The Reality of the Resurrection
There is a popular depiction of the resurrection of Christ that shows the Lord ascending heavenward gripping a white banner. In a blaze of light, He shoves aside the stone covering the tomb and leaps forth, striking terror into the hearts of the guards. This is all very dramatic and would have made great stuff for a Cecil B. deMille blockbuster. The only problem is that it did not happen this way.
The sacred Apostle and Evangelist Matthew tells us that it was like this:
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there ye shall see him: lo, I have told you.
And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.
St. Matthew 28:1-10
So, you see, it was the angel who rolled away the stone at dawn, not Christ. Jesus Himself was already risen and had come forth from the tomb, without disturbing the stone or breaking the seals placed there by the Jewish authorities. In the dead of night, silently, and unseen by human eyes, the Lord by His own divine energy had already resurrected His truly human, truly crucified, truly dead, and truly buried body. He had already passed through the stone in this actual, physical, but resurrected body. And that evening, in the same way, He would pass through the locked door of the Upper Room.
Many “liberal scholars” deliberately and foolishly distort this hidden aspect of the Resurrection to “prove” that it was purely “spiritual,” that is, that the Lord’s body did not actually rise from the dead. But this is absurd. The resurrected Lord plainly and physically showed Himself to the disciples many times, for forty days. He literally ate with them. They literally touched His feet, His hands, and His side, which still possessed the actual wounds inflicted on that first Great Friday. Though He now possessed a spiritualized, immortal body, one which was not subject to the laws of the fallen physical universe, nevertheless, it was the same body which had been truly born of the Virgin and truly suffered and died on the Cross.
We should not let these unbelievers’ misuse of the hidden aspect of the Lord’s Resurrection discourage us, however, from probing its true meaning. Why did the Lord not make a public show of His triumph over death? Why did He not gather kings and potentates from the ends of the earth to witness this greatest miracle of miracles, so that all would bow down and worship Him? Why did He rise so silently and then reveal His Resurrection so selectively - to a tiny portion chosen from the entire race of man?
No one knows the entire answer to these questions, of course; they are part of the inscrutable, pre-eternal wisdom of the Divine Providence. But we do have some answers, among which are:
1. The Lord knew ahead of time who would believe in Him and who would not. His means of gathering people into His Church is to call them to faith, not to dazzle them and force them into submission by a show of power. Remember what God told the rich man in the parable of Lazarus: “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe even if one should rise from the dead.”
2. The Lord came precisely not to establish a kingdom on earth, but to gather His chosen (many are called, but few are CHOSEN) into the eternal kingdom of heaven. His resurrection was not a show for the many, but a life-giving reality for the faithful few.
3. By rising in silence, in the dead of night, and alone (but for the angels), the Lord indicates to us the following critical reality: Our own resurrection of soul, what the Fathers call the first resurrection, takes place primarily in hidden ways, in the deepest recesses of the heart. It is the spirit of a man that is recreated by the first resurrection, Holy Baptism; the physical resurrection is to be revealed later, at the Dread Judgment (though in the saints it is often also presaged by the incorruption of their earthly bodies). Our struggles to maintain and develop our baptismal purity are witnessed chiefly by God and His angels, not by men. If we are serious about our salvation, we will develop a hidden life of prayer, speak of our spiritual state to very few, and re-arrange our lives for greater silence, hiddenness, non-acquisitiveness, and rejection of all ambition. We must experience the resurrection of our soul by the extirpation of the passions, or we will not experience the resurrection of the body unto eternal life, but unto damnation and eternal torment.
Let us begin anew this “life hid with Christ in God” today, as we look towards the end of Great Lent, towards Passion Week and Pascha. Let us prepare for the Radiant Resurrection not primarily with busyness and bustle, but with greater prayer, examination of conscience, and strict adherence to the ascetical principles taught us by the Holy Fathers. In this way, that divine and inimitable Paschal joy which only Orthodox Christians can experience, will well up in us as “a fountain springing up unto life everlasting.” It will begin quietly, like “the waters of Siloam which flow in silence,” but it will become a rushing torrent that shall have no end.
I look forward to greeting you, my beloved in Christ, with the joyful “Christ is Risen!” I pray that when you reply “Truly He is Risen,” this will not be merely from custom, for this is sheer hypocrisy. I pray that you will not speak thus only to affirm a dogma, for, though good, this is no more than what we expect of a catechumen. I pray earnestly that your “Truly He is Risen” will spring from a pure conscience, a soul cleansed of sin, a heart and mind filled with the thought of Jesus, the knowledge by experience of the energies of Christ God uprooting the passions and establishing the virtues in their stead. Possessing even a very tiny portion of this knowledge is greater than having all the riches of the physical universe; it is a foretaste of limitless and eternal life. May this Life, which Christ died and rose to give us, be yours.
Priest Steven Allen
2nd Sunday of Great Lent, 1998
St. Gregory Palamas