A reading of the Holy Gospel according to Saint John. Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus. She saw that the stone had been already moved away. So, she ran off to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one that Jesus loved, that's Saint John himself and said to the disciples, the lord has been taken from the tomb and we don't know where they have put him. That Peter and the other disciple started out on their way towards the tomb.
They were running side by side, but then the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He did not enter, however, but bent down to look into it and saw the wrappings lying on the ground, all the linens that they put around Jesus' body. Presently, Simon Peter came along behind John. But Peter went into the tomb. He saw also the wrappings on the ground and saw the cloth which had covered Christ's head not lying with the other wrappings but rolled up by itself in a separate place.
Then the disciple who had arrived first at the tomb went in. He saw and believed. Remember, as yet, they did not understand the scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead. And this is the gospel indeed, absolutely the good news of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Unless Christ be risen from the dead, our preaching is in vain, and so also your faith and your practice too. Let me hasten to add. You recognize these words from Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Unless Christ be risen, and Paul's talking about a bodily resurrection, then our faith is a washout.
Forget it. And I respect people who are fighting against it because it's the most horrible lie the world has seen. So let's face it. We're dealing here with big stakes. You either believe in Christ's resurrection or you don't, And it makes all the difference in the world or should and will in any life that takes it seriously.
Now first thing, there were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Keep it in mind, nobody saw it. There were people around the tomb, presumably, but nobody saw it. The soldiers said they were asleep. But there were plenty of people who can testify to Christ's life, to his death, to his burial, and to what appeared to be his appearances after the resurrection or whatever it was.
Plenty. And on one instance, there were 500, but there was no eyewitness to the resurrection. And this is the big point which so called historians make, because unless you see it or you have an eyewitness, it doesn't count. But now another thing to keep in mind, I I'm being very factual. I'm not about this because there's nothing so important as for you to realize that while your acceptance of Christ's resurrection is an act of faith, it's not the faith which is a synonym for trust or confidence.
It's a synonym for belief on evidence, not for the fact, but for the testimony of your witness as in any good court of law. Now when I first went to the seminary in 1928, that's a few years ago. They don't seem like very many, I'll tell you. Those who denied the resurrection denied the resurrection because there was never any Christ who who was who lived to resurrect. Because there was a the very elite intelligentsia had Christ as the product of the primitive Christian faith, a projection of their imagination and over a lot of stuff.
Well, of course, nobody today accepts that or even believes it. You can't. You can't. Christ is admitted today to be a fact of history. He lived, and he died.
At least, that's what a lot of people think. So that was the first thing. They denied the resurrection because there was no Christ to resurrect. Very simple. Now that dwindled off.
But you see, those who attack Christianity attack the resurrection because it's pivotal. It's absolutely the fulcrum of our faith. So then we had after Boltman and company, this idea that Christ was an historical person, that he he is a fact of history. He lived. And that you had his apprehension, you had a trial, you had his torture, you had his carrying of the cross, you had his actual crucifixion, and you had a burial.
They admit all of that. But the various theories, there are two main ones, reject the idea that he really died on the cross. That what actually happened was that, for a lot of their explanations, he appeared to be dead. So then it was a premature burial when they put him in the grave. And then in one way or another, as they try to explain, he left the tomb.
And, of course, then his disciples said he he rose from the remember, none of them expected the resurrection. Keep that in mind. They did not expect it at all. Now that is a very commonly accepted view today. It was made it was made very prominent in 1966 by Sean Felt in what he called the Passover plot.
I think it was made into a movie. Then in 2782, you have the Englishman, Derek, who published a book under the title of Anastasis, the Greek word Anastasis, which means a coming to life, a revival, not necessarily resurrection, you see. Now that's those, that is not an uncommonly held view. But, you see, it rejects Christ's resurrection because it rejects his death on the cross, that he did not rise from the dead because he he didn't die. It was a premature burial.
Now coming down into into our own Catholic family, we have a view which I would call it a a middle view, which doubts or even denies the bodily resurrection of Christ, but insists upon what they call the spiritual resurrection of Christ, whatever that means. And here you have such theologians as Hans King, Schillebuck, Marxian, Dufour, Rauner in his later years. These are all Catholic theologians, all of them under a cloud of discipline from Rome too, let me say. But this is their idea. See, this is an an effort to compromise, to satisfy, in a sense, Now there, here you have it, but that is not the view of the Catholic church.
Trent in the sixteenth century made it very clear that Christ's resurrection from the tomb was absolutely unique, not because you had a a corpse coming back to life. There are number of instances of that. But as Trent pointed out, the unique character of Christ's resurrection is that he came to life by his own power, by his own virtue as god. He raised himself from the dead as god almighty, and that's the heart of it. That Christ, the son of Mary, one person, two natures, rose from the dead by his own divine power.
Nobody did it for him. Christ said to Lazarus, come out of the tomb. Nobody said that to Christ. He did it himself. And that's the hard truth of Catholicism.
The church officially as officially and formally as she can speak That this song, a direct quotation from the Latin, that Christ rose bodily from the dead by his own power and virtue, and that's our faith. We are resurrection Christians, and hallelujah is our song. Praise god. That's what hallelujah means, as you know. Praise god.
Now I just wanna review briefly. As I said, the resurrection of Christ, our ascent to Jesus Christ as the son of god is a matter of faith, not of apodictic proof. It's historical certitude. But let me tell you the case. I read these books.
They are not at all convincing because they they don't deal with certain facts. They deal with some, but not with others. Of course, it would be a possible explanation that Christ didn't die and that his some way that the body was recovered and revived, and then he appeared. Very sensible. But how do you explain a lot of other facts?
First fact, all the testimony is that Christ died on the cross. Two reasons two reasons that he actually died. First, after he'd been on the cross for only a such three hours or so and that the two thieves or whoever they were, In order to get the bodies down before the Sabbath started, the Jewish Sabbath, on Friday night, they because you see the bodies were crucified were left on the on the crosses until they died, and they died of starvation and lack of water. It was a horrible death. So when they they so when they got permission to to, to take the bodies down, the soldiers wanted to be sure they were dead or at least they couldn't run away.
So they broke the legs of the two thieves who were still living and, of course, just chucked them into a grave, some kind of a ditch. But when they came to Christ, these Roman centurions found Christ dead. Now these weren't men who weren't acquainted with death. These were Roman centurions. They were seasoned soldiers.
They knew what death was, but they found Jesus dead. That's what the text says, and nobody denies the text. Then to make sure he was dead, they thrust a spear into his side, and blood and water came out. It wasn't as just a mere scratch. So that's point number one.
Christ was dead, and there's no evidence that he wasn't dead. Not a bit. He was a surely a corpse. Now the second point, the two because part of the part of the the argument that Christ did not actually die and rise from the dead was is that he that they forgot where they buried him. Well, we are explicitly told that the Jews went to Pilate I mean, that that the Christ that Joseph of Arimathea, he has a name.
He comes up other times. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he put the body of Jesus in a brand new tomb that he himself had had paid to have carved out a rock. Now that isn't something that an owner easily forgets where you've carved your own tomb out of a piece of solid rock. And Pilate said, go ahead.
Take the body. Do what you want with it. So Joseph of Arimathea and others took the body of Jesus, wrapped it in fresh linen, and put it in a brand new tomb that Joseph of Arimathea had had made for himself. So there's no mistake in where the tomb was. There's no doubt about the empty tomb.
Everybody agrees to that. Now one of the hardest things for those who deny the resurrection of Christ as bodily is the appearances. You may argue about how many they were, but they they were our lord's appearances all the way from Jerusalem in the South, all the way up to Capernaum up in the Northern part of Palestine. And there were all kinds of appearances, not just to one or two people, to smallish groups, and then on one occasion to a crowd of 500. That's not that's always a pretty good crowd.
And then he ate, he drank, he cooked. After he left him, there were empty cups, there were crumbs on the table, there were bones of the fish. Ghosts don't leave bones. And another fact beyond dispute, just just think of the change that took place with the disciples after they became convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. It was totally unexpected, remember.
Keep that in mind. They were completely changed men. From the Peter who three times denied that he even knew Christ because a maid accused him of it at a fire, they were on fire with enthusiasm to go forth and to preach Jesus Christ crucified in the face of the very people who had crucified Jesus. What brought about that change? Will you tell me that?
Nobody denies it. And it's a fact, and any scientific mind wants to know the cause when you have an effect. And the final point I want you to remember is Thomas. I love saint Thomas. I love him for his doubt.
I would have been with Saint Thomas. Unless I put my hands in his wounds, I won't believe. And he didn't until he put his hands in the wound and put his hand where the peer where the spear had thrust into Christ's breast. Then Thomas believed. You want proof?
Another thing, and don't ever forget this when it comes to people quoting scripture. When you quote Saint Paul, when you read Saint Paul, you're not reading one of the evangelists. You're not reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. You're reading Saint Paul of Tarsus, the Jew. They were all Jews, but he was a very special Jew.
He was a rabbi. And Paul of Tarsus, on at least three or four in the Corinthians, in the Galatians, in Ephesians, in these all of these letters, he says explicitly that what I am teaching you, I got directly from God and his son, our lord Jesus Christ. So Saint Paul is a completely separate witness by his own words. Well, you can say, well, he's a liar. Fine.
But let's prove that now. And then let's eliminate it if you can prove he was lying. But if Paul's telling the truth, then you have a totally separate witness from all the other disciples I mean, the evangelists. And the book of the acts, keep that in mind. So remember, when I am talking to you, I've spent this week, I believing in Christ's resurrection is is not an easy thing.
It's not an easy thing when last night at the mass, father Geist raised that host, and we all said, my lord and my god. What do you think of that? Isn't that an act of faith? But that same act of faith that that host was raised, and I said, that is Jesus Christ, the son of god, as I will do when I myself consecrate your host. Of course, that's an act of faith, a tremendous act of faith, and so is our belief in Christ's resurrection.
But there is loads of testimony, loads of testimony, not for the fact, but for the credibility of our witnesses, which is the way it's done in any decent court of law. We are not talking about trust and confidence. We are talking about belief, Catholic belief. You're talking about motives of credibility based upon the reliability of your witnesses. And so on this Easter Sunday, when we are indeed Christians of the broken tomb, Christians of the resurrection, Christians of the living Christ, not an illusion, not a projection of faith, not merely some kind of a spiritual resurrection of a memory, but the actual bodily resurrection of Christ from a tomb by his own power and in virtue of his own divinity.
And so with Saint Augustine of the fourth to fifth century, we do sing out with joy in our hearts because all our faith, all our hope, all our aspirations, all the sacrifices we have made in this life for him, they come to rest upon this fact, that we are Christians of the resurrection, the broken tomb, and, hallelujah. Praise god is our song. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.