Tag: Resurrection

On
Bishop Robert Barron

Lessons derived from the Resurrection

The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the be-all and the end-all of the Christian faith. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, all bishops, priests, and Christian ministers should go home and get honest jobs, and all the Christian faithful should leave their churches immediately.

As Paul himself put it: “If Jesus is not raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain and we are the most pitiable of men.” It’s no good, of course, trying to explain the Resurrection away or rationalize it as a myth, a symbol, or an inner subjective experience. None of that does justice to the novelty and sheer strangeness of the Biblical message.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Risen and the reality of the Resurrection

When I saw the coming attractions for the new film Risen — which deals with a Roman tribune searching for the body of Jesus after reports of the Resurrection — I thought that it would leave the audience in suspense, intrigued but unsure whether these reports were justified or not.

I was surprised and delighted to discover that the movie is, in fact, robustly Christian and substantially faithful to the Biblical account of what transpired after the death of Jesus.

Scene in the Upper Room

My favorite scene shows tribune Clavius (played by the always convincing Joseph Fiennes) bursting into the Upper Room, intent upon arresting Jesus’ most intimate followers. As he takes in the people in the room, he spies Jesus, at whose crucifixion he had presided and whose face in death he had closely examined.

But was he seeing straight? Was this even possible? He slinks down to the ground, fascinated, incredulous, wondering, anguished.

As I watched the scene unfold, the camera sweeping across the various faces, I was as puzzled as Clavius: was that really Jesus? It must indeed have been like that for the first witnesses of the Risen One, their confusion and disorientation hinted at in the Scriptures themselves: “They worshipped, but some doubted.”

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Fr. Robert Barron

Startling news of the resurrection

Just a few weeks before the most significant Christian holy day of the year, British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking on an evangelical radio program, articulated what, for him, is the meaning of Easter.

He explained that the central message of Easter is “kindness, compassion, hard work, and responsibility.” I’m for all of those virtues, but so, I would venture to guess, is any decent person from any background, religious or non-religious. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, fair-minded agnostics, and atheists would all subscribe to that rather abstract and harmless description of the significance of Easter.

In a sense, we shouldn’t blame the prime minister for his characterization, for the Christian Churches in general, but especially the Anglican Church, have not distinguished themselves for the crispness of their doctrinal formulations.

But if that’s all Easter is about, not to put too fine a point on it, the jig is up.

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On
George Weigel

Easter and evangelism: learning from St. Paul

Galatians 1:15-18 is not your basic witness-to-the-Resurrection text.

Yet St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview, and why an evangelical imperative was built into that experience.

St. Paul’s story

Here’s the Pauline text:

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On
Fr. Donald Lange

Easter’s eternal surprise

In February 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, Ruth Dillow received the sad news from the Pentagon that her son Clayton had stepped on a mine in Kuwait and was killed.

Ruth said that the grief and shock she felt was almost unbearable. For three days she wept constantly. For three days family and friends tried to comfort her, but they could not. Her grief was too great! She felt some of the grief that Mary surely experienced when her son, Jesus, was crucified.

Surprising news

After the third day, the telephone rang. “It’s just another stranger trying to comfort me,” she thought. Reluctantly, she picked up the phone. The voice on the phone shouted joyfully, “Mom, it’s me. I’m still alive! It’s me!”

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

Reliving Christ’s Passion, Death, Resurrection

This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop.

Dear friends,

We stand at the threshold of the holiest of weeks, reliving the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Indeed, the Sacred Triduum — Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday — comprise a microcosm of our whole life lived in Christ.

To enter as fully as possible into the mysteries of these days is to enter more fully into the mysteries of the life of each one of us. For instance, in the fervent celebration of the days of Holy Week, we can come to have an initial grasp of the mystery of why good people suffer.

Meaning of life unveiled

The meaning of life is unveiled by a fervent and serious celebration of the mysteries of these days.

So, please make every effort to be present for the Holy Thursday evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the solemn commemoration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, and the great Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.

Our churches really should be full (and then some) on these days, because of the gifts of grace available to us at so special a time — and available in a way that they are not otherwise available.

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Bishop Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison

The Cross as part of our faith

This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop.

Dear Friends,

This past Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

This Feast Day takes place each year on the 14th of September and so, while it is a major feast day for the Church, it is often missed by those who do not attend daily Mass, or at least Mass on major feasts.

This year, however, we were particularly blessed to have the feast fall on a Sunday, and so important is the feast that it actually “trumps” the typical Sunday readings.

It is indeed an important day — so much so that it used to be followed by three Ember Days of prayer and fasting.

Why is it so important? It is not the feast of the Crucifixion of our Lord; obviously we mark that on Good Friday. And, in fact, each time we approach the altar for Mass, we represent the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, we recall His suffering, death, and resurrection; why have a special day just for the exaltation of the Holy Cross?

Because, in our Catholic faith symbols matter! We are a physical people, whose very bodies are destined to be glorified, and so the physical, tangible things of this world matter.

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On
George Weigel

The difference Easter made

One of the striking things about the Easter and post-Easter narratives in the New Testament is that they are largely about incomprehension: which is to say that, in the canonical Gospels, the early Church admitted that it took some time for the first Christian believers to understand what had happened in the Resurrection and how what had happened changed everything.

In Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (Basic Books), I draw on insights from Anglican biblical scholar N.T. Wright and Pope Benedict XVI to explore the first Christians’ unfolding comprehension of Easter and how it exploded their ideas of history and their place in history.

So, what changed after Easter?

Understanding of history

The disciples’ understanding of history changed. The first Jesus community lived in expectation of the “last days,” even while Jesus walked among them in his public ministry, but they thought the “last days” involved a history-ending cataclysm.

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On
Fr. Robert Barron

What Easter means

In first century Judaism, there were many views concerning what happened to people after they died.

Following a very venerable tradition, some said that death was the end, that the dead simply returned to the dust of the earth from which they came.

Others maintained that the righteous dead would rise at the close of the age. Still others thought that the souls of the just went to live with God after the demise of their bodies. There were even some who believed in a kind of reincarnation.

Accounts of Jesus’ resurrection

What is particularly fascinating about the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection is that none of these familiar frameworks of understanding is invoked.

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