From here:

“The heart of the earth has accepted and received the Son of God; and it is from a womb so consecrated, this womb of the ‘hellish’ depths of human existence, that the saved creature rises up. Not just (not even temporarily) in the Son alone. It is not that he alone descended and so rose again as victor because death could not hold him captive. ‘Even now’ he is not the firstborn among the dead in the sense that he is even now the only human being to have found the complete fulfillment of his whole human reality. . . . the Son of Man ‘cannot’ have risen alone. What, we may ask, is really to be understood by his glorified bodily condition (if we take it seriously, and don’t spiritualize it into another way of talking about his eternal ‘communion with God’) right up to the ‘Last Day’, if meanwhile it should persist all by itself—something which is precisely unthinkable for the bodily condition (though glorified)? So when we find in Mt 27:52 s. that other bodies too, those of saints, rose up with him (indeed even ‘appeared’—as he himself did—to show that the end of the ages has already come upon us), this is merely positive evidence from Scripture for what we would have expected anyway, if definitive salvation has already been unshakably founded, death conquered, and a man, for whom it is never good to be alone, has entered upon the fulfillment of his whole being. Hence to try to set aside this testimony from Matthew as a ‘mythological’ intrusion, or to argue away its eschatological meaning with ingenious evasions—such as that it is merely a matter of a temporary resurrection or even of ‘phantom bodies’—would not be in accord with the authoritative voice of Scripture. It is a fact that by far the greater part of the Fathers and the theologians, right up to the present day, have firmly maintained the eschatological interpretation of the text as the only one possible from the exegetical point of view.”

“The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story…There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true…this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves.”
—J.R.R. #Tolkien #Easter pic.twitter.com/PsqoU9Fbqc

— J.R.R. Tolkien (@JRRTolkien) April 12, 2020

O God, who for our redemption didst give thine only begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of the enemy: Grant us to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Resurrection by James Tissot, watercolour on cartridge paper late 19th century. pic.twitter.com/Xby29z26RO

— John J Brumer (@Karacyr_1970) April 1, 2018

The next day the man we buried stands before us and greets us as if he has just come back from a journey. For our part, we do not know whether to laugh or cry; nothing like this is anticipated within the range of human experience and emotion, within the limited spectrum of our comprehension between the boundaries of bearable pain and bearable joy. Thus, while the event explodes upon us and reveals such vast dimensions that we dare not trust ourselves to it or believe it, because to us mortals it seems inhuman, he shows us his hands and feet and side—just as one might show souvenirs of some journey—in order to prove that he really was there (and was not, for instance, hidden in the house all the time), really was in the land of death and of shadows, the land of cold and of imprisonment without hope, of which the four coffin planks are only a symbol. He really was in the land where all life is of the past and where the soul is robbed of every hope that seemed justified here below, like losing a watch and not knowing when or how one lost it. He really was among the shades of Homer and Virgil, in the land of shadows of the Psalms and the Book of Job and the Wisdom literature, among the shadowy figures like Samuel when the Witch of Endor conjured him up for the doomed Saul, who, on the morrow, would be just such an insubstantial shadow himself, without hope, incapable of looking to heaven for help and deliverance, for heaven is more tightly closed than the Iron Curtain, and even if the whole world or hell were to burn, it would not melt this curtain; anyway, who knows what is behind the curtain, someone or no one.

From this realm, therefore, he returns and shows his wounds. The open wounds allow us to see through, as it were, to what was, a past that, as such, is past; they also allow us to see what was—what, evidently, now is—and what will be.

But now, friends, let us imagine something even more difficult, something even more fantastic. Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that the dead man of whom we have been speaking is actually the “Logos”, as understood by the received religious and philosophical wisdom of the late ancient world. It is not at all enough to translate it as “world reason”, “world soul” or “cosmic reason”: we must speak here of divine reason indwelling the world, mirroring and expressing itself in the universe; we must speak of a divine meaning informing the world, human existence and all things, a formal and material logic on which depend the truth and validity of all individual statements made by men and that forms the basis for the (albeit rather imperfect) continuity of our everyday life. If, for the sake of argument, we accept this presupposition, what would follow from it? As a result of the death of this person, the meaning of our personal existence and of the world’s existence, of the whole of nature and the whole of history, would have gone to the grave with him. Not just in the way that every death brings the world to an end and signifies an irreparable loss that puts a question mark over the meaning of life as such. No. For in such a case all other people go on living and believing in some meaning to existence; they presuppose it in order to go on living at all. But there is more: we need to go further and imagine that, after some indefinable period, this world meaning comes to life again on the celebrated “third day”; and now it acquires a meaning, a logos, a logic, that is no longer of this world, no longer transitory, but directly divine, eternal, so absolute and fulfilled in every respect that its meaning could not be or become fuller.

This is the supposition made by the Christian Faith.

Read it all.

Easter: We Walked Where There Was No Path https://t.co/VKj6CIJsHN

— Church Life Journal (@ChurchLifeND) April 16, 2020

[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

Christ is Risen. Easter Sunday. Greek icon,
early 18th century pic.twitter.com/L5tC9ZiUof

— hkkorban@hotmail.com (@hkkorbanhotmai1) April 8, 2018

Here is today’s prayer from the Church of England.

You can access text and audio versions through our website at https://t.co/Rn4jDVCRSG. pic.twitter.com/5InBzg3Gqo

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 16, 2020

Listen to it all.

“He has cheated hell
And seated us above the fall
In desperate places he paid our wages
One time, once and for all.”

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.

Baking Easter Bread
William Kurelek
1968 pic.twitter.com/1RggA2hZhc

— Canadian Paintings (@CanadaPaintings) April 11, 2020

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.

Read it all.

Even in the dark days of this Easter, we still have hope. In the new life of the resurrection of Jesus, we dare to have faith in life before death…

Christ is risen! Alleluia! #HappyEaster #HeIsRisen pic.twitter.com/iexeElb3wU

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) April 12, 2020

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)

Signs of Spring, and a healthy weed or two, at St Mary’s this morning. pic.twitter.com/NoR6mH3Dwb

— The Elland Parishes (@EllandChurches) April 15, 2020

Who would recognise someone known to be dead?

Yet within a very short period we find Mary announcing that she has seen the Lord. Not long after Peter is telling Cornelius that Jesus had risen and that this was the foundation of hope for all people.

There are three astonishing things in what Peter says.

First, that someone could rise from the dead. Peter’s change from frightened denier of Christ to bold advocate is one of the great evidences for the resurrection.

Second, that God would reach in love to the whole world.

Third, that Roman occupier and Jewish occupied could be drawn together in unity.

Read it all.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia! pic.twitter.com/qrlCpvAuar

— St Paul’s Cathedral (@StPaulsLondon) April 12, 2020

Who are you praying for?

Read or listen to today’s prayer at https://t.co/Rn4jDVUsKe. pic.twitter.com/9TgjPjImlf

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 15, 2020

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

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.

#Wielkanoc. “Chrystus po Zmartwychwstaniu zapłacił ludziom detaliczną dobrocią, serdecznością, bliskością i radością za zniewagi doznane przed śmiercią. Jakże On jest wielkoduszny i wspaniałomyślny!”

kard. Stefan Wyszyński pic.twitter.com/7otGcY9DGC

— EpiskopatNews (@EpiskopatNews) April 12, 2020

God our Father,
as we have celebrated today the mystery of theLord’s resurrection
grant our humble prayer:
free us from all harm
that we may sleep in peace
and rise in joy to sing your praise.
Through Christ ourLord,
Amen
The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end pic.twitter.com/ofDAVJd7z8

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 14, 2020

Watch and listen to it all from the original writers of the song.

..the Christmas story is largely nonthreatening to nonbelievers: Jesus in the manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph and the adoring shepherds, is easy to take. As the Gospels of Matthew and Luke recount, there was no little danger involved for Mary and Joseph. But for the most part, it can be accepted as a charming story. Even nonbelievers might appreciate the birth of a great teacher.

By contrast, the Easter story is both appalling and astonishing: the craven betrayal of Jesus by one of his closest followers, the triple denial by his best friend, the gruesome crucifixion and the brutal end to his earthly life. Then, of course, there is the stunning turnaround three days later.

Easter is not as easy to digest as Christmas. It is harder to tame. Anyone can be born, but not everyone can rise from the dead.

Yet the Easter story, essential as it is for Christian belief, can be a confusing one, even for believers. To begin with, the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ appearances after the Resurrection can seem confounding, even contradictory. They are mysterious in the extreme.

Read it all from the WSJ.

The Resurrection of Christ Bartelome Murillo (1618-1682) #baroque #painting pic.twitter.com/sCNbidVVjr

— Tim Marlowe (@aweirdmisc) April 1, 2018

“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.

Read it all.

Alleluja!!! Jezus żyje!!!
Przekaż dalej!#Wielkanoc2020 pic.twitter.com/SNEXG3C82L

— Bp Ignacy Dec (@BpIgnacyDec) April 14, 2020

Have you prayed using the audio version of today's prayer?

Go to https://t.co/Rn4jDVCRSG to learn more. pic.twitter.com/qCsUYXYdgY

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 14, 2020

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 calcined 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.

God exists: that is the real message of #Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed. – Pope Benedict XVI pic.twitter.com/UsFlXg8ven

— Franciscan Friars (@MFVAFriars) April 13, 2020

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.

You may grasp the Spring
But the wind takes it away
The Sun mite Shine
But the wind is cold as Ice
It’s just a picture In Ones mind
The Season’s no One can hold
For they pass right in front of
Ones Eyes ~♡
~rLs~ And This To Shall Pass pic.twitter.com/D1P34CWKcg

— Robin Stanfill ✴🕊 (@RobinStanfill2) April 13, 2020

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.

Read it all.

Join @BishopWorcester tomorrow at 8:30am as he celebrates the Eucharist from his home. Streaming here, Facebook and the website. @WorcCathedral @churchofengland #EasterSunday #Easter2020 #HeIsRisen pic.twitter.com/afWnFqvuSg

— Diocese of Worcester (@CofEWorcester) April 11, 2020

Coronavirus: Easter Sunday under lockdown captured in pictures https://t.co/0vuLhoC7Ma

— David Kisamfu (@thedextazlab) April 12, 2020

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.

Read it all.

Happy Easter..
Resurrection of Christ 1475-79 – Giovanni Bellini pic.twitter.com/iCJ7bCFzq9

— Araceli Rego (@AraceliRego) April 21, 2019

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

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

A blessed Easter! Zalig Pasen!
Michelangelo
Sketch for a scene of the Resurrection pic.twitter.com/gePGrHD8xI

— Rembrandt’s Room 🖌 (@RembrandtsRoom) April 12, 2020

Join in with thousands of others praying these words today.

Access a spoken version of today's prayer at https://t.co/Rn4jDVCRSG. pic.twitter.com/53DwIHhRPA

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 13, 2020

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

The Risen Christ by Rembrandt. The world’s most famous painters were captivated by Jesus death and resurrection, I pray that you are too. Happy Easter! pic.twitter.com/IViG2gsqZi

— tom konjoyan (@tomkonjoyan) April 12, 2020

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)

May the spirits of this day help all of us, the entire world, to resurrect from the doom despair and gloom. Happy Easter! (👇🏽Christ Ressurected by Rembrandt Van Rijn) pic.twitter.com/yQ34UUgg6y

— Liz Mathew (@MathewLiz) April 12, 2020

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.

How does your garden grow? With all this spring weather, the Wissahickon is sprouting up.

Check out our Creekside Classroom for new videos on spring ephemerals and native plants, presented by Lisa Stout! https://t.co/p0ois6Whok pic.twitter.com/4WCUGrX1tC

— Friends of the Wiss (@FOWissahickon) April 18, 2020