Meditations on the Resurrection¹
Meditations on the Resurrection¹
My beloved sons and sisters,
I am pleased on this blessed day to congratulate you on the Glorious Feast of the Resurrection, with all the meanings and spiritual contemplations that this feast carries, and truly in every image of Christ we find a spiritual meaning that has its depth and its impact on hearts.
For the crucified Christ presents an image of love, sacrifice, and redemption; and the risen Christ gives an image of power and victory; and the ascended Christ into heaven presents to us an image of the glorified Christ.
And today we desire to contemplate the Resurrection of the Lord Christ from the dead in the depth of its meanings.
The Resurrection changed the circumstances.
At the crucifixion of Christ, it seemed that faith had been lost and finished… and that all the work of Christ had been destroyed by His crucifixion, for they struck the Shepherd and the sheep were scattered (Zech. 13:7).
Behold, the strong Christ, the worker of miracles, nailed to a wood amid the mockery and ridicule of people… and His disciples had fled at the moment of His arrest; only one remained near the cross. Then they hid fearfully in the upper room, none of them daring to appear or speak… And Peter the bold, who had previously said most emphatically, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You” (Mark 14:31),
had, unfortunately, denied and blasphemed and said, “I do not know the Man” (Matt. 26:74).
And the people who followed Christ and saw His miracles were shaken to their core—some cried, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” some feared and fled… and some wept and were satisfied with weeping…
And Christ stood alone in the depth of His sufferings… And just as the image of His disciples was extremely sorrowful, so was the image of His enemies painful and gloating…
The enemies of the Lord grew arrogant and controlled the situation with astonishing dominance… They were able to bring false witnesses, fabricate accusations around Christ, claim that He was an enemy of Caesar, a breaker of the Law, a violator of the Sabbath, a deceiver and a sinner.
They deceived the people, subdued Pilate the governor to their will, held a council against Christ, judged Him, condemned Him, and were able to stir the people to shout, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”… They severely insulted Christ and placed Him in the position of the powerless after challenging Him with many words.
And even after His death, they secured the tomb with guards after sealing it with seals.
And the situation appeared hopeless from every direction! The Resurrection was not in the mind of anyone, for it seemed difficult or impossible. It appeared to everyone that Christ had ended—He and all who were with Him!
How then could Christ rise? All who had risen before from the dead had someone to raise them: the son of the widow of Zarephath, raised by Elijah the prophet; and the son of the Shunammite, raised by Elisha the prophet… and the son of the widow of Nain, raised by Christ. But Christ Himself—who would raise Him?!
And the Jews did not only want to eliminate Him, but they also wanted to eliminate His message and His teaching…
Christ was the truth crying out against their falsehoods… He was the light that tore through their darkness and revealed their deeds… He was the frankness that exposed their hypocrisy… and the bold voice that said to them: “Woe to you, hypocrites… O killers of the prophets, who shut up the kingdom of heaven before men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who are entering to go in” (Matt. 23).
And His teaching presented a spirituality unknown in their teaching that clung to the letter and not the spirit… Christ spoke with authority, not as the scribes, and His existence among them represented the continual struggle between truth and falsehood.
Falsehood thought, when Christ was hung on the cross, that truth had died! But when Christ rose: all knew that truth does not die, and they knew that the crucified truth is stronger than the conspiring, dominant falsehood…
Yes, the meek, gentle, forgiving truth was stronger than all its tormentors and crucifiers… His silence was not from weakness, but from divine will for the salvation and redemption of humanity…
Christ in His tomb was more alive than those whose lives were tombs… They were dead while they breathed and moved! And He was alive after He breathed His last breath in the flesh.
Their life was death from a spiritual aspect, while the death of Christ was life and salvation for the whole world… Christ trampled death by His death… and offered people the pledge of resurrection by His Resurrection.
A Resurrection unlike any other resurrection
His Resurrection was wondrous in every aspect. Many had risen before… but their rising was never of the same kind as Christ’s.
A Resurrection unique in its nature; therefore He was called “the Firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20).
How do we say He is the Firstfruits while Lazarus had risen by Him before, and the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain, and before that the son of the widow of Zarephath, and the son of the Shunammite, and a dead man who touched the bones of Elisha rose?!
He is the Firstfruits because His Resurrection differs from every other resurrection. We mention the following points:
He is the Firstfruits because He is the first who rose in a Resurrection followed by no death.
All who rose before died again and await the general resurrection in which they will rise again—a resurrection to eternal life with no death after it, in the likeness of Christ’s Resurrection…
And He is the Firstfruits because He is the first who rose with a glorified body.
All those who rose before rose with the same material body, subject to all the factors of corruption—fatigue, pain, sickness, and decay… They await in the general resurrection to rise again in the likeness of His glorious Body: “the spiritual luminous body, where this corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal will put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:49, 54).
And the Resurrection of Christ differs from every other resurrection in that He rose by Himself, and no one raised Him as happened with the others…
Thus we may distinguish linguistically between two expressions: “Resurrection” (with respect to Christ) and “raising” (with respect to others). We say “the raising of Lazarus,” not “the resurrection of Lazarus,” and likewise “the raising of the widow’s son,” not “his resurrection,” but concerning the Lord Christ we say “the Resurrection of Christ”…
And this gives us an idea of the power by which He rose from the dead.
The power of the Resurrection…
The Resurrection of Christ mocked all the opposing human actions.
He came out of the tomb while it was closed and sealed, just as He came out of the womb of the Virgin while her virginity remained sealed.
If His Resurrection was a miracle extraordinary in nature, then His coming out of the tomb while it was closed with a great stone upon it is a second miracle.
Here we notice that the angel—after the Resurrection—rolled away the stone so that the women might see the empty tomb, and that all might see it empty; but the angel did not roll away the stone for Christ to come out of the tomb… He had already come out earlier at a time unknown to anyone.
Thus His coming out of the tomb without the guards seeing Him is a third miracle; and His leaving behind the linen cloths and the handkerchief arranged is a fourth miracle that caused Peter to believe (John 20:6–8).
And His entering the upper room after the Resurrection while the doors were shut (John 20:26) is a fifth miracle.
Had the Jews not sealed the tomb, placed a great stone upon it, and secured it with armed guards, they would have had room to doubt the Resurrection… But these measures stood as a testimony against them and as proof for the Resurrection, giving the Resurrection a certain power that placed it above human arrangements, and the Jews thereafter greatly feared the apostles’ preaching of the Resurrection.
The first point in the greatness and power of the Resurrection is that Christ trampled death.
Death was under His authority, and He was not under the authority of death…
It was said of Him, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
The life in Him was stronger than the death that comes from outside.
Indeed, it is said that He Himself is life…
He said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).
He also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). If He is life, then death has no authority over Him.
The restoration of the disciples’ morale
The power of His Resurrection restored the morale of the disciples. It showed that truth, no matter how defeated it appears at first, must eventually triumph…
And that falsehood may appear proud, inflated, and boasting in its persecution of truth, but it quickly dissipates before the power of truth.
Falsehood is like smoke: it rises upward, far above the fire, higher than its heat and its light, but soon fades away.
The smoke that tries to obscure the light of the fire, rising upward, becomes weaker as it rises and its spread increases—its sharpness decreases, its strength weakens, and it dissipates and vanishes, while the fire remains as it is in its strength, light, and heat, despite its humility and its lack of competition with the smoke in height and extent.
This reminds us of the humility of Christ in His Resurrection despite its power. For He was crucified openly before all… but His Resurrection in its greatness He made in secret, and no one saw it!
No one saw Him during the Resurrection, but all saw the empty tomb and the arranged linen cloths… How did He come out of them and leave them, after breathing His last, with all the spices of about a hundred pounds? (John 19:39)
Is this not a clear miracle?
Among His other miracles after the Resurrection were His appearances to the disciples, which give us another aspect of the Resurrection, namely consolation and joy…
Truly the Resurrection gives consolation to those whose loved ones have departed through death. This consolation the disciples enjoyed when they saw the Lord, who had already promised them this when He said, “But I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (John 16:22).
And just as the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord, this was a joy to the entire world, for the Lord sanctified human nature in His Resurrection, granting it the ability to rise from death… and His Resurrection became the pledge of the general resurrection.
We rejoice in His Resurrection because it is also our resurrection—the resurrection of our nature.
This Resurrection changed the circumstances, as we have said… and it had its wondrous effect on the psyche of the disciples, who came out of the upper room with boldness… and went about preaching the Resurrection of the Lord everywhere.
Those who had been afraid in the upper room, not speaking, had their words reach the ends of the world.
And Peter, who had denied the Lord previously and sworn he did not know the man, returned to proclaim his faith in Him everywhere, preaching in His name. And when they threatened him, he did not fear but said his immortal phrase: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
The disciples no longer feared death, for by Christ’s Resurrection death no longer frightened them, and they no longer feared prison or sufferings… After they were beaten and imprisoned, Scripture says they went away rejoicing “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name… And daily in the temple and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus Christ” (Acts 5:41–42).
The restoration of the disciples’ morale was caused by the Resurrection. It also had another cause: the Lord’s visitation to them after His Resurrection.
The Lord visits His disciples
The Lord did not ascend immediately after His Resurrection but remained forty days with the disciples, visiting them, comforting them, strengthening them, explaining to them the details of their upcoming ministry, and giving them His teaching and what they should instruct the people regarding the doctrines of faith.
In this, our teacher St. Luke says, “to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).
Truly it would not have benefited us had the Lord ascended directly after His Resurrection, for there was pastoral work He needed to accomplish before the Ascension.
The visitation began when He said to Mary Magdalene, “Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me” (Matt. 28:10).
Then He appeared to Peter as a special consolation to him, for he was bitter in soul after denying Christ… We notice that the Lord did not rebuke him with hurting words; rather He said to him gently, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?… Feed My lambs… shepherd My sheep” (John 21:15–17).
Thus He restored him to apostleship, which Peter might have feared would be taken from him after his denial.
Just as the Lord visited Mary Magdalene and Peter, He also visited Thomas to remove his doubt…
He showed him His pierced hands and His wounded side and said to him, “Reach your hand… and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27). And He did not leave him until he believed…
Thus the Lord was gentle with all… And in the doubt of the eleven disciples regarding the Resurrection, He entered among them while the doors were shut… And when they thought He was a spirit, He said to them: “…Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).
In the Resurrection of the Lord, just as He restored the morale of the disciples and removed their doubts, He also completed His teaching for them and opened their minds to understand…
This appears in His encounter with the two disciples of Emmaus, for the Gospel says that He “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).
Concerning the eleven, He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me… Then He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44–45).
After His Resurrection He also granted His disciples the sacrament of priesthood and the authority of binding and loosing.
He said to them, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21–23).
When He completed delivering to them all the foundations of faith and all the mysteries and all the rites, He said to them:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you…” (Matt. 28:19–20) “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:15–16).
And He promised them that He would be with them, saying: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:21).
Blessed is the Lord in His Resurrection and in all that He did for us after His Resurrection.
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani newspaper on 14-4-1985.
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