(Matthew 28:1-15; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-49; John 20:1-12)

Jesus’ Resurrection is our salvation. 

St. Paul is blunt about this fact: Unless Jesus is risen from the dead, “your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Unless Jesus is raised from the dead, he is just an ordinary dead human who changed nothing and we are still immersed in our sins (vv. 17-19).

The Judeo-Christian message is clear: Man’s fundamental problem is sin. Sin damaged his human nature and broke his relationships, with God, his fellow human beings, the rest of creation and even himself. When God threatens man with “death” if he sins, it’s not that God is being particularly severe or brutal. God is our “highest Good.” He is Love. The only point of intersection we can have with a God who is Good and is Love is goodness and love. And if sin is a turning from goodness and a rejection of love, then the only thing that can possibly result is death. We cannot amputate ourselves from the source of life and hope to go on living. We are not self-sufficient. The devil’s temptation notwithstanding, we are not gods.

So, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, i.e., if death conquered him rather than he death, he is no Savior. It would mean the consequence of our sin still has hold of us because it still has hold of him. That would mean he is not God, not our Redeemer. He is just a dead human.

But because Jesus is risen from the dead, a whole new page of human history has begun. Jesus’ Resurrection is not an isolated event, a one-off, personal reward to him. (“You did good, Jesus, now get out of that tomb!”) No, Jesus’ Resurrection is proof of his divine credentials. It is also the beginning of a process, beginning on the first Easter but ending on the Last Day. When we declare, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come,” we are not speaking of something disconnected from the Resurrection. The fact that Jesus ensured the grave was not a dead-end street guarantees that humanity shares in that benefit.

For those who are part of his Mystical Body, it is the final act of salvation. It is the restoration of the whole man — body and soul — to a glory even the First Adam could not have known. It is Jesus’ ultimate healing miracle, for which all the cures he performed during his lifetime were but foretastes. For those who reject him, it is the restoration of man’s bodily-spiritual unity only to endure the rupture of that unity on the part of sinners who cling forever to their sins. The pain of hell is the pain of those who want to destroy themselves as God’s image in order to remake themselves in their own warped likeness. They are “good” insofar as they are — that is the repeated refrain of Genesis — but that goodness is what they hate and would destroy about themselves. 

The “joy of the Resurrection” is precisely that sin and evil do not have the final word in human history. The devil is beaten. He may still try to take prisoners, but the paradox is those he takes are those who freely choose his slavery. The Resurrection makes clear that God and good have the last words in history and eternity.

The Gospels recount various events connected with the Resurrection. They speak of the women who went to the grave, expecting to anoint Jesus’ body and instead finding an empty tomb (Luke 24:1-10, Mark 16:1-3, Matthew 28:1, 5-10). They speak of visions of angels (Matthew 28:5-10, Mark 16:4-7). They speak of Peter and John running to that empty tomb, seeing and believing (Luke 24:12, John 20:3-10). They speak of shocked guards and confabulated stories (Matthew 28:2-4, 11-15). They speak of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in the Garden, someone she does not at first recognize (John 20:11-18).

They speak the same way of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who finally recognize Jesus in the Eucharist (Luke 24:13-35). They speak of encounters with the Risen Jesus in Galilee (John 21:1-14) and the reconciliation of Peter (John 21:15-24). They speak of the Apostles in the Upper Room to whom Jesus brings greetings of “peace” and the message to continue that “peace” through the sacrament of Penance (John 20:19-23). 

They speak of “many other things” that Jesus did (John 21:25) not recorded in the Gospels, alluding to the “many proofs” by which “he presented himself alive to them … appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).

Each of these episodes provides us rich material for meditation on the fact that Jesus is not “God of the dead but of the living” (Luke 20:38), that “God did not make death nor does he rejoice in the death of the living” (Wisdom 1:13), and that this is his offer to us, requiring only our fiat, letting him by his grace transfigure us. 

Today’s Mystery is depicted in art by the early 16th-century “Italian” Renaissance painter, Raphael. His “Resurrection of Christ,” dating from around 1500 and in Brazil’s São Paulo Art Museum, seeks to capture the very moment of Resurrection. It is one of his earliest works. One commentator points out that the viewer should observe the “balanced geometry” of the painting because it gives the action a “dynamic choreography.”

Jesus is the central figure, ascending over his tomb (which is more a Renaissance sarcophagus than a Jewish cave tomb). He bears his glorious banner of victory, marked by the sign of that victory, his Cross. His right hand is extended in blessing. His Body is already transformed — from the beaten and bruised torso he has retained only those marks of his Passion he chooses, i.e., the nail marks in his limbs and the opening in his side.

Two angels already attend him — will they be the messengers to the empty Tomb’s first visitors? Jesus told his Apostles, some of whom were ready to melee in Gethsemane with a few swords, that he could have a legion of angels at his defense if he wanted. Instead, he had an angel there to strengthen him on his way to Calvary. 

The four tomb guards, dressed in Renaissance breeches, are scattered to the four winds. Human agents, in the service of watching over death, are no match against the Lord of Life. But the human agents are not alone: just below the guard in gold on the left is a green snake, the ancient serpent the crushing of whose head was promised in Eden. Nor can the devil keep the grave sealed.

In the background, almost oblivious to what is happening in front of them, come the three women, bearing spices, planning to anoint Jesus’ body, so absorbed in their debate over who would move the stone to note that discussion is moot.

The Joyful Mysteries focused on Jesus’ first 12 years and the Hidden Life. The Luminous Mysteries primarily looked at events in his Public Ministry, though they open the door into the present. The Sorrowful Mysteries are concentrated on “a day in the Life of Christ.” 

The Glorious Mysteries explicitly open the door to eternity. From what we see and meditate on today comes our faith in “the life of the world to come,” a life without end.