creed 21 on the third day he rose from the dead according to the scriptures

Creed 21On the third day He rose from the dead according to the Scriptures

He is Risen on the Third Day

“Christ is risen from the deadBy death He conquered death

And He granted life to those in the tombs”Hymn of the procession in Resurrection

“We bring you the good news, what God promised to the fathers, this day He has fulfilled to us,

their children, by raising Jesus” (Acts 13:32-33)


• Resurrection is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ,

• a faith believed and lived as the central truth by the first Christian community;

• handed on as fundamentally by tradition; • established by the documents of the New

Testament; • and preached as an essential part of the

paschal mystery along with the cross

He is Risen on the Third Day• Why are Resurrection together with the Cross the

cornerstone of the faith? • The resurrection of Christ is the tangible proof of God’s

existence, the truth of the revelations given to the fathers and the prophets in the OT, the sovereign power of God, the truth of Jesus’ identity as He proclaimed it, the foundation of the church, and the down payment of the fulfillment of the future promises to come. It is the summit of God’s work in history, as the sacrifice of Isaac was the summit of God’s dealing with Abraham and the appearance of God on the mountain of Sinai was to the Israelites, or even more entering the promised land.


• “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the 12…” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians in about AD 56.

• The resurrection is a real historical event that was handed down by the apostles


• How can we count three days and three nights?

• The common mistake• God’s definition of day and night

He is Risen on the Third Day• The empty tomb

• The holy women as messengers of the resurrection to the apostles

• The resurrection of Christ could not be of human doing and is not like Lazarus’ resurrection.


• Christ’s resurrection cannot be interpreted as something outside the physical order, and its impossible not to acknowledge it as an historical fact.


• The hypothesis that the resurrection was produced by the apostles’ faith or gullibility would not hold up.


The condition of the Christ-risen humanity:

• He showed them that He is not a ghost, yet at the same time His authentic, real body possessed the new properties of a glorious body.


• Why He appeared in a form that could not be recognized immediately by Mary Magdalene and the 2 disciples of Emmaus?


• What is the difference between Christ’s resurrection and the other resurrections?

He is Risen on the Third DayThe Resurrection as transcendent event: • What happened to the body of Christ at the

moment of resurrection? • Why the risen Christ did not show Himself to

anybody except the disciples and the holy women?


• Did Christ raise Himself, or did the Father raise Him?


“By the unity of the divine nature, which remains present in each of the two components of man, these are reunited. For as death is

produced by the separation of the human components, so resurrection is achieved by the

union of the two.” St Gregory of Nyssa

According to the Scriptures

• What did Christ speak of when talking to His disciples after the resurrection concerning the Old Testament Scriptures about resurrection?

According to the Scriptures• What did we gain in the cross, and what do

we gain in the resurrection of Christ? • “who was delivered up because of our

offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:25).

• “Go and tell My brethren” (Matt 28:10; John 20:17).

• So we can say the life we live now we live for God in Christ and that we have the mind of Christ (Gal 2:20).

According to the Scriptures• What do we gain in the resurrection? • How do we receive the graces of the cross and

the resurrection? • “Given for remission of sins and eternal life for

those who partake of Him”• Mystery to be practiced in spirit and truth • Only on the day of judgment will we fully

understand “given for remission of sins and eternal life for whoever partakes of Him” (St Basil liturgy), and John 6:40, 54, 62, 63.

creed 21 on the third day he rose from the dead according to the scriptures

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