from the Resurrection
from the Resurrection
How many miracles occurred at the time of Christ’s crucifixion: the sun was darkened, the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the tombs were opened, and the veil of the temple was torn…
But did everyone benefit from these miracles? No. Rather, each person’s benefit is according to the readiness of his heart…
from the Resurrection
When the earth quaked, the thief believed, but the priests and their leaders did not believe. And when blood and water came out from Christ’s side, the centurion and his soldiers believed, but the leaders of the people did not believe.
The matter does not depend on the miracle and the extent of its power, but rather more on the extent of the readiness of a person’s heart within and his desire to benefit.
In the miracle of granting sight to the man born blind, the man believed, while the Pharisees did not believe, although the miracle was clearly powerful. Rather, they rose up against the man when he defended Christ who healed him, and they cast him out of the synagogue (John 9:34). Likewise, when Christ healed the man with the withered hand, they refused to benefit from the miracle because the Lord healed him on the Sabbath… All this reminds us of the parable of the sower which the Lord explained…
The growth of the plant depended first of all on the condition of the soil: whether it was rocky, or good, or full of thorns… The sower is the same sower, and the seed is the same seed. But the soil that receives the seed from the sower differs in the extent of its goodness and its acceptance of the divine planting…
Thus it happened in the story of the Resurrection and in the story of the Crucifixion. The miracles are present, but people differ. Among them are those who benefited, and among them are those who did not benefit…
Seed on rocky ground (on stone)
The chief priests and leaders of the Jewish people saw the sun darkened at noon, at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. Yet they did not benefit, because their hearts were darker than the darkness upon the face of the earth.
Even after these miracles, by which the right-hand thief and the centurion believed, they went to Pilate saying about Christ: “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said while He was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:62–64).
Thus they took soldiers with them, went and secured the tomb with guards, and sealed the stone. And they did not care that they did all this on the Sabbath day—those who said that Christ was a sinner because He healed the sick on the Sabbath.
How zealous they were for the Sabbath, and how they opposed Christ because of it. They even asked that the legs of the crucified be broken and that they be taken down, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross lest they defile the Sabbath… A strange zeal for the Sabbath!
Yet they took soldiers with them on the Sabbath night, sealed the tomb on the Sabbath night, and set guards to watch the tomb on the Sabbath… and in all this there was no sin!!
As if they said in their hearts, when they sealed the tomb on the Sabbath, “We have broken the Sabbath in order to break the breaker of the Sabbath”!! But Christ, while they were sealing His tomb, had released the redeemed from Hades, opened the seals of the closed Paradise, and brought into it those who had fallen asleep in hope…
How easy it is for people to play with their consciences as they wish.
There are persons whose consciences are spherical, rolling on any side; wherever they slip, they settle and rest! The Jewish leaders were of that kind.
But what they did was against them, not for them. For if they had not sealed the tomb themselves and set guards of their own, they could later have protested and said that the disciples stole the body. But now, after they secured the tomb with guards and sealed it, what can they say when the tomb is empty and Christ has risen in great glory, coming out of the sealed tomb just as He came in His birth from the womb of the Virgin, with her virginity sealed…
After Christ’s Resurrection, a great earthquake occurred, “for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men” (Matthew 28:2–4).
Did the guards benefit from this great miracle? Did the chief priests and elders of the people benefit from it? No. The holy seed had fallen on rocky ground… Our father Abraham spoke truth when he said, “Nor will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).
If there is some excuse sought for the Gentile soldiers who knew nothing about the Messiah and His glory, what about the priests, teachers of the Law, who were supposed to be zealous for the commandments of the Lord and their fulfillment?
When they heard of the Resurrection from the soldiers, they gave them a bribe and put false words in their mouths, saying, “Say, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying was widely spread (Matthew 28:11–15).
Thus they did not benefit from the miracle of the Resurrection, but increased in evil.
They lied and taught others to lie. It was not even a well-crafted lie. They instructed them to say that His disciples stole Him while they were asleep!! If you were asleep, how did you know in your sleep that His disciples took Him?! Truly the rope of falsehood is short… But they were not content with lying; they falsely accused others, attaching the charge of theft to the disciples. They paid a bribe to cover their deed. They harmed the reputation of the soldiers. They deceived the governor. They misled all the people, the people deceived in them…
And in all this misguidance, they described Christ as a deceiver. As though they were saying to Pilate: Save the people from this deceiver, so that we may deceive them ourselves!!
The seed of the miracle of the Resurrection, when it fell into the hearts of those leaders, fell on rocky ground and did not affect them. Their thinking about preserving their positions overpowered their thinking about their eternity.
In them we see how a person descends from one sin to another, in a long chain of sins without end…
The principle of their sins was the love of vainglory.
This love led them to envy; they envied Christ because they wanted to be alone in the picture, without anyone standing beside them—how much more this Nazarene who overshadowed their fame and exposed their hypocrisy.
The sin of envy led them to conspiracy, and conspiracy led them to false witness in the trial of Christ. All this led them to cruelty in crucifying Him and to misleading the whole people. Their wrong position led them to fear. Fear led them to secure and seal the tomb, breaking the Sabbath and involving others in this breaking. And their sin—exposed by the Resurrection—led them to bribery, lying, inciting others to lie, misleading people, and unbelief.
While by all this they wanted to grow great in their own eyes and in the eyes of the people, they lost themselves and gained neither heaven nor earth…
They are rocky ground… a sin wrapped in fear… They feared Christ even after His death… They feared His Resurrection because it would demolish all they had done… They felt that although they had killed Him, Christ still had work…
The murderer fears the ghost and the image of his victim…
Psychologists have spoken truth when they said that the murderer always hovers around the scene of the crime… and these also kept hovering around the place of their crime.
The disciples of Christ forgot His saying that He would rise on the third day, but those priests and elders, fearful of Christ, did not forget.
They said to Pilate: We remember that that deceiver said, “After three days I will rise.” How strange that they remembered this phrase, but did not remember His saying, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), nor did they remember that He did works which no one else had done before… They did not remember His raising of Lazarus after four days of death, nor His granting sight to the man born blind… They remembered His Resurrection because the idea of the Resurrection troubled their thoughts and disturbed them… So they committed what they committed in order to get rid of it.
They are an example that gives us an idea of the seed that fell on rocky ground. And there are other kinds of soil…
There is seed that fell among thorns, sprang up, and was choked by the thorns. The most prominent example in the events of the Resurrection is Mary Magdalene.
As for the effect of the Resurrection in the souls of Christ’s disciples, it was like seed that the birds devoured. The birds, in regard to the disciples, are the devil of doubt who snatched their faith and flew away. How did that happen? And how did Christ transform them into good soil that yields a hundredfold? And how did He restore faith to their hearts and to the heart of Magdalene? This is what we will now explain…
Seed snatched by the birds:
How painful it was to the heart of the Lord that what happened did happen…
Even His eleven disciples doubted His Resurrection and did not believe…
But He did not meet this doubt with rebuke; rather, with all love He embraced their weakness and treated their doubt with persuasion…
Mary Magdalene went to them and told them of the Lord’s Resurrection, “And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe” (Mark 16:11).
When the women returned from the tomb and told them of the Lord’s Resurrection, “their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11).
When the Lord appeared to the two disciples of Emmaus, “they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either” (Mark 16:13).
Even when the Lord Himself appeared to them, they did not believe that He had risen, but “they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:37).
The seed of faith which the Lord had cast into their soil had been snatched away by the devil of doubt and flown away with. So the Lord had to condescend to their weakness to convince them of His Resurrection.
Thus He dealt with the two disciples of Emmaus who were slow of heart to understand, for “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27)… and He remained with them until “their eyes were opened and they knew Him,” and they went and told the eleven.
To those eleven also the Lord condescended to their weakness and said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 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 24:38–39). And the Lord who had risen in a glorified body condescended to convince them, saying to them, “Have you any food here?”
So they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and some honeycomb. “And He took it and ate in their presence” (Luke 24:43). When Thomas was absent, the Lord appeared to him especially to treat his doubt and convince him…
The Lord remained with them until they believed and were established. He continued to show Himself alive to them by many infallible proofs (Acts 1:3). He did not leave them. He stayed with them forty days, appearing to them and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. He drove away the birds that snatch their seed and transformed them into good soil that yields not thirty or sixty but a hundredfold. Faith in them became a great fruitful tree bearing every kind of good fruit.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Seventh Year (Issue Eighteen) – 30-4-1976
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