The Long Easter

For most folks, Easter lasts but a day: a morning of formal worship followed by an afternoon family feast. But in point of fact, Easter is an entire season on the calendar of the Church, one that lasts a full 50 days, beyond the Ascension to Pentecost. I’m not above using this to my clerical advantage, as I may have been known to introduce liturgical modifications with the assurance that it would “only be for Easter.” Muahaha.

It is a remarkable claim of the Christian community not simply that Jesus rose from the dead but that He then continued to appear to individuals, groups, and significant crowds for 40 days following His death and Resurrection. As I’ve pointed out before, both at Candlemas and Lent, 40 holds symbolic importance in the Bible, as ancient peoples knew that it takes roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. It is a number indicating new life, new birth.

The nature of these Resurrection appearances proves no less remarkable. Jesus’ conquest of death soars far beyond mere revivification. Unlike other biblical characters, such as Lazarus or those who came into contact with the bones of Elisha, Jesus did not return to common mortal life but rose instead never to die again. He could appear wheresoever He willed, passing through locked doors, rising up into the clouds. Yet this was no mere ghost: He took and ate grilled fish, allowed Thomas to touch His scars.

Moreover, Jesus’ appearance appears to have changed. When witnesses first encounter the Risen Christ, be they Mary Magdalene at the tomb or Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, they fail to discern who He is. Yet at some small sign on His part—calling a name, breaking some bread, bidding us peace—something like scales falls from their eyes and they react in pure elation, without a hint of hesitation amongst them.

Of this there can be no doubt: the closest friends and disciples of Jesus Christ were utterly convinced that He rose from the dead. Even so skeptical a historian as Bart Ehrman confesses that the early Church obviously believed this. Almost to a man, the Apostles died in terrible ways for witnessing to Christ. They gained nothing from this, nothing worldly at any rate. Have you ever heard of so may men willing to die for a lie? Could we ever imagine a conspiracy so secure that none in a dozen cracked under torture?

We may question the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but His closest companions and relations never did. Whomever they encountered, whatever they had witnessed, it transformed them completely. Peter went from cowering in an upper room to proclaiming Christ before the very authorities who had crucified Him.

I would not wish much to speculate on the mechanics of resurrection. Truly, an immortal life is far 'beyond our ken'. Such mysteries are for God alone to reveal, to each in his good time. Suffice for now to say that first-century Judea, heavily influenced by Platonic philosophy, understood the life of the “spirit” to be qualitatively different from that of the “soul.” The former was immortal, perfect, transcendent; the latter ephemeral, vulnerable, temporary, and weak. Spirit possesses a permanence of which flesh can only dream.

Denizens of the heavens, what pagans called gods and Jews termed angels, could descend into this world of woe—could descend down to hell and back again, if they liked—but beings of mere flesh could not ascend to realms of glory. Such goodness, truth, and beauty proved all too bright, too intense, too powerful for us. If we are to rise as Jesus rose, we must do so not in the flesh but in the spirit. Such was the cosmology of the day.

To many modern Christians, this rightly sounds anathema. We think of such a worldview—shared amongst others by St John and St Paul—as anti-physical, as a denial of Jesus’ literal bodily Resurrection. But this isn’t how the ancients understood it. To them, the life of the spirit was more real, more substantive, than that of passing worldly flesh. We tend to think of angels, for instance, as diaphanous beings of smoke and light, yet we have things precisely backwards. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, angelic forms are hard as diamond; they pass through us as though we were not even there.

All of which is to say that the Resurrection makes Jesus more real, not less. He has not shed His body but fulfilled it, and thereby redeemed all of humanity, all of flesh, and all of Creation. We are given a new and eternal life, not of scarcity, illness, and survival of the fittest, but of fullness, flourishing, and superabundant joy. In God we all are gods.

This is the life granted to us in the Sacraments: as we are given Jesus’ Name and Spirit in Baptism; His Body and Blood in Communion. Such is our foretaste of the feast to come. We live out the Resurrection each and every day, dying at night to our sins, rising anew in the morning with the life of Christ within us—until that day when our Baptism reaches fulfillment in bodily death, and we rise never to fall again.

In liturgical traditions, the Paschal Candle is lit on only three occasions: at Easter, at baptisms, and at funerals. This is to remind us that these three are one in the same. In Baptism we are joined to Jesus’ death, already died for us, that we need never fear death again; and to Jesus’ own eternal life, already begun. Thus may it always be Easter within every Christian heart.

In Jesus. Amen.

-Eminent Grand Prelate Sir Knight Ryan Stout