5th April 2026 –
The Resurrection is the foundation of the Christian’s faith. Yet what does it mean? The Resurrection did not mean that Jesus’ mortal life had been prolonged. His life after Resurrection was different from the life he had lived before. The Gospels make it clear that Jesus was no longer subject to the limitations that this life places upon us – and indeed placed on him, too, before his resurrection. The Gospels, however, very definitely emphasise the physical character of his appearances. His disciples recognised his voice, they touched him, they shared meals with him. Equally the Gospels do not shy away from telling us that Jesus could enter rooms where the doors were shut. He could appear suddenly and just as suddenly disappear. They knew, as much as we do, that knowledge of the workings of this world meant that this was implausible. Yet they did not shy away from recording what they experienced.
When reflecting on the various appearances of Jesus, it is worth asking the question, to whom did the risen Jesus appear? Or to put the question another way, to whom might we expect him to appear? Certainly he had a wonderful opportunity to dispel all doubts about the truth of his resurrection. Jesus might have turned up at a meeting of the Jewish Temple authorities and forced them by the pure evidence of his presence to accept the fact that a man whom they knew for certain had died was now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, alive. An even better idea, why didn’t he appear to the Emperor Tiberius Caesar in Rome? He could have ordered the emperor to proclaim the gospel throughout the empire. Think of how much easier things would have been, if Jesus had done this. All those bloody martyrdoms would have been spared. Peter would not have had to die upside down on a cross. Paul would not have had his head chopped off outside the city of Rome. And so many others would not have been thrown to wild beasts in the Roman Coliseum or been burnt alive for the outlandish amusement of the crowd.
Non-believers would have been overwhelmed by the evidence. They would be compelled to become believers. Yet these are precisely the kinds of things that Jesus did not do. He appeared only to his chosen disciples. We read in the Acts of the Apostles an intriguing statement that calls for serious reflection, if we are to understand the meaning of the Resurrection. Peter goes to Caesarea, to the home of the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was interested in hearing more about Jesus. Peter preaches what was clearly the proclamation of the early disciples of Jesus. He says: “Now I, and those with me, can witness to everything he did throughout the countryside of Judea and in Jerusalem itself: and also to the fact that they killed him by handing him on a tree, yet three days afterwards God raised him to life to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand. Now we are those witnesses, we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.” (Acts 10:38-41).
The key point is that Jesus appeared, not to all the people, but to those who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate with him after he rose from the dead. Evidently the risen Jesus was seen only by those who were linked to him by some bond of love and friendship. Those who did not know him and those who opposed him during his mortal life never got to see him as the Risen Lord.
St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica III, q. 55, art. 2, ad 1) says that Jesus’ disciples Were able to see him because of the eyes of faith.” The disciples may have lost hope after Jesus he died, but they never lost their love and friendship for him. And it was this loving friendship, which is at the core of faith, which gave them the ability to recognise him, when others could not.
The mortal Jesus, the Jesus before his death, could have been experienced as a fact of physical, scientific data; the risen Jesus, however, could only be experienced by faith. For resurrection is not returning from the dead. It is something beyond death to an entirely different kind of existence. Such a leap cannot be verified by ordinary experience. There is always that element of the Resurrection that cannot be explained: Jesus is no longer as he was, he is still who he was. He is the same Jesus. he even carries the wounds of his passion on his body, yet he is somehow different. This means that the Resurrection cannot be proved. It is a matter of faith.
Because Jesus, as a man, entered into an entirely new kind of existence, an immortal existence, the human story is no longer birth, life, death, corruption. It has become birth, life, death and eternal life. The message of the Resurrection is that the body matters. These bodies of ours, with weak hearts, poor eyesight and hearing, arthritic joints and all the other illnesses we endure, are going to be transformed. They’re going to be glorified. For CHRIST HAS RISEN! Easter is not just a happy ending to Jesus’ story. It is a radical new beginning for the human race. Easter means that what is mortal becomes what is eternal. Easter is the gateway into the Divine Life -the hall marks of this life are justice and mercy, truth and joy, peace and kindness, summed up by Saint John in one word – love.
