2005 Easter Supplement

(Note: The Easter supplement is composed mostly of Catholic News Service stories, as well as pictures and beautiful cover art. Below is the annual Easter article that is written by the editor emeritus of The Criterion.)

'Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed'

By John F. Fink

See Matthew 27:55-28:20, Mark 15:40-16:18,
Luke 23:48-24:49, John 19:33-21:14, 1 Corinthians 15:1-19

Jesus had died. There could be no doubt about it. Just to make sure he was dead, one of the soldiers thrust his lance into Jesus’ side. There were many eyewitnesses, not only curious citizens of Jerusalem but also the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee. Most of them had stood below the hill of execution enduring the horrible spectacle, but some had come right up to the cross to help comfort Mary, his mother.

What would happen to Jesus’ body, the women wondered. Would it be thrown into the common pit where most crucified criminals ended up? Surely they were relieved to see Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, and the Pharisee Nicodemus approach the cross carrying some linen shrouds and a mixture of myrrh and aloes.

They carefully took Jesus’ body down from the cross, anointed it, and wrapped it in the linen shrouds. Then we can imagine a small funeral procession as they carried the body to a tomb that had been hewn in the walls of the former quarry. It was beginning to get dark on this early spring day, so they did their work quickly because the Sabbath was about to begin—not just any Sabbath, in fact, but the feast of Passover.

Then, we can be sure, Joseph and Nicodemus went to their homes and, before leading the Passover Seder, immersed themselves in their ritual baths to cleanse themselves after having touched a dead body. The women, too, dispersed after making plans to return to the tomb after the Sabbath was over.

Jesus’ body, though, was not left alone. Soldiers were posted outside the tomb to make sure that Jesus’ disciples didn’t come and steal the body and then claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Even if his Apostles never understood what Jesus meant when he said that he would rise from the dead, the Jewish chief priests and Pharisees apparently did.

We don’t know exactly what happened next because there were no eyewitnesses. All we know is that, when Mary Magdalene and two other women went to the tomb early Sunday morning, they found it empty. Before they arrived, the soldiers had been dazzled when an angel appeared and rolled back the large stone in front of the tomb. The angel then told the women that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

No one saw him rise, but the soldiers and the women each reported that the body had disappeared—the soldiers to their superiors and the women to the Apostles. The Apostles didn’t believe that Jesus had actually risen from the dead. Yes, of course, he had told them that it would happen, but they were nevertheless completely unprepared for his actual return to the earth. Peter and John ran to the tomb anyway, to see for themselves, then went back to tell the others that the tomb was empty.

Mary Magdalene was convinced that someone had stolen the body, which is undoubtedly what the Apostles thought, too. She returned to the tomb in sorrow. When she saw a man standing nearby, she thought he was the gardener and asked him if he had taken Jesus’ body away. That’s when the risen Jesus revealed himself to her.

This was the first of many appearances that Jesus made after his resurrection from the dead. Those who wrote about the appearances remembered certain things and all the accounts differ; there was never an attempt to try to harmonize the various accounts. Of course, they were also writing years after the Resurrection occurred.

St. Paul was the first to write about the Resurrection—at least, the first account that still exists. He wrote about it in his first letter to the Corinthians around the year 57, about 27 years later. Unlike the evangelists, he makes no mention of Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene, but he says that he appeared to Peter; then to the rest of the Twelve (actually, only 11 by then since Judas was dead); then to 500 people at the same time; then to James, the first bishop of Jerusalem; and finally (in a vision) to Paul.

The evangelists, too, detail numerous appearances—to Peter; to two disciples on the road to Emmaus; to the Apostles while Thomas was absent and, a week later, when he was present; to some of the Apostles who were fishing in Galilee; and to the Apostles on a mountain in Galilee.

We have become familiar with all of these stories of Jesus’ appearance because we have heard them year after year. But what can we learn from them?

Let’s begin with his first appearance—to Mary Magdalene. After he spoke her name and she recognized him, Jesus told her not to cling to him because he had not yet ascended to the Father and he instructed her to tell the Apostles that he was “going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

The author of John’s Gospel and other New Testament writers thought that the Resurrection and the Ascension took place as one action—immediately after Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene. The Ascension 40 days later, which Luke wrote about in the Acts of the Apostles, was merely the end of Jesus’ earthly appearances. Having been glorified through his Ascension after appearing to Mary Magdalene, he was able to breathe the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles when he appeared to them on Easter night.

John’s Gospel’s emphasis on “breathing” on the Apostles recalls the only other reference to breathing in Scripture—in Genesis 2:7 when God formed the first man out of the slime of the earth and breathed on him to give him life. Just as Adam’s life came from God, so now the Apostles’ new life came from Jesus.

One of the puzzling things about Jesus’ appearances is that he was usually not immediately recognized—by Mary Magdalene, the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and the Apostles who had been fishing. Why not?

Because Jesus was resurrected, not simply resuscitated as had been Lazarus, the son of the widow of Naim and the daughter of the synagogue official, Jairus. Jesus had a glorified body, a spiritual body—just the kind we will have when our bodies are resurrected. With that body he was able to pass through the stone that sealed his tomb (the angel rolled the stone back so the women could enter; Jesus was already gone) and into the room where the Apostles were gathered despite the doors being locked. He could appear to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and then disappear, only to appear miles away to the Apostles. He rose into the sky at the end of the 40 days during which he made appearances.

It was a spiritual body, but also a real body. He was not a ghost, as he proved when he showed the Apostles the wounds on his body and ate some baked fish. Surely a spiritual body doesn’t need to eat or drink, but Jesus was demonstrating to his Apostles that he was really resurrected.

He was indeed truly resurrected, as Christians have believed from the earliest days of Christianity. St. Paul bases everything about our faith on the Resurrection: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.”

Jesus redeemed us by offering himself to God on the cross as the perfect victim. As both human and divine, Jesus died in his humanity, but it was as God that he offered the sacrifice to his Father. His resurrection showed that God accepted the sacrifice and had glorified the victim.

When he appeared to Thomas, who insisted on seeing Jesus for himself before he would believe that Jesus was resurrected, Thomas professed his belief in the words, “My Lord and my God!” Although he had been called the Son of God before, this was the first and only time that Jesus was addressed directly as “God.” Jesus then made the declaration for all of us through the ages: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

Blessed are we indeed. †