus was "
conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary". The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus as
a dove during his Baptism, and in his Farewell Discourse after the Last
Supper Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after
his departure: The participation of the Holy Spirit in the tripartite
nature of conversion is apparent in Jesus' final post-Resurrection
instruction to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew
(28:19):
19 Go, therefore, and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."
Since
the first century, Christians have also called upon God with the
name "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" in prayer, absolution and
benediction. In Christian theology Holy Spirit is believed to perform
specific divine functions in the life of the Christian or the church.
The action of the Holy Spirit is seen as an essential part of the
bringing of the person to the Christian faith. The new believer is "born
again of the Spirit". The Holy Spirit enables Christian life by
dwelling in the individual believers and enables them to live a
righteous and faithful life.
The Holy Spirit also acts
as comforter or Paraclete, one who intercedes, or supports or acts as an
advocate, particularly in times of trial. And it acts to convince the
unredeemed person both of the sinfulness of their actions, and of their
moral standing as sinners before God. Another faculty of the Holy Spirit
is the inspiration and interpretation of scripture. The Holy Spirit
both inspires the writing of the scriptures and interprets them to the
Christian and/or church.
The Acts of the Apostles has
sometimes been called the "Book of the Holy Spirit" or the "Acts of the
Holy Spirit". Of the about seventy occurrences of the word Pneuma in
Acts, fifty five refer to the Holy Spirit. From the start, in Acts 1:2,
the reader is reminded that the Ministry of Jesus, while he was on
earth, was carried out through the power of the Holy Spirit and that the
"acts of the apostles" are the continuing acts of Jesus, facilitated by
the Holy Spirit.
comments by Pope
Benedict XVI (JN):
All four Gospels, as well as Saint Paul’s Resurrection account in 1 Corinthians 15, presuppose that the period of the risen Lord’s appearances was limited. Paul was conscious of being the last to whom an encounter with the risen Christ was granted. The meaning of the Resurrection appearances is also clear from the overall tradition. Above all, it was a matter of assembling a circle of disciples who would be able to testify that Jesus did not remain in the grave, that he lives on. Their testimony is essentially mission: they must proclaim to the world that Jesus is alive—that he is Life itself.
The first task they were given was to attempt once again to gather Israel around the risen Jesus. For Paul, too, the message begins with testimony to the Jews, the first to be destined for salvation. But the final command to those sent out by Jesus is universal: “
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:18-19). “
You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And as the risen Lord said to Paul: “
Depart; for I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21).
Thus the ending of Luke’s Gospel helps us to understand better the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Jesus’ “Ascension” is explicitly recounted. Before Jesus’ departure, a conversation takes place in which the disciples—still trapped in their old ideas—ask whether the time has yet come for the kingdom of Israel to be established.
Jesus counters this notion of a restored Davidic kingdom with a promise and a commission. The promise is that they will be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit; the commission is that they are to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
The questioning about times and seasons is explicitly rejected. Speculation over history, looking ahead into the unknown future—these are not fitting attitudes for a disciple. Christianity is the present: it is both gift and task, receiving the gift of God’s inner closeness and—as a consequence—bearing witness to Jesus Christ.
The New Testament, from the Acts of the Apostles to the Letter to the Hebrews, describes the “place” to which the cloud took Jesus, using the language of Psalm 110:1, as sitting (or standing) at God’s right hand. What does this mean? God is not in one space alongside other spaces. God is God—he is the premise and the ground of all the space there is, but he himself is not part of it. God stands in relation to all spaces as Lord and Creator. His presence is not spatial, but divine. “Sitting at God’s right hand” means participating in this divine dominion over space.
The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters into communion of power and life with the living God, into God’s dominion over space. Hence he has not “gone away”, but now and forever by God’s own power he is present with us and for us. In the farewell discourses of Saint John’s Gospel, this is exactly what Jesus says to his disciples: “
I go away, and I will come to you” (14:28). These words sum up beautifully what is so special about Jesus’ “going away”, which is also his “coming”, and at the same time they explain the mystery of the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. His going away is in this sense a coming, a new form of closeness, of continuing presence, which for John, too, is linked with the “joy” that we saw in Luke’s Gospel.
Because Jesus is with the Father, he has not gone away but remains close to us. Now he is no longer in one particular place in the world as he had been before the “Ascension”: now, through his power over space, he is present and accessible to all—throughout history and in every place.
There is a very beautiful story in the Gospel (Mk 6:45-52 and parallel passages) where Jesus anticipates this kind of closeness during his earthly life and so makes it easier for us to understand.
After the multiplication of the loaves, the Lord makes the disciples get into the boat and go before him to Bethsaida on the opposite shore, while he himself dismisses the people. He then goes “up on the mountain” to pray. So the disciples are alone in the boat. There is a headwind, and the lake is turbulent. They are threatened by the power of the waves and the storm. The Lord seems to be far away in prayer on his mountain. But because he is with the Father, he sees them. And because he sees them, he comes to them across the water; he gets into the boat with them and makes it possible for them to continue to their destination.
This is an image for the time of the Church—intended also for us. The Lord is “on the mountain” of the Father. Therefore he sees us. Therefore he can get into the boat of our life at any moment. Therefore we can always call on him; we can always be certain that he sees and hears us. In our own day, too, the boat of the Church travels against the headwind of history through the turbulent ocean of time. Often it looks as if it is bound to sink. But the Lord is there, and he comes at the right moment. “I go away, and I will come to you”—that is the essence of Christian trust, the reason for our joy.
From a very different perspective, something similar emerges from a story that is extraordinarily rich in its theology and anthropology, namely, the risen Lord’s first appearance to Mary Magdalene. Mary turns around and sees Jesus, but she does not recognize him. Now he calls her by name: “Mary!” Once again she has to turn, and now she joyfully recognizes the risen Lord, whom she addresses as Rabbuni, meaning Teacher. She wants to touch him, to hold him, but the Lord says to her: “
Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn 20:17). This surprises us. We would have thought that now, while he is standing before her, she can indeed touch him and hold him. When he has ascended to the Father, this will no longer be possible. But the Lord says the opposite: Now she cannot touch him or hold him. The earlier way of relating to the earthly Jesus is no longer possible.
It is the same phenomenon that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17: “
Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation.” The old manner of human companionship and encounter is over. From now on we can touch Jesus only “
with the Father”. Now we can touch him only by ascending. From the Father’s perspective, in his communion with the Father, he is accessible and close to us in a new way.
Christ, at the Father’s right hand, is not far away from us. At most we are far from him, but the path that joins us to one another is open. And this path
is not a matter of space travel of a cosmic-geographical nature: it is the “space travel” of the heart, from the dimension of self-enclosed isolation to the new dimension of world-embracing divine love.
Let us return once more to the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The content of the Christian life, we said, is not speculating on the future, but it is, on the one hand, the gift of the Holy Spirit and, on the other hand, the disciples’ worldwide testimony to Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord (Acts 1:6-8). And when Jesus was taken from their sight by the cloud, this does not mean that he was transported to another cosmic location, but that he was taken up into God’s very being, participating in God’s powerful presence in the world. “
Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). With these words, faith in Jesus’ return is strengthened, but at the same time it is stressed once more that the disciples are not to gaze into heaven or to know times and seasons, which are concealed in the mystery of God. Their task at this moment is to proclaim to the ends of the earth their witness to Christ. Faith in Christ’s return is the second pillar of the Christian confession. He who took flesh and now retains his humanity forever, he who has eternally opened up within God a space for humanity, now calls the whole world into this open space in God, so that in the end God may be all in all and the Son may hand over to the Father the whole world that is gathered together in him (cf. 1 Cor 15:20-28).
Vigilance is demanded of Christians as the basic attitude for the “interim time”. This vigilance means, on the one hand, that man does not lock himself into the here and now and concern himself only with tangible things, but that he raises his eyes above the present moment and its immediate urgency. Keeping one’s gaze freely fixed upon God in order to receive from him the criterion of right action and the capacity for it—that is what matters.
Vigilance means first of all openness to the good, to the truth, to God, in the midst of an often meaningless world and in the midst of the power of evil. It means that man tries with all his strength and with great sobriety to do what is right; it means that he lives, not according to his own wishes, but according to the signpost of faith. All this is presented in Jesus’ eschatological parables, especially in the parable of the vigilant servant (Lk 12:42-48) and, in a different way, in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25:1-13).
The Book of Revelation concludes with the promise of the Lord’s return and with a prayer for it: “He who testifies to these things says,
‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (22:20). It is the prayer of one who loves, one who is surrounded in the besieged city by all the dangers and terrors of destruction and can only wait for the arrival of the beloved who has the power to end the siege and to bring salvation. It is the hope-filled cry for Jesus to draw near in a situation of danger where he alone can help. Can we pray, therefore, for the coming of Jesus? Can we sincerely say: “
Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”? Yes, we can. And not only that: we must! We pray for anticipations of his world-changing presence. We pray to him in moments of personal tribulation: Come, Lord Jesus, and draw my life into the presence of your kindly power. We ask him to be close to those we love or for whom we are anxious. We ask him to be present and effective in his Church.
Let us return once more to the ending of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus led his followers into the vicinity of Bethany, we are told. “
Lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven” (24:50-51). Jesus departs in the act of blessing. He goes while blessing, and he remains in that gesture of blessing. His hands remain stretched out over this world. The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven may enter in, may become “present” within it.
The gesture of hands outstretched in blessing expresses Jesus’ continuing relationship to his disciples, to the world. In departing, he comes to us, in order to raise us up above ourselves and to open up the world to God. That is why the disciples could return home from Bethany rejoicing. In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy.
