From the Heart of the Shepherd
- Church of St. Mark
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
From the bulletin for The Resurrection of the Lord (Apr 20, 2025)
April 20, Easter Sunday
“He saw and believed” (Jn 20:8)
Bishop Barron once said in an Easter homily that if Christ has not been raised, then we should all go home. That is to say, if the Resurrection of Jesus is not a truth of history, then what we do in church every Sunday is a terrible deceit. Of course, the bishop is just riffing on what St. Paul said ages ago: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain… then you are still in your sins … and we are the most pitiable of men” (2 Cor 15:14-19).
But if Christ has been raised… then we should be at church not just on Easter Sunday, but every Sunday… even every day, if we can! If Christ has been raised, then He is who He said He was… and that changes everything! Then the power of death is truly defeated; it no longer has the last say. And who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? And if the God who raised Christ from the dead is for us, who can oppose us? (Cf. Rom 8:31-35) If He lives and intercedes for us, and makes all things work for the good of those who love Him, and has a place prepared for us in the Father’s house, and will come back and bring us there Himself when He raised us who believe up on the last day… then everything, everything has been converted into a cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving, such that St. Peter can go so far as to say, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pe 4:13).
Is, then, the Resurrection true? Of course we Christians believe it to be. But is it merely a matter of faith? A blind choice? Hardly. God has given us many good reasons that point to the truth of the Resurrection. So many that to deny it would be downright unreasonable. It is undeniable that the followers of Jesus claimed that though He was put to death, afterwards He was raised up in His body and appeared to them. Many were willing to die before renouncing their belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. How does one explain that? Who would face death for a lie? Could they all have been deceived? If just one of the apostles or first Christians had admitted that the Resurrection was a hoax, would not the unbelieving world have remembered that? Where, indeed, is Jesus’ body if it was not raised? Would not the enemies of the Church have found it, since doing so would have been the easiest way to disprove the claim? And yet though both Jews and Romans had every motivation to find it, they never could…
Then we have the Gospels themselves: four independent witnesses to the Resurrection, each with its own perspective, and differing from one another in ways that make it hard to conclude that their authors were in cahoots. Yet they all agree on the essentials. Moreover, what they relate is only explicable if it actually happened. In a culture in which a woman’s testimony was not considered reliable, why would the evangelists claim that the first witnesses to the Risen Christ were all women… one of whom was a former demoniac (Mary Magdalen)? The incredulous apostles are put in the worst possible light. The burial clothes (which we still have!) were found in the tomb… what thieves would unwrap a body to carry away naked when they had found it all conveniently packaged for transport? The Roman guard had been positioned under pain of death to watch over the tomb until the fourth day… how could those grave robbers have entered in the first place? And then when you consider the fact that all of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection had been prophesied in advance over the course of centuries and down to the details… doubting becomes very difficult.
So let’s not. Let’s start to believe in the Resurrection. If we do, “Easter” will not be a matter of going to church once a year. It will be everything we do.