From there:

Not darkness but twilight
In which even the best
of minds must make its way
now. And slowly the questions
occur, vague but formidable
for all that. We pass our hands
over their surface like blind
men feeling for the mechanism
that will swing them aside. They
yield, but only to re-form
as new problems; and one
does not even do that
but towers immovable
before us.

Is there no way
of other thought of answering
its challenge? There is an anticipation
of it to the point of
dying. There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body.

A #Lutheran masterpiece "of the #Resurrection by Lucas #Cranach the Younger (the son of #Luther’s friend). It’s filled with light, which has, indeed, overcome the darkness. May all of you have a glorious #Easter!…#Christ Is Risen!"~> https://t.co/1NcVKkPnaj pic.twitter.com/j48var6Rjg

— Quinte Lutheran (@QuinteLutheran) April 4, 2018

Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.

'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' – John 11:25

Amen 🙏 pic.twitter.com/6KebXAmtpH

— Thy Kingdom Come (@thykingdom_come) April 5, 2021

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that pierced died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

–John Updike (1932-2009)

The Resurrection fresco attributed to Andrea da Firenze (aka Andrea Bonaiuti, active c. 1346 – 1377) or Pietro Nelli (1345? – 1419) in the vestry of Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence

via Tumblr pic.twitter.com/hCOo3CzBjU

— chiotchiot Moritz Jan (@chiotchiot1) April 13, 2020

Sam believes that Gandalf has fallen a catastrophic distance and has died. But in the end of the story, with Sam having been asleep for a long while and then beginning to regain consciousness, Gandalf stands before Sam, robed in white, his face glistening in the sunlight, and says:

“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?”

But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed… “How do I feel?” he cried.” Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel” –he waved his arms in the air– “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”

— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King

Angel Announcing the Resurrection of Christ to the Three Marys
[Annibale Carracci, 1580-1609] #ResurrectionSunday pic.twitter.com/k9fWNCxDBI

— Anton Sorkin ن (@Anton_Sorkin) April 5, 2015

O Lord God of our fathers, who didst of old deliver thy people from the prison-house of Egypt through the paschal sacrifice: Mercifully grant that we thy new Israel, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, may be set free from the bondage of evil and serve thee henceforth in the joy and power of the resurrection; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who ever liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

WOW! Spectacular sunrise seen this morning from Sherburn, Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Lona Larson. #Sunrise #MNwx pic.twitter.com/J8FC2GEUab

— Mark Tarello (@mark_tarello) April 5, 2021

There are 24-take the time to look through them all.

This year marks the second Easter in a pandemic. Spend some time with these photos from celebrations around the world.https://t.co/9zshy31Npj

— Julius C. (@juliusmotal) April 4, 2021

Found courtesy of Alan Jacobs there:

What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. — If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, — what I need is certainty — not wisdom, dreams of speculation — and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.

Inside Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, France. pic.twitter.com/3bFyCs35VL

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) March 6, 2021

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined1 thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Read it all.

Local paper front page #easter #easter2021 #religion #lowcountrylife #anglican #worship #southcarolina #charlestonsc pic.twitter.com/5VrlmakBaw

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 5, 2021

If I had a Son in Court, or married a daughter into a plentifull Fortune, I were satisfied for that son or that daughter. Shall I not be so, when the King of Heaven hath taken that sone to himselfe, and married himselfe to that daughter, for ever? I spend none of my Faith, I exercise none of my Hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life againe. This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, and we, are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one Quire.

–John Donne (1572-1631) [my emphasis]

Flower Cross https://t.co/rUVc1N2dT4

— St Mildred's Church (@milliescroydon) April 2, 2021

Break the box and shed the nard;
Stop not now to count the cost;
Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;
Reck not what the poor have lost;
Upon Christ throw all away:
Know ye, this is Easter Day.

Build His church and deck His shrine;
Empty though it be on earth;
Ye have kept your choicest wine—
Let it flow for heavenly mirth;
Pluck the harp and breathe the horn:
Know ye not ‘tis Easter morn?

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.

Read it all.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊

The Resurrection
by
Benjamin West #EasterSunday #ReligiousArt #CatholicArt#Jesus❤️#HeIsRisen #HeIsRisenIndeed#Easter #HappyEaster #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/3NR9S428Kw

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 4, 2021

Take the time to listen to it all from the Oxford Philomusica.

The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks did not believe in resurrection; in the Greek worldview, the afterlife was liberation of the soul from the body. For them, resurrection would never be part of life after death. As for the Jews, some of them believed in a future general resurrection when the entire world would be renewed, but they had no concept of an individual rising from the dead. The people of Jesus’ day were not predisposed to believe in resurrection any more than we are.

Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number of works listing arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most telling went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women””and we all know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For them, that was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know, women were marginalized, and the testimony of women was never given much credence.

Do you see what that means? If Mark and the Christians were making up these stories to get their movement off the ground, they would never have written women into the story as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ empty tomb. The only possible reason for the presence of women in these accounts is that they really were present and reported what they saw. The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty and an angel declares that Jesus is risen.

Read it all.

#EarlyRenaissance #DonneInArte #ArtLovers

Sandro #Botticelli
"The Resurrection"1490@Asamsakti @alecoscino @fra852 pic.twitter.com/56VHe4USW6

— ludovico vico (@VicoLudovico) April 4, 2015

O Almighty God, hear thy people who are met this day to celebrate the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Lord; and lead them on from this festival to eternal gladness, to the joys that have no end; through the same our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.

What a beautiful sunrise on this Easter Sunday in #Pittsburgh. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, the birds were singing, and there was this incredible glow emanating from behind the city as the buildings framed the rising sun. Couldn't have asked for anything else. pic.twitter.com/bsYcIoJibK

— Dave DiCello (@DaveDiCello) April 4, 2021

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast””unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

–1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Tintoretto's Resurrection

Powerful Renaissance depiction of the central core of the Christian Gospels, The Resurrection of Tintoretto: https://t.co/AAC9lbVlaQ pic.twitter.com/mC3L1OSamt

— Caperton Classic Art (@CapertonFineArt) April 1, 2021

O God, who by the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ hast destroyed death, and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that we, being raised together with him, may know the comfort and strength of his presence, and rejoice in hope of thy everlasting glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be dominion and praise for ever and ever.

Art:
The Three Marys At The Tomb
By
Gaspare Landi, 1756–1830
Galleria d’Arte Moderna
Palazzo Pitti
Florence#EasterSunday #ReligiousArt #CatholicArt#Jesus❤️#HeIsRisen #HeIsRisenIndeed#Easter #HappyEaster #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/7NbqgLSOCN

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 4, 2021

“Without Easter, Good Friday would have no meaning. Without Easter, there would be no hope that suffering and abandonment might be tolerable. But with Easter, a way out becomes visible for human sorrows, an absolute future: more than a hope, a divine expectation.”

–Hans Urs von Balthasar To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), p.39

Alleluia! He is Risen! This wonderful photo of dawn breaking through the East Window over our Easter Garden was taken by James Atkinson. #EasterSunday pic.twitter.com/WdTT9Q2W1F

— Worcester Cathedral (@WorcCathedral) April 21, 2019

The truth sets us free. Lies bind us, enslave us. And no lie binds more tightly than the lies of death. If death is telling the truth, then we may as well live for ourselves. Then the last year is yet another cruel period of history taking from us those we loved, ending lives cruelly and tragically.

But because Jesus who was dead is alive: death is a liar. The truth of Christ is the reality, we have certain hope and a changed future. We will be reunited with those we love. We are offered forgiveness and freedom to live God’s new life as a gift – to be taken or ignored.

How can we respond? We live in a new world in which everything is changed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That has been true for this country for over 1,500 years. It cannot be ignored or forgotten. Not to respond is to respond.

For each of us. We can receive this new reality. Jesus, crucified and risen, is alive today and brings life and hope. The joy and purpose he gave to the disciples is exactly the same as is offered to us today.

Read it all.

Christ just casually climbing out of the grave, and wishing the terrified guards a #HappyEaster , from this early 16th-century French choir breviary. pic.twitter.com/izy3XfAqFH

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) April 4, 2021

The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.

— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

Join us in sharing today's Easter prayer. 🙌🏾 Amen.

For a plain text and audio version of today's prayer, visit https://t.co/Rn4jDVCRSG. pic.twitter.com/vMGObR19VP

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 4, 2021

This is the real meaning of Easter…

No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb.

The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes. Death is not a wall, but a door. And eternal life which may be ours now, by faith in Christ, is not interrupted when the soul leaves the body, for we live on…and on.

There is no death to those who have entered into fellowship with him who emerged from the tomb. Because the resurrection is true it is the most significant thing in our world today. Bringing the resurrected Christ into our lives, individual and national, is the only hope we have for making a better world.

“Because I live ye shall live also.”

That is the real meaning of Easter.

–Peter Marshall (1902-1949), The First Easter

The Resurrection, Caravaggio. – #art #twitart #arte #fineart #painting – pic.twitter.com/rHolluBt8Z

— 🎨 Bel Art – Orlando Fernández — 🎨🎼 (@ofervi) March 27, 2016

Listen to it all and you can read more about it, including finding the lyrics, at Lent and Beyond.

O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have this day given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.

Art:
The Angel of the Lord Announcing the Resurrection, 1805
By
Benjamin West
Rococo
Brooklyn Museum,
New York City, NY, US#ReligiousArt #CatholicArt#Jesus❤️#HeIsRisen #HeIsRisenIndeed#Easter #HappyEaster #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/jZk967n1SA

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 4, 2021

Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou hast broken for us the bonds of sin and brought us into fellowship with the Father.

Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou hast overcome death and opened to us the gates of eternal life.

Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because where two or three are gathered together in thy Name there art thou in the midst of them.

Thanks be unto thee, O Christ, because thou ever livest to make intercession for us.

For these and all other benefits of thy mighty resurrection, thanks be unto thee O Christ.

Botticelli's Resurrection of Christ (1490) #EasterDayImages pic.twitter.com/HFZhC7SmrK

— Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 (@montie) March 27, 2016

All night had shout of men, and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone,
He rose again behind the stone.

–Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

There’s a rumour, a whisper. Something’s happening. Could it be? #HolySaturday @gandkchurch @cofe pic.twitter.com/4xJz6oTEpv

— Craig J Huxley (@CraigJHuxley) April 15, 2017

Lord God our Father,
maker of heaven and earth:
As the crucified body of your dear Son
was laid in the tomb
to await the glory that would be revealed,
so may we endure
the darkness of this present time
in the sure confidence
that we will rise with him.
We ask this through your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.

Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps. #HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/7Vvws874kv

— NYPD Chaplains Unit (@NYPDchaplains) April 3, 2021

From here:

Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday is probably one of his most intriguing contributions since he interprets it as moving beyond the active self-surrender of Good Friday into the absolute helplessness of sin and the abandonment and lostness of death.

In the Old Testament one of the greatest threats of God’s wrath was His threat of abandonment, to leave His people desolate, to be utterly rejected of God. It is this that Jesus experienced upon the Cross and in His descent into the lifeless passivity and God-forsakenness of the grave. By His free entrance into the helplessness of sin, Christ was reduced to what Balthasar calls a “cadaver-obedience” revealing and experience the full horror of sin. As Peter himself preached at Pentecost (Acts 2:23-24; 32-33):

[Jesus] being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you, by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death; who God raised up, having abolished the birth pangs of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it…This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, He pour out this which you now see and hear.

We ought to pause and note the passivity that is expressed here. Christ experienced what God was doing through Him by His purpose and foreknowledge. Jesus was truly dead and fully encompassed within and held by the pains of death and needed God to abolish them. He was freed from death by God, not simply by God’s whim, but because for God it was impossible that death should hold Christ. Christ Himself receives the Holy Spirit from the Father in order that He might pour out that Spirit. Balthasar writes:

Jesus was truly dead, because he really became a man as we are, a son of Adam, and therefore, despite what one can sometimes read in certain theological works, he did not use the so-called “brief” time of his death for all manner of “activities” in the world beyond. In the same way that, upon earth, he was in solidarity with the living, so, in the tomb, he is in solidarity with the dead…Each human being lies in his own tomb. And with this condition Jesus is in complete solidarity.

According to Balthasar, this death was also the experience, for a time, of utter God-forsakenness—that is hell. Hell, then, is a Christological concept which is defined in terms of Christ’s experience on the Cross. This is also the assurance that we never need fear rejection by the Father if we are in Christ, since Christ has experienced hell in our place.

–S. Joel Garver on Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

In stillness, we wait
In quiet, we remember
In despair, we stand together
In darkness, we hope#HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/WkrjOv1ZIj

— Jeni Watts 💙 (@jenidubs) April 3, 2021

Jesus dies. His lifeless body is taken down from the cross. Painters and sculptors have strained their every nerve to portray the sorrow of Mary holding her lifeless son in her arms, as mothers today in Baghdad hold with the same anguish the bodies of their children. On Holy Saturday, or Easter Eve, God is dead, entering into the nothingness of human dying. The source of all being, the One who framed the vastness and the microscopic patterning of the Universe, the delicacy of petals and the scent of thyme, the musician’s melodies and the lover’s heart, is one with us in our mortality. In Jesus, God knows our dying from the inside.

–The Rt. Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Rowell

Pietà is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Pietro Perugino, executed around 1483-1493, and housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. pic.twitter.com/ChDyAErwgW

— European Art (@EuropeanArtHIST) April 21, 2020

O Lord God, who didst send thy only begotten Son to redeem the world by his obedience unto death: Grant, we humbly beseech thee, that the continual remembrance of his bitter cross may teach us to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof; that in the union and merits of his death and passion we may die with him, and rest with him, and rise again with him, and live with him for ever, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory; world without end.

Art:
Pieta With Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, 1495
By
Pietro Perugino#Triduum #HolySaturday #Jesus❤️#HolyWeek2021 #3April #3Apr2021#ReligiousArt #CatholicArt #Christian #Catholic #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/hfgRM7BaN0

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 3, 2021