“And if Christ be
not risen again,
Then is our
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”
A Reflection on
Easter Sunday
Thomas A. Droleskey,
Ph.D.
REMNANT COLUMNIST,
What appeared to be an
ignominious death turned out to be the defeat of the power of sin and death
forever. The One Who had been arrested as a criminal,
charged falsely by the Sanhedrin, spent a night in prison, was scourged at the
pillar, crowned with thorns, condemned by the crowd, judged by Pilate, spat upon
and vilified as he walked to His Crucifixion, placed in the arms of His Most
Blessed Mother after He had breathed His last, was assigned a grave among
evil-doers and spent forty hours in a borrowed tomb. Although dead in His human
nature, Our Lord went to the reaches of the netherworld to free all of the souls
of the just who had been awaiting His Redemptive Act. The Gates of Heaven had
been reopened. The Good Thief had company. Souls of human beings were finally in
Heaven.
The world, however, thought
that the Nazarene had been done away with. His Apostles were hiding in fright
out of fear of the Jews. Only a small band of women had the courage to make
their way on Easter Sunday morning to the tomb in order to anoint Our Lord's
Body. The sight of the empty tomb startled them. And St. Mary Magdalene was
astonished to see the Master Himself tilling the ground as a gardener. You see,
Adam tilled the ground in the Garden of Eden. Our Lord wants to till the garden
of our souls. He told St. Mary Magdalene to go to the Apostles with the news
that He had risen from the dead as He had foretold. He had fulfilled His own
prophecy: "Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days."
The Apostles did not
believe at first. Do we believe at all? Do we really understand that the fact
that there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem because Our Lord got up from there and
walked out on Easter Sunday morning is supposed to define everything about us
and our nations and the world? Do we understand that the Cross and the empty
tomb mean that we cannot think or act as secularists, making no reference to
these events and the One Who accomplished them in public discourse? Do we
understand that nothing that happens to us in this life matters one little bit
(no suffering, no misunderstanding, no injustice) if we die in a state of
sanctifying grace? Do we realize that there is no material success or failure
which defines our eternal destiny? Do we fear the deaths of our souls by means
of mortal sin rather than the death of our physical bodies? Do we believe that
we are destined to rise forth incorrupt and glorious on the Last Day from our
tombs if only we persevere until the point of our deaths in a state of grace?
"For I delivered unto you
first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins,
according to the Scriptures: and that he was seen by Cephas; and after that by
the eleven. Then was he seen by more than five hundred brethren at once: of whom
many remain until the present, and some are fallen asleep. After that, he was
seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all he was seen also by me,
as one born out of due time. . .
"Now if Christ be preached,
that he arose again from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no
resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then
Christ is not risen again. And if Christ is not risen again,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, that he hath
raised up Christ; whom he hath not raised up, if the dead rise not
again.
"For if the dead rise not
again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be
not risen again, your faith is in vain, for you are yet
in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men
most miserable.
"But now Christ is risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep: for
by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. . . .
"In a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the
dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed. For this
corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality.
And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying
that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy
victory? O death, where is thy sting?
"Now the sting of death is
sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to
God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my
beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmovable; always abounding in the work of
the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Cor. 15:3-8;
12-22; 52-58)
The Resurrection of Our
Lord from the dead on Easter Sunday was an event that had never before taken
place. Each of the three people, including Lazarus, that Our Lord brought back
miraculously to physical life died again. Our Lord's Resurrection was not simply
a physical resuscitation of His Body. No, His Resurrection from the dead on this
very day, Easter Sunday, was a rising forth from death in a glorified Body with
properties that all of the bodies of the just will have on the Last Day when
they are reconstituted from the dust of the earth and reunited forever to their
immortal souls.
Our Lord showed Himself to
the Apostles in the same Upper Room where He had begun His Passion. His risen
and glorified Body still bore the brand marks of the cruelty our sins had
imposed upon Him. Indeed, those brand marks remained on His Body once He had
ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday forty days
later. There is no Easter Sunday, no empty tomb, without the Cross. There is no
way to know eternal life unless we are willing to die to self as faithful sons
and daughters of the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation, just
as Our Lord died for love of us on the wood of the Cross. We must always look to
the Cross, the instrument of Our Lord's torture which He used to effect our unmerited redemption.
An ancient tradition of the
Church teaches us that Our Lord was crucified on the same date, March 25, that
He had been conceived in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb by the power of
the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. No, this is not de fide
dogma. However, it is worth giving
the matter a moment of thought. It does make perfect sense that Our Lord would
suffer and die on the same date that He became incarnate to win back for us on
the Tree of the Holy Cross what was lost for us on the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. No matter the date of the first Good Friday, though, it is the
case absolutely that Our Lord appeared first to His Most Blessed Mother on
Easter Sunday to console her and to reward her with the fruit of their Easter
victory over sin and death.
There is symmetry here. If
we die in a state of grace, we will be received into the bosom of Our Lady, who
will present us to her Divine Son once our souls have been purified of all stain
of sin in Purgatory if they are not so purified at the moment of our deaths. We
will see Our Lady before she presents us to the Blessed Trinity to enjoy the
glory of the Beatific Vision for all eternity. It is thus essential to keep
close to Our Lady to make the best Holy Week of our lives. Let me repeat: it is
essential to keep close to Our Lady to make the best Holy Week of our lives. Our
Lord came into this world through Our Lady. We cannot return to Him except
through Our Lady, who wants to lead us after a life of repentance as sons and
daughters of the true Church her Divine Son founded upon the Rock of Peter, the
Pope, to an unending Easter Sunday of glory in
Alleluia! He is Risen! It is now time for fifty days of jubilant celebration.
The Easter season lasts ten days longer than Lent, reminding us that no matter
how long we toil in this vale of tears to save our own souls by cooperating with
the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the
wood of the Holy Cross, the joys of eternity are forever. We should work
assiduously each and every day to get to Heaven by pursuing the heights of
sanctity with every beat of our hearts, united as they must be to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the font of Divine
Mercy.