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.

Happy Easter!
Peter Paul Rubens: 'The Resurrection of Christ', 1611-12.
O.-L. Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp. 17th century. pic.twitter.com/0uNXGXnjAV

— Andrea Zuvich (@17thCenturyLady) April 5, 2026

Teach thy Church, O Lord, we beseech thee, to value and support pioneering and courageous missionaries, whom thou callest, as thou didst thy servant James Lloyd Breck, to preach and teach, and plant thy Church in new regions; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever (moved from Friday).

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates James Lloyd Breck, Priest, 1876 https://t.co/DhExxD2sbf

Inspired by the Oxford Movement, Breck served as a missionary priest in the newly opened territories of America's West, founding Nashotah House & Seabury Divinity School pic.twitter.com/Cuta3W2dpR

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) April 2, 2022

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.

Good Morning and a happy new week – an image from today’s early walk (towards Barston) #treeclub #stormhour pic.twitter.com/ad8RLWOCG4

— Terry (@No1GhostDog) April 6, 2026

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Mag′dalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salo′me, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

–Mark 16:1-8

Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. pic.twitter.com/gZuS022EJr

— Richard Tarsitano ⚓️ (@GodRemembrancer) April 5, 2026

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

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]

"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said"
Hallelujah#EasterSunday #HeHasRisen #EasterJoy pic.twitter.com/sQEDq4zoTO

— English Cathedrals (@engcathedrals) March 31, 2024

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.

In the Christian celebration of Easter quite particularly an affirmation of the whole of existence is experienced and celebrated. No more rightful, more comprehensive
and fundamental an affirmation can be conceived.
– Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World 49 pic.twitter.com/JVgkHx8iAM

— Jacob Sherman (@Shermanicus) April 5, 2026

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

— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

The Irish word ‘Cásc’ (in English, Easter) derives from the Romance language line of ‘Pascha’ via Latin & Greek, and so back to Aramaic.

(Met Museum) pic.twitter.com/paesqvMoZe

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 5, 2026

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.
Amen.

'He is not here, he is risen as he said'

On Easter morning, the three Marys hurry to where Jesus is buried, only to find the tomb empty and an angel guarding it. Glass by Didron of Paris, 1863 at Feltwell St Mary, Norfolk.

Feltwell: https://t.co/BugPZEEoqU pic.twitter.com/xqZUxj90bZ

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) April 5, 2026

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens,
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels,
praise him, all his host!

Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord!
For he commanded and they were created.
And he established them for ever and ever;
he fixed their bounds which cannot be passed.

–Psalm 148:1-3

'Alleluia! Christ is risen!'

A very happy Easter to you from all of us at Westminster Abbey pic.twitter.com/WKro9JKqsb

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) April 5, 2026

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 Huxley-Jones (@FatherHux) April 15, 2017

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

–East Coker

The Entombment of Christ by Titian, 1520, Louvre. pic.twitter.com/9AnvRl1P41

— Cody J. Swanson (@CodyJSwanson) April 4, 2026

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

Holy Saturday

"It is easy to be faithful to God when everything goes smoothly, when His cause triumphs; but to be equally faithful in the hour of darkness, when, for a time, He permits evil to get the upper hand – this is hard, but it is the most authentic proof of real love." pic.twitter.com/kDRR6vflDj

— Memento Mori (@TempusFugit4016) April 19, 2025

O God, whose loving kindness is infinite, mercifully hear our prayers; and grant that as in this life we are united in the mystical body of thy Church, and in death are laid in holy ground with the sure hope of resurrection; so at the last day we may rise to the life immortal, and be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Entombment of Christ (c. 1635-163)
by Rembrandt pic.twitter.com/gLlXkcZixD

— Marysia (@marysia_cc) April 3, 2026

“By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one”. In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” but should also “taste death”, experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God’s great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.

–The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, para. 624

The Lamentation of Christ. #HolySaturday #HolyWeek pic.twitter.com/CIDRagT5Ru

— Marlene T. Diaz (@academicknight) April 3, 2021

HOW life and death in Thee
Agree !
Thou hadst a virgin womb
And tomb.
A Joseph did betroth
Them both.

–Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

BUON SABATO SANTO AGLI AMICI DELLA PAGINA DELL'ARTE

Caravaggio, Deposizione nel sepolcro, 1602-1604. Olio su tela, 300×203 cm. Città del Vaticano, Pinacoteca Vaticana. pic.twitter.com/WN5GyceWj2

— La Pagina dell'Arte (@LaPaginaArte) April 4, 2026

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

For Holy Saturday, a pyx, c500 AD, with the women at Christ’s tomb

(Met Museum) pic.twitter.com/zNMpCmnFI2

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 4, 2026

“I have been hunted like a bird
    by those who were my enemies without cause;
 they flung me alive into the pit
    and cast stones on me;
 water closed over my head;
    I said, ‘I am lost.’

–Lamentations 3:52-54

There's something eery about the Cathedral with no main lights. #HolySaturday pic.twitter.com/O5IvoSWP5L

— OurCofE (@OurCofE) March 26, 2016

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

Read it all.

'Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing''
Luke 23: 34#GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/Udz7vgYqvS

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) April 3, 2026

O God, the Father of mankind, who didst suffer thine only Son to be set forth as a spectacle despised, derided, and scornfully arrayed, yet in his humiliation to reveal his majesty: Draw us, we beseech thee, both to behold the Man and to worship the King, immortal, eternal, world without end.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

The Crucifixion with Mary and John on either side of the cross #GoodFriday
BL Harley MS 2904; the 'Ramsey Psalter'; 10th century; England, S (Winchester or Ramsey); f.3v @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/Tbvchs0o1g

— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 3, 2026

“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”

The Crucifixion, Giovanni da Milano, c. 1360

St Francis of Assisi appears at the foot of the Cross (Rijksmuseum) #GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/MqHbHIh2Jj

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 3, 2026

“When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man’s godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”

–Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), p, 414

Crucifixion scene.

Attributed to Kesu Dás, Mughal India, c. 1590 (British Museum) #GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/bWAsnrXGNG

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) April 3, 2026

There was a door

And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle.

Why could I not walk out of my prison?

What is hell? Hell is oneself,

Hell is alone, the other figures in it

Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from

And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

–Edward in The Cocktail Party, Act One. Scene 3

Diego Velásquez (Spanish painter, 1599-1660): “Christ Crucified”, 1622. pic.twitter.com/1ghgp2tC4L

— Maria Helena (@mhcoutinho_48) April 9, 2020

Almighty Father,
look with mercy on this your family
for which our Lord Jesus Christ was content to be betrayed
and given up into the hands of sinners
and to suffer death upon the cross;
who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Good Friday

This is one of the greatest days from the beginning of the world to its end. He was scourged, crowned with thorns, carried the cross to Calvary amid taunts, was nailed to the cross between two thieves, and by His painful death finished the great work of redemption. pic.twitter.com/G1fvTD3BJ0

— Memento Mori (@TempusFugit4016) April 3, 2026

Isn’t it curious that the Son of God would die in this particular way? Even Paul was permitted a nice, neat slice of the sword. Why did the Son of God die in the worst possible way? That’s the point here. Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the worst of the worst. It was so bad, good Roman citizens didn’t discuss it in public. It’s very much like the way we avoid talking about death and sin. The Romans avoided talking about crucifixion because it was so horrible, so disgusting, so obscene””they used that word to describe it.

Why this method and not another? Because it corresponds to the depth of depravity caused by human rebellion against God. It shows us just how bad things really are with us. No wonder we don’t want to look at it. Yet again, the African American church has never been afraid to look at it. It gives them hope. It gives them strength. It gives them comfort.
As for the blood: It is important because it’s mentioned so much in Scripture. It’s a synecdoche, a word that stands for the whole thing. When you say “the blood of Christ,” you mean his self-offering, his death, the horror of it, the pouring out of it. It sums up the whole thing.

And it’s not just a metaphor; he really did shed blood when he was scourged. He was a bloody mess. I remember one line from an article by a secular journalist. Concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, he wrote, “He must have been ghastly to behold.” That’s a great sentence.

—Fleming Rutledge in a 2016 Christianity Today interview (emphasis mine)

By His wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5
The Crucifixion, Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), 1457 – 1460, tempera and oil on panel, 76 x 96 cm, Le Louvre pic.twitter.com/4F54YCT946

— SaintsandScripture (@Saint_of_theDay) April 3, 2026

Almighty Father, who gave your only Son to die for our sins and to rise for our justification: Give us grace so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve you in purity of life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Good Friday.

Christ the Man of Sorrows, 15th Century.
Banningham, Norfolk.

'He was despised and rejected of men
A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief:

And we hid as it were our faces from him,
He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Banningham: https://t.co/LECvrtUAcv pic.twitter.com/3lNkueZ8X1

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) April 3, 2026