The sermon starts about 25:30 in.
For this first #ArtWednesday after #Easter, we’ll look at art inspired by Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. (Rembrandt, The Incredulity of St Thomas, 1634) #Resurrection #PostResurrectionAppearances #EasterWeek #Rembrandt pic.twitter.com/XEZnW0NGzZ
— Russ Ramsey 🫀 (@russramsey) April 4, 2018
The silence: deafening. Broken only by an excruciating groan from the protesting joints of a wooden chair as one of those seated shifts their weight.
No one speaks. But volumes are communicated as ashamed, bloodshot and guilt-ridden eyes meet across the room and quickly withdraw.
Suddenly, a familiar voice, clear and strong, declares, “Peace be with you.”
As if the roof were ripped off the house and the noon day sun flooded the room so their hearts were engulfed in joy.
In one glorious moment their inconsolable sorrow was unexpectantly turned to inexpressible exultation.
Vandaag is het Paaszondag 🐥. Volgens de Bijbel stond Christus op deze dag op uit zijn graf. Zijn discipelen herkenden hem eerst niet, pas toen zij in Emmaüs aan de maaltijd zaten en Christus het brood brak. Dit ogenblik van herkenning toont Rembrandt in deze ets. pic.twitter.com/f4qdI4E280
— Museum Het Rembrandthuis (@Rembrandthuis) April 4, 2021
Enjoy the whole thing.
O God, who makest us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Lord: Vouchsafe us such a blessing through our worship on the first day of the week, that the days to follow it may be hallowed by thy abiding presence; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Sunrise at Shrove this morning. pic.twitter.com/116NPzcPUj
— Fiontán Ó Caoláin (@fiontanoc) April 12, 2021
Lyrics:
This joyful Easter-tide,
Away with care and sorrow!
My Love, the Crucified,
Hath sprung to life this morrow.Had Christ, that once was slain,
Neer burst His three day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now hath Christ arisen,
Arisen, arisen, arisen!My flesh in hope shall rest,
And for a season slumber;
Till trump from east to west,
Shall wake the dead in number.Had Christ, that once was slain,
Neer burst His three day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now hath Christ arisen,
Arisen, arisen, arisen!Deaths flood hath lost his chill,
Since Jesus crossed the river:
Lover of souls, from ill
My passing soul deliver.Had Christ, that once was slain,
Neer burst His three day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now hath Christ arisen,
Arisen, arisen, arisen!
Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter’s robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.
Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe.
Chaplets for disheveled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.
Seek God’s house in happy throng;
Crowded let His table be;
Mingle praises, prayer and song,
Singing to the Trinity.
Henceforth let your souls alway
Make each morn an Easter Day.
New York, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL MA 091 / Giulio Clovio / Resurrection pic.twitter.com/f97TcgW7cg
— Jean-Luc Deuffic (@medievalpecia) April 6, 2015
Almighty God, who broughtest again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the glorious Prince of Salvation, with everlasting victory over sin and the grave: Grant us power, we beseech thee, to rise with him to newness of life, that we may overcome the world with the victory of faith, and have part at last in the resurrection of the just; through the merits of the same risen Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.
Moeraki Boulders during a stunning sunrise in New Zealand by Chris Smith pic.twitter.com/w0d9kVZ3pn
— ~Andrés G_74~ (@andrespeneke) April 11, 2021
MOST glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having harrowd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest dye,
Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!And that Thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love Thee for the same againe;
And for Thy sake, that all lyke deare didst buy,
With love may one another entertayne!
So let us love, deare Love, lyke as we ought,
—Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
— iwishpiece (@bestgreatist) April 10, 2021
We give thee thanks, O heavenly Father, who hast delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of thy Son; grant, we pray thee, that as by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his presence abiding in us he may raise us to joys eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, Fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.
(Lamentations 3:22-23) pic.twitter.com/2Nfb4xLqh6— Christine Caine (@ChristineCaine) April 9, 2021
Christ himself pointed out the benefit of his sufferings and resurrection when he said to the women in Mt 28, 10 – “Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me.” These are the very first words they heard from Christ after his resurrection from the dead, by which he confirmed all the former utterances and loving deeds he showed them, namely, that his resurrection avails in our behalf who believe, so that he therefore anticipates and calls Christians his brethren, who believe it, and yet they do not, like the apostles, witness his resurrection.
The risen Christ waits not until we ask or call on him to become his brethren. Do we here speak of merit, by which we deserve anything? What did the apostles merit? Peter denied his Lord three times; the other disciples all fled from him; they tarried with him like a rabbit does with its young. He should have called them deserters, yea, betrayers, reprobates, anything but brethren. Therefore this word is sent to them through the women out of pure grace and mercy, as the apostles at the time keenly experienced, and we experience also, when we are mired fast in our sins, temptations and condemnation.
These are words full of all comfort that Christ receives desperate villains as you and I are and calls us his brethren. Is Christ really our brother, then I would like to know what we can be in need of? Just as it is among natural brothers, so is it also here. Brothers according to the flesh enjoy the same possessions, have the same father, the one inheritance, otherwise they would not be brothers: so we enjoy with Christ the same possessions, and have in common with him one Father and one inheritance, which never decreases by being distributed, as other inheritances do; but it ever grows larger and larger; for it is a spiritual inheritance. But an earthly inheritance decreases when distributed among many persons. He who has a part of this spiritual inheritance, has it all.
The Church will not break because the Risen Lord is with us. #homilytweet #EasterFriday pic.twitter.com/nZ04LKeTz5
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) April 9, 2021
Listen to it all (and enjoy the inside of the Cathedral).
What links them together so that, all the same, they are the history of a single being, dying, dead and now rising again? A single world meaning, which has passed away and gone, to acquire new, eternal reality, presence and future in God? This is a problem of theological logic; perhaps it is the problem that the theologians have never attended to and that, if it were taken seriously, would threaten to throw into confusion all our beautiful Archimedean drawings on paper. And yet it is what is called the Logos tou staurou, the word and the message of the Cross, by Paul, who, in Corinth, renounces all other worldly and divine wisdom because God himself “will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever. . . . Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? . . . I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Risen too, of course, the “firstfruits of the dead”. Yes, he, he is the continuity for which we have been looking, the connecting thread linking ruin and rising, which does not break even in death and hell. He it is who walks along paths that are no paths, leaving no trace behind, through hell, hell which has no exit, no time, no being; and by the miracle from above he is rescued from the abyss, the profound depths, to save his brothers in Adam along with him.
And now there is something like a bridge over this rift: on the basis of the grace of the Resurrection there is the Church’s faith, the faith of Mary; there is the prayer at the grave, the faithful watching and waiting. It is a lightly built bridge, and yet it suffices to carry us. What it spans, however, is not some indifferent medium but the void of everlasting death. Nor can we compare the two sides as if from some higher vantage point; we cannot bring the two together in some rational, logical context by using some method, some process of thought, some logic: for the one side is that of death in God-forsakenness, and the other is that of eternal life. So we have no alternative but to trust in him, knowing, as we walk across the bridge, that he built it. Because of his grace we have been spared the absolute abyss, and yet, as we proceed across the bridge, we are actually walking alongside it, this most momentous of all transformations; we do not observe it, but can only be seized and pulled into it, to be transformed from dead people into resurrected people. May the sign of this transformation be found on our Janus destiny. May its mark be branded on each of our works, those that come to an end inexplicably and those that, inexplicably, are resurrected through grace. Their two faces can never meet; they can never behold each other, and we can never link up the two ends because the rope across the chasm is too short. So we must put it into God’s hand: only his fingers can join our broken parts into a whole.
Happy and blessed Easter! 🐥🐥🐥
In this Resurrection Hamburg painter Meister Francke, a Dominican friar born circa 1380, did something strikingly original: he painted Christ with his back turned to us while he climbs out of the tomb. 🐤 pic.twitter.com/PvbbypAILn— Rembrandt's R👀m 🖌 (@RembrandtsRoom) April 4, 2021
Today that question, that debate—Did Jesus really rise from the dead historically, bodily?—is not as prominent or as intense because, at one level, people feel that it doesn’t matter to them, because different people believe in different things, and maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t; and if it did, or didn’t, and that helps you get along in life, fine; but it doesn’t make much difference to me. I may or may not call myself a Christian, and if the resurrection seems helpful to me, I may believe it; and if it doesn’t, then I won’t, and I don’t think any body should tell me that I have to.
Behind those two different kinds of unbelief–the kind from 40 years ago and the kind from the present day–is a different set of assumptions. For example, in my college days the assumption pretty much still held sway, though it was starting to give way with the rise of existentialism, that there are fixed, closed natural laws, that make the world understandable and scientifically manageable, and these laws do not allow the truth of the claim that someone has risen from the dead to live forever. That was a commonly held assumption: The modern world with its scientific understanding of natural laws does not allow for resurrections. So unbelief was often rooted in that kind of assumption.
But today, that’s not the most common working assumption. Today the assumption is not that there are natural laws outside of me forbidding the resurrection of Jesus, but there is a personal law inside of me that says: I don’t have to adapt my life to anything I don’t find helpful. Or you could state it another way: Truth for me is what I find acceptable and helpful.
This unfinished Michelangelo is one painting telling the story of Easter in the Gallery: http://t.co/Po1mVqy6qk pic.twitter.com/TOYBdRrimD
— National Gallery (@NationalGallery) April 5, 2015
[Easter]…is the proclamation of a war already won. The war is at an end–even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind–and truly it is burning–but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.
–Karl Barth Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 123
Today's pick: Giovanni Bellini: Resurrection https://t.co/43PUCqbw7W pic.twitter.com/oqp48rsHqA
— Art and the Bible (@artbible) November 8, 2020
O God, the living God, who hast given unto us a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Grant that we, being risen with him, may seek the things which are above, and be made partakers of the life eternal; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)
Spring has sprung on the west side of Manhattan #NYC pic.twitter.com/5SqQ9qGOH2
— Max Guliani (@maximusupinNYc) April 8, 2021
We are an Easter people living in the story that started under the bright stars in a stable at Bethlehem, moved into the darkness that shrouded Christ on the cross, and now stands breathless before biggest occasion to crash into our history. Fleming Rutledge calls it “the transhistorical event,” where the true nature of God was revealed in Christ.
Rutledge says:
The resurrection is not a set piece. It is not an isolated demonstration of divine dazzlement… Since the resurrection is God’s mighty transhistorical Yes to the historically crucified Son, we can assert that the crucifixion is the most important historical event that has ever happened. …The resurrection ratifies the cross as the way “until He comes.” The Crucifixion (44)
We live in the now and the ‘not yet.’ And in the meantime, which is what we have—the ‘meantime’—our songs are like those in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings on the Fields of Cormallen, where the minstrel sang to all the host “until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together, and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”
Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Alleluia!
Happy Easter! May the glory of the risen Christ fill your life with joy. pic.twitter.com/7s8UOnedgY
— Mount Michael (@Mount_Michael) April 4, 2021
Holy Week reminds us that God loved us so much that he sent his Son into our world to die for our sins. As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” And so he was crucified on Good Friday, and now it’s Easter morning, the day of his resurrection. He rose from the dead and affirmed everything that he said. His resurrection promises us not just hope for now and life abundantly in the present, but life eternal, eternal life with him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
I don’t know where this video finds you this morning, or this afternoon, or tonight, but I hope you will find yourself in the presence of the Lord, and if not, that you will open your heart and soul to him this day.
On our walk yesterday at Ashridge, the first bluebells were coming out, so in a few weeks time we will be able to photograph scenes like this from a couple of years ago 💜 @ChrisPage90 @StormHour @ThePhotoHour @bbcweather @BBCCountryfile @MailOnline https://t.co/D91qrTQgWT pic.twitter.com/uvJZRODbzr
— Graham Custance (@gracust) April 1, 2021
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899)
Today, we bask in the bright light of hope & renewal. #Easter blessings from my family to yours! pic.twitter.com/cKPI7CBU7N
— Timothy Law Snyder (@LMUSnyder) April 4, 2021
This remarkable and deliberate recording of the first Christians’ incomprehension of what they insisted was the irreducible bottom line of their faith teaches us two things. First, it tells us that the early Christians were confident enough about what they called the Resurrection that (to borrow from Prof. Wright) they were prepared to say something like, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s what happened.” And the second thing it tells us is that it took time for the first Christians to figure out what the events of Easter meant—not only for Jesus but for themselves. As they worked that out, their thinking about a lot of things changed profoundly, as Prof. Wright and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI help us to understand in their biblical commentaries.
The way they thought about time and history changed. During Jesus’ public ministry, many of his followers shared in the Jewish messianic expectations of the time: God would soon work something grand for his people in Israel, liberating them from their oppressors and bringing about a new age in which (as Isaiah had prophesied) the nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord and history would end. The early Christians came to understand that the cataclysmic, world-redeeming act that God had promised had taken place at Easter. God’s Kingdom had come not at the end of time but within time—and that had changed the texture of both time and history. History continued, but those shaped by the Easter Effect became the people who knew how history was going to turn out. Because of that, they could live differently. The Easter Effect impelled them to bring a new standard of equality into the world and to embrace death as martyrs if necessary—because they knew, now, that death did not have the final word in the human story.
The way they thought about “resurrection” changed. Pious Jews taught by the reforming Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed in the resurrection of the dead. Easter taught the first Christians, who were all pious Jews, that this resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse, nor did it involve the decomposition of a corpse. Jesus’ tomb was empty, but the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples in a transformed body. Those who first experienced the Easter Effect would not have put it in these terms, but as their understanding of what had happened to Jesus and to themselves grew, they grasped that (as Benedict XVI put it in “Jesus of Nazareth–Holy Week”) there had been an “evolutionary leap” in the human condition. A new way of being had been encountered in the manifestly human but utterly different life of the one they met as the Risen Lord. That insight radically changed all those who embraced it.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Love is come again.
Easter Blessings from Ely Cathedral. pic.twitter.com/6NGl1FtqyW
— Ely Cathedral (@Ely_Cathedral) April 4, 2021
O Lord God Almighty, whose blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ did on the third day rise triumphant over death: Raise us, we beseech thee, from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness, that we may seek those things which are above, where he sitteth on thy right hand in glory; and this we beg for the sake of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Resurrection. Andrea Mantegna, 1459. #mantegna #renaissance #arthistory pic.twitter.com/6b5QCJJ5Xc
— Art History Feed (@arthistoryfeed) April 11, 2018
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
–1 Corinthians 15:41-50
Good morning from #Exmoor pic.twitter.com/fh2efny1DE
— Sarah + Jack (@bramble444) April 8, 2021
It’s the most profound question in the world. Who are you looking for? I mean, what are you really looking for? What is it that you seek? Whom will you follow? How will you set the compass of your life?
And then he speaks her name. For a moment she’s on time. That tender moment where time and eternity fuse together in the moment of recognition. Her eyes are opened – there – in the dawning of a new day and a whole new humanity. A spring of hope for the world that will never run dry; a love that can never be too late. Jesus: the early bird, the song thrush singing before the dawn; the pelican who feeds her young with her own shed blood; the crucified one who took upon him our flesh and plumbed the depths of grief, has been raised up. And all of God was with him in his dying. And all of us are with him in his rising.
She cries out, ‘Rabbouni! Teacher’; and she holds onto him for dear life. He is the one to follow. He is the one to build a life upon.
But she’s too early again. It is not yet that day when we are with God in paradise. There is work to be done. This new thing that you are seeing. It is for everyone. It must be shared.
Gently, he prises her hands away. ‘Do not cling to me. I have not yet ascended… but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father to my God and your God.’
The endless message of Easter. The timeless message. I am rising.
She thought he was the Gardener. She was right. He is the gardener: the new Adam tending a new creation, re-planting the seeds of human destiny.
#HappyEaster2021 💐from the beautiful city of Ely from everyone at The @Gemini Boat Race@CUBCsquad @OxfordUniBC @OUWBCsquad
🥚🐰🥚🐰🥚🐰🥚🐰🥚🐰
Photo Credit @Ely_Cathedral
Watch the coverage of the races live on the BBC 1 from 3pm#TheBoatRace #Teamwork #Passion #Excellence pic.twitter.com/xdvSAD27C9— The Boat Race (@theboatrace) April 4, 2021
Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.
The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.
Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.
The Resurrection of Christ, 1450–1490, (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland). A Nottingham alabaster. English sculpture industry from the XIV century until the early XVI century. This has led to refer to them as “Nottingham alabaster”.#sculpture #resurrection @ALEXEDSIO pic.twitter.com/lTw7CKTELe
— Miguel Calabria (@MiguelCalabria3) April 4, 2021
We believe Christ’s resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies: The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.
The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?
There are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth, conspiracy and swoon.
1. Jesus died. Jesus rose. [ Christianity ]
2. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceived. [Hallucination]
3. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles myth-makers [ Myth ]
4. Jesus died. Jesus didn’t rise—apostles deceivers [ Conspiracy ]
5. Jesus didn’t die. [ Swoon ]
“Women At The Tomb”
by William Bouguereau pic.twitter.com/rbQN5qLAKt— тнєℓαуαятιѕтє.com (@TheLayArtiste) April 7, 2021
But you, most holy Lord, why do you ask her why she weeps? Surely you can see; her heart, the dear life of her soul, is cruelly slain. O love to be wondered at; O evil to be shuddered at; you hung on the wood, pierced by iron nails, stretched out like a thief for the mockery of wicked men; and yet, “Woman,” you say, “why are you weeping?” She had not been able to prevent them from killing you, but at least she longed to keep your body for a while with ointments lest it decay. No longer able to speak with you living, at least she could mourn for you dead. So, near to death and hating her own life, she repeats in broken tones the words of life which she had heard from the living. And now, besides all this, even the body which she was glad, in a way, to have kept, she believes to have gone. And can you ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Had she not reason to weep? For she had seen with her own eyes — if she could bear to look — what cruel men cruelly did to you; and now all that was left of you from their hands she thinks she has lost. All hope of you has fled, for now she has not even your lifeless body to remind her of you. And someone asks, “Who are you looking for? Why are you weeping?” You, her sole joy, should be the last thus to increase her sorrow. But you know it all well, and thus you wish it to be, for only in such broken words and sighs can she convey a cause of grief as great as hers. The love you have inspired you do not ignore. And indeed you know her well, the gardener, who planted her soul in his garden. What you plant, I think you also water. Do you water, I wonder, or do you test her? In fact, you are both watering and putting to the test.
But now, good Lord, gentle Master, look upon your faithful servant and disciple, so lately redeemed by your blood, and see how she burns with anxiety, desiring you, searching all round, questioning, and what she longs for is nowhere found. Nothing she sees can satisfy her, since you whom alone she would behold, she sees not. What then? How long will my Lord leave his beloved to suffer thus? Have you put off compassion now you have put on incorruption? Did you let go of goodness when you laid hold of immortality? Let it not be so, Lord. You will not despise us mortals now you have made yourself immortal, for you made yourself a mortal in order to give us immortality.
And so it is; for love’s sake he cannot bear her grief for long or go on hiding himself. For the sweetness of love he shows himself who would not for the bitterness of tears. The Lord calls his servant by the name she has often heard and the servant knows the voice of her own Lord. I think, or rather I am sure, that she responded to the gentle tone with which he was accustomed to call, “Mary.”
Mary Magdalene meets the risen Christ in the garden on Easter morning, in 15c wall paintings at Peakirk, Cambridgeshire and Risby, Suffolk. pic.twitter.com/Vcy9e00gRP
— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) April 4, 2021
Watch and listen to it all from the original writers of the song.
“The compelling evidence for me is the unanimous testimony of all the apostles and even a former persecutor like St. Paul,” said Brant Pitre, assistant professor of theology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. “There was no debate in the first century over whether Jesus was resurrected or not.”
Scholars say that the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection are compelling for a variety of reasons.
“People will seldom die even for what they know to be true. Twelve men don’t give up their lives for a lie,” said Ray, who recently returned from France, where he was filming his “Footprints of God” series at the amphitheater in Lyon, the site of a persecution in A.D. 177. “The martyrs of Lyon underwent two days of torture and all they would say is, ‘I am a Christian.’ They knew the resurrection was true and didn’t question it.”
Barber also highlighted the diversity of sources and how they include different details as well as passages that do not paint the disciples in the best light.
“In the Road to Emmaus story, they write that they didn’t recognize him,” said Barber. “Our Biblical accounts are our best evidence.”
Several of the scholars pointed to 1 Corinthians, where Paul states that Christ appeared to 500 people.
“Some want to shy away from the Gospels because they say they were written later,” explained Barber. “If you want to believe that they were written later, then why wouldn’t the Gospels have made use of this piece of evidence from 1 Corinthians?” asked Barber.
Happy Easter!!
"On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures." Nicene Creed#EasterSunday #Resurrection
🎨 The Empty Tomb by Mikhail Nesterov, 1889 pic.twitter.com/bSmMtCuRoV
— McCrimmons (@Mccrimmons) April 20, 2019
Lord Jesus, risen from the dead and alive for evermore: Stand in our midst…[this day] as in the upper room; show us thy hands and thy side; speak thy peace to our hearts and minds; and send us forth into the world as thy witnesses; for the glory of thy name.
"And it happened that, while [Jesus] was with [the two disciples] at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight." (Lk 24:30-31)
Supper at Emmaus by Rembrandt. pic.twitter.com/6wCmbcu64r
— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) April 24, 2019
Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.
The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity. In his preaching at Corinth, Paul initially wants to know nothing but the Cross, which “destroys the wisdom of the wise and wrecks the understanding of those who understand”, which “is a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles”. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (I Cor 1:19, 23, 25).
Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith.
–Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), A Short Primer For Unsettled Laymen
We need the Risen Christ. He is our reality. He is our interpretive lens on the word. Without Him nothing makes sense. #homilytweet pic.twitter.com/R7nUAfxH2I
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) April 6, 2021