April 1, 2018
We know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists,” or explainers, was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.
Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection. Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his Savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.
Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way. Being intellectual dwarfs may sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.
The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. The famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr, meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.”
The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of each one of us depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.
“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (Lk 12:50).
On the third day He rose again from the dead. We say these words frequently and are sometimes perplexed when we do the math. Our Lord died on Good Friday and arose very early on Sunday, which counts for two days, unless we reckon the number of the days of the week, even partial days, in which His body was in death rather than count the number of twenty-four-hour days. Another interpretation holds that since Christ had been thrown into an underground prison on Holy Thursday night awaiting trial the next day, His body was “in the bowels of the earth” three days: Thursday in a cellar under the High Priest’s house, and Friday and Saturday in the tomb. In any case, our Lord emerged out of the earth alive in the body after having descended into “hell:” limbo or the abode of the dead. This mission into the lower regions of the earth (it was believed that spirits of the dead went to a place deep in the earth) must have been a sort of Easter celebration for the souls of those just men and women. Although Christ was not yet there in His body, His appearing there indicated to those souls that the purpose for which He had lived and died–to be the Victor over sin and death–had been successfully accomplished. Can we imagine the jubilation which took place in limbo? A vast sea of humanity, we should hope, was there waiting for this precise moment. A short time later these holy souls would follow Christ in His ascension into heaven, producing a sweeping procession of people into the Holy City, the Jerusalem above.
