Contemplations on the Resurrection¹
I congratulate you on the Feast of the Resurrection of the Lord from the dead, and we would like today to benefit from some contemplations on the Resurrection.
Contemplations on the Resurrection¹
† The first thing we notice is the humility of the Lord, who allowed His crucifixion and humiliation to be before everyone, while He made His glorious Resurrection in secret, a mystery that no one saw…!!
He did not rise in glory before all people in order to compensate for the insults and reproaches that befell Him at the time of the crucifixion… Rather, He rose secretly. And He chose the time of dawn for the Resurrection, when all people were asleep, so that no one would see Him in the glory of His Resurrection…
He was far from dazzling appearances in His Resurrection, just as He was also far from dazzling appearances in His Birth…
Then afterward He appeared to Mary Magdalene and to the other Mary, and to Peter and to the women, and to the two disciples of Emmaus and to the eleven, then to Saul of Tarsus and to some brethren… to the beloved, to the chosen ones… and He did not appear to those who had previously mocked Him…
And despite all this, this Resurrection that took place in secret greatly disturbed the Jews, and they tried with all their power to stop it or at least prevent people from believing in it…!!
First they tried to stop it through the ruling authority, so they contacted Pilate the governor. And they said to him: We have heard that that deceiver said that He would rise on the third day, so lest His disciples come by night and steal Him, and the last deception be worse than the first, command that the tomb be secured with guards. And they took soldiers with them, and placed a large stone on the tomb, and sealed it. And they secured the tomb with guards, to prevent the Resurrection. And with all this they were not able to prevent the Resurrection… And Christ rose.
And when they found that they had failed to prevent the Resurrection through the soldiers and the guards and the stone and the seals, they wanted to prevent its reaching the people in another way: through lies, bribery, and rumors.
Thus they paid a bribe to the guards, just as they had paid money to Judas. And they instructed them to tell Pilate that the disciples had stolen the body while the soldiers were asleep. And the Jewish priests spread this misleading rumor. And they fell into the same description with which they had described Christ, so they became the deceivers, and the last deception was their own deception… And when this trick failed, and they could not prevent the news of the Resurrection through lies and bribery, and the news of the Resurrection spread throughout the whole earth through the preaching of the disciples, they resorted to another method.
They tried to prevent the preaching of the Resurrection by arresting the disciples, flogging them, imprisoning them, and submitting complaints against them to the rulers…
And with all this they could not prevent the Resurrection nor prevent the preaching of it. And the disciples were able to proclaim it with all boldness, without hindrance. And they said to the Jewish priests and their leaders, “We must obey God rather than men,” and the world was filled with the talk of the Resurrection, and the leaders of the Jews held a council and said that these people wanted to bring upon them the blood of this man…
Human means failed to prevent belief in the Resurrection… and the saying of Scripture proved true: “Every weapon formed against you shall not prosper.”
Human force from soldiers and guards and seals failed. And lies, bribery, and rumors failed, and persecution and imprisonment and flogging failed… And the gates of Hades did not prevail against the Church. And the Resurrection, which had frightened them, continued to pursue them. And faith spread.
So what is the secret of this great Resurrection? Its secret is that for the first time in history and for the last time, a person rose from the dead by Himself; no one raised Him…! An event that terrified them…
The Lord Christ fulfilled what He had said about Himself… that no one can take it from Him: “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”… He laid down Himself, He offered it. No one forced Him to die. He died for His beloved, and He rose. He offered Himself as a ransom, and He took it again. No one has authority over Him…
The mighty Nazarene overcame them, He over whom death could not prevail, who trampled death and rose, when He willed and as He had foretold. And no one could prevent His Resurrection…
They did to Him everything they could: they bought one of His disciples with money, they arrested Him, they judged Him unjustly and by night, they arranged for false witnesses, they sentenced Him for blasphemy, they pressured the governor, they stirred up the people, they insulted Christ, they scourged Him, they crucified Him, He died before their eyes… and they thought they had gotten rid of Him forever… And behold, He rose by Himself, “and His tomb is empty,” and before His Resurrection they felt the failure of all their human methods, and the people departed from them…
But why did Christ not appear to them after the Resurrection? Was it not suitable that He appear to convince them so they might believe?!
He did not appear to them because they were not worthy… and because even if He had appeared to them, they would not have believed… This point reminds us of the words of Abraham the Patriarch to the rich man who lived at the same time as poor Lazarus: “Even if one rises from the dead, they will not believe”… And the Lord Christ had done many other miracles among them, and they did not believe… And when He healed the man born blind, they said to the man born blind: Do you not know that the one who healed you is a sinner?!! And during the crucifixion the sun darkened, the rocks split, the veil of the temple was torn, and some of the dead arose… and yet they did not believe…!!!
Thus He did not appear to them because they were not worthy, and because they would not believe. So why then did He not appear to the rest of the people…
The Lord Christ thereby left room for faith. And faith, as the Apostle Paul said, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”… If the Resurrection were visible, it would have joined the realm of sight, not faith. For faith is “the evidence of things not seen.” It is enough that He appeared to the leaders, so that all might believe through them…
In addition to the element of faith, not everyone can bear this matter; therefore, when Christ appeared in His Resurrection even to His own, He did not appear in His glory, because they could not bear it…
With the two disciples of Emmaus He progressed gradually, so they did not recognize Him at first…
And with Mary Magdalene, He hid Himself until she thought He was the gardener, then He revealed Himself to her after progressing with her a little.
And Saul of Tarsus, when He appeared to him with something small of His glory, his eyes became blind from the light, then He healed him afterward.
And John the beloved, when He appeared to him in something of the glory, fell at His feet as dead, and He raised him and said to him, Do not fear…
Truly, who can bear seeing Christ in His glory?! But in His humility, it suffices what He showed of His self-emptying… He will appear to them later in His glory, in the second coming, and they will say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us… and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.
And though the Lord Christ rose in quiet and in secret, His Resurrection indicated His extraordinary power and His victory… And this Resurrection was able to change all situations, turning the fear of the disciples into boldness, and their doubts into preaching and evangelism, and gave them great strength and courage of heart so that they no longer feared death, for Christ had trampled it.
Thus the Resurrection reversed the situations that had previously been reversed by the humiliation of the Cross, and things returned to their original state.
People believed in the Lord. And when they saw Him humiliated and crucified, their faith weakened and they doubted. And the Resurrection restored to them their former faith. All followed Him before the crucifixion, and at the hour of the crucifixion they turned against Him and shouted against Him. And with the Resurrection they returned to follow Him again.
Indeed, the Cross that had been humiliation became the pride of the believers…
Christ, through His Resurrection, was able to raise heads that had been bowed, to give boldness to hearts that had feared, and to grant strength to those who had weakened and hidden. And everyone who looks at the image of Christ risen from the dead remembers the power of Christ and His victory, and through his faith in the Resurrection, strength enters his heart, and the spirit of victory enters him, so he neither fears death nor fails.
And through the Resurrection people were assured that the powers of evil have limits, and that no matter how victorious they appear, their fate is disappearance, because good is stronger and more enduring. Even if good is crucified, it will rise again alive…
Christ is the mighty victorious One, and He is also the One who is present with His disciples, forty days with them, strengthening them in faith, removing their doubts, speaking to them of matters pertaining to the kingdom of God, and whispering in their ears His encouraging statement:
“Behold, I am with you all days, unto the end of the age”…
Yes, He is with them, with His power and His support, now and always… Therefore these are days of joy in which the Church celebrates—no fasting, no prostrations, no self-abasement, no sorrowful hymns… Even if the body of a deceased enters the church, they receive him with joyful hymns…
It is a period in which the Church celebrates life, the life that death cannot overcome… the life that is in Christ Jesus…
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men,” thus said John the Evangelist (1:4). And Christ Himself said about Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” “I am the Resurrection and the life”…
Would anyone then believe that life dies?! The life that was in Him was stronger than the death that He bore on our behalf.
The life that was in Him could not remain in the tomb. Rather, it had to come out of it victorious in order to give life to all by its power. Thus was the power of the Resurrection in Christ, in Himself, not coming to Him from outside…
And thus Christ rose, and all His enemies disappeared like weak mice, each one entering his hole. And the word of the Lord grew, and the number of disciples multiplied… And even those who were scattered went about preaching the word… Even the Roman Empire, which persecuted Christianity in the days of Nero and Diocletian and others… finally believed… As for the Jews, they were scattered… and the power of the Resurrection appeared.
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Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Kerraza Magazine – Sixth year (Issue Twenty), 16-5-1975
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