Jesus Christ’s Resurrection Clearly Happened. What Does It Mean?

My parents raised me Catholic, and I received the sacraments of baptism and communion as a child. However, I stopped going to confirmation classes in 2013 on account of my parents’ divorce, and I was generally unserious about Christianity until 2016–17. I was at that point an obnoxious acolyte of Ben Shapiro, constantly in the business of defending whatever position I believed had the most evidentiary support. When I realized that Christianity is rational and can be defended with facts, logic, and evidence (such as Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God), I embraced Christianity and immersed myself in trying to prove historically various elements of the Bible. I was accordingly overjoyed to discover, on Easter Sunday 2018, a since-deleted Western Journal article entitled “Historical Evidence That Jesus Rose from the Dead.” Frankly, reading this article was probably my first time engaging with the narrative of Christ’s resurrection, and I found the evidence for this event compelling enough to never again question that Christ rose from the dead. I was confirmed in the Catholic Church at the University of Chicago; and, somewhere along the line, the basis for my religious belief shifted from ‘facts and logic’ to faith. Compounding the seemingly indefeasible intellectual assent I granted the resurrection years ago, my faith journey and Tuesday’s readings have helped me identify three deeper meanings of the resurrection: comfort, promise-fulfillment, and example.

We can see Christ in the Shroud of Turin and, because of His resurrection, find comfort in His undying presence.

Just as the incarnation demonstrates for mankind that God is not absent, the resurrection proves that He is not dead. This has provided thousands of years of comfort for religious believers, starting with the Blessed Virgin Mary and Christ’s disciples and apostles. John of Caulibus’s Meditations stresses this point, describing how much Christ’s “departure devastated” the Blessed Virgin and how much His return filled her with joy: “They arose, with tears of joy, she embraced him, pressed her face to his, and held on tightly, fairly falling into his arms” (pp. 278–81). Similarly, the Gospel accounts emphasize how Christ’s resurrection mollified the “trembling,” “fear, ” and “weeping” that Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of James; and Salome experienced upon discovering that Christ’s body was not in the tomb (Matthew 28:8, Mark 16:8, John 20:11). “[T]hey have taken away my Lord,” said Mary Magdalene in between tears; “and I know not where they have laid him” (John 20:13). “[B]ehold Jesus met [Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of James; and Salome], saying: All hail. . . . Then Jesus said to them: Fear not” (Matthew 28:9–10). “[W]hy weepest thou? . . . I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:15–17). In much the same spirit, Christ’s resurrection provided comfort to two disciples traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. “[H]e said to them: What are all these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?” (Luke 24:16). Seeing the resurrected Christ, “their eyes were opened, and they knew him” (24:31). Christ’s resurrection also comforted His apostles. “Peace be to you; it is I, fear not. Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” (Luke 24:38).

For today’s Christians, Christ’s resurrection provides the comfort of knowing that a God we can visualize and understand is enthroned in Heaven and ready to receive our petitions. Doubly comforting is when He gives an answer.

Second, the resurrection is the classic case of promise-fulfillment: Christ rising from the dead accomplished both the promises of the Old Testament as well as those He uttered while on Earth. The Old Testament is clear on the point that God would appear to mankind as a meek lamb, suffer death for the salvation of all, and be resurrected from the dead. “For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will gather you together,” reads the Prophecy of Isaiah in foretelling the incarnation. “Behold my servant shall understand, he shall be exalted, and extolled, and shall be exceeding high” (52:12–13). The prophecy continues, describing Christ’s coming passion: “All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . [H]e shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter” (53:6–7). Finally, the prophecy foretells Christ’s resurrection: “[T]he Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand” (53:10). Isaiah posits, in so many words, that Christ’s resurrection would be the bridge between the Old Testament notions of Him as both “exceeding high” and a “sheep to the slaughter”; it would only be in the resurrection that He would mesh those identities.

While walking on Earth, Christ was even clearer than the Old Testament in forecasting that He would be resurrected from the dead. “[H]e taught his disciples and said to them: The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise again the third day” (Mark 9:30). Thus, it would have been embarrassing for the Old Testament prophets but doubly so for Christ if He failed to resurrect Himself from the dead. Christ’s mockers at Calvary held out hope that this would be the case, “saying: Vah, thou that destroyest the temple of God, and in three days buildest it up again; Save thyself, coming down from the cross” (Mark 15:29–30). Needless to worry, Christ’s resurrection from the dead fulfilled both the Old Testament prophecies and the promises He tendered to His disciples.

Third, Christ’s resurrection (and ascension into Heaven) is a dramatic and detailed example of the resurrection of the body, which Christ’s saving passion and resurrection made available to all who believe in Him and repent for their sins. As Hugh of St. Victor’s On the Sacraments elucidates, Christ’s soul exited His lifeless flesh on Good Friday. And, as “The Harrowing of Hell” illustrates in dramatic form, Christ’s soul took on something of a life of its own in the period from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, saving Adam, Abraham, Moses, and the like from eternal damnation. Christ’s body and soul reunited into one cohesive whole on Easter Sunday, and this cohesive whole ascended into Heaven after forty days (Luke 24:51). The resurrection narrative gives Christians a concrete example of what awaits the saved at the Last Judgment. Their bodies will reconstitute themselves, becoming incorruptible and “impervious[] to change”—regardless of any rot that has occurred in the interim (Bynum, pp. 172, 185). Then, their bodies will reunite with their souls, which, in my understanding, are detached from the body and sent to Heaven or Hell in the run-up to the Last Judgment.

In short, it is with Christ that the prophecy of Daniel makes tangible sense: “many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake: some unto life everlasting. . . [T]hey that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament” (12:2–3).

— DMH