The Resurrection Is the High

Point of Revelation

"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is

in vain" (1 Cor 15:14).

Evidently St. Paul saw the resurrection as the basis of the

Christian faith. He saw it as the keystone of the entire edifice of doctrine and life built up on revelation, inasmuch

as it is the definitive confirmation of the whole ensemble of truth

taught by Christ.The first element we encounter in

the framework of the Easter events is the empty tomb.

(Jn 20:13; Mt 28:11-15)

Hence all the Church's preaching,

(Lk 24:34, 36)

from apostolic times down the centuries and

spanning the generations even to the present day, makes its appeal to the

resurrection.(1 Cor 15:4-8; Acts 1:22)

The resurrection was first of all the confirmation of all

that Christ had "done and taught." It was the divine seal

stamped on his words and life.

He himself had indicated to his disciples and

adversaries this definitive sign of his truth.

On the first Easter the angel told the women at the

empty tomb: "He has risen as he said"

(Mt 28:6, Lk 24:5-6).

If this word and promise of his are

revealed as true, then all his other words and promises possess the power of truth that

does not pass away, as he himself had proclaimed:

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not

pass away" (Mt 24:35; cf. Mk 13:31; Lk 21:33).

No stronger, more decisive and more

authoritative proof than the resurrection from the

dead could have been imagined or asked for. All the truths, including those most impenetrable to the human mind, find their justification, even

from the rational point of view,

in the fact that the risen Christ gave the definitive

proof, promised beforehand, of his divine

authority.(Lk 24:30,39-40,41-43; Jn

20:20,27; 21:9, 13-15)

The truth of Christ's divinity itself is confirmed by the resurrection.

"When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I Am"

(Jn 8:28).

Those who heard these words wanted to stone Jesus, because for the Jews the

words "I Am" were the equivalent of the unspeakable name of God.

In fact, when asking Pilate to condemn Jesus to death, they presented as the principal charge that he had "made

himself the Son of God" (Jn 19:7).

For this reason the Sanhedrin had condemned him as guilty of blasphemy.

In reply to the high priest's question,

Jesus had declared that he was the Christ,

the Son of God (cf. Mt 26:63-65; Mk 14:62; Lk 22:70),

that is to say, not merely the earthly Messiah as

understood and awaited by Jewish tradition,

but the Messiah-Lord announced by Psalm 110

(cf. Mt 22:41 ff.),

the mysterious personage perceived by Daniel

(cf. 7:13-14).

This was the great blasphemy and the charge

for the death sentence: that he had proclaimed

himself the Son of God! Jesus' resurrection

confirms the truth of his divine identity, and

justifies the self-attribution of the "name" of God which he made

before the Pasch: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham

was, I Am" (Jn 8:58).

For the Jews this was a claim punishable by stoning

(cf. Lev 24:16).

"They took up stones to throw at him;

but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple"

(Jn 8:59).

If they had not then been able to stone him, they

later succeeded in "lifting him up" on the cross.

The resurrection of the crucified proved that he was really I Am, the Son

of God.

In actual fact, Jesus, while calling himself Son of Man, had not only asserted that he was truly the Son

of God. But in the upper room, before the

passion, he had also prayed the Father to reveal that the Christ-Son of Man

was his eternal Son: "Father, the hour has come;

glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you"

(Jn 17:1).

"Glorify me in your own presence with the glory which I had with you before the world was made"

(Jn 17:5).

The paschal mystery was the answer to this prayer, the confirmation of

Christ's divine sonship, and indeed his glorification with that

glory which he "had with the Father before the

world was made": the glory of the Son of God.

According to John's Gospel Jesus, in the pre-pashcal period, had on

several occasions alluded to this future glory which would be manifested in his death and

resurrection. Only after the event did the disciples

understand the meaning of those words of his.

Thus we read that during his first Pasch at Jerusalem,

after having driven the merchants and money-changers out of the temple, Jesus replied to the Jews who had

asked him for a sign of his authority for doing as he had done:

"'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up....' But he spoke of the temple of his body.

When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered

that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word

which Jesus had spoken" (Jn 2:19-22).

Jesus' reply to those sent by the sisters of

Lazarus who besought him to come to visit

their brother who was ill,

referred to the paschal events:

"This illness is not unto death;

it is for the glory of God,

so that the Son of God may be glorified by

means of it" (Jn 11:4).

It was not merely the glory which he could acquire from

the miracle, all the more so since it would

have been a contributory cause of his death

(cf. Jn 11:46-54).

His real glorification would have come precisely from his being raised up on the cross

(cf. Jn 12:32).

The disciples had a clear understanding of all this after

the resurrection.

Particularly interesting is St. Paul's teaching on the value of the

resurrection as the determinant element of his Christological

concept, linked also to his personal

experience of the risen one. "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God which he

promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, the Gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David

according to the flesh, and designated Son of God in power

according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord"

(Rom 1:1-4).

This means that from the very first moment of his human conception and

birth

(descended from David),

Jesus was the eternal Son of God

become Son of Man.

In the resurrection this divine sonship was manifested in all

its fullness through the power of God.

God restored Jesus to life by the work of the Holy Spirit

(cf. Rom 8:11)

and constituted him in the glorious state of kyrios

(cf. Phil 2:9-11; Rom 14:9; Acts 2:36).

Jesus merited under a new, messianic title the recognition,

worship and glory of the eternal name of Son of God

(cf. Acts 13:33; Heb 1:1-5; 5:5).

Paul had expounded this same doctrine in the synagogue of

Antioch in Pisidia on the sabbath day.

At the invitation of the leaders of the synagogue, he spoke to

announce that as the high point of the economy of salvation, effected between the lights and shadows of

the history of Israel, God had raised up Jesus from the dead.

For many days Jesus had appeared to those who came up with him

from Galilee to Jerusalem and these were now his witnesses to the

people.

"And we," the Apostle concluded, "bring you the good news that what God promised to our fathers, he has

fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus;

as also it is written in the second psalm:

'You are my Son, today I have begotten you'“

(Acts 13:32-34: cf. Ps 2:7).

For Paul there is an assimilation of ideas between the glory of Christ's

resurrection and Christ's eternal divine sonship, which is fully

revealed in that victorious conclusion of his messianic mission.

Paul's personal experience of the Lord

This glory of kyrios manifests that power of the risen one (Man-God) whom Paul had

known by personal experience at the moment of his conversion

on the road to Damascus. Then he too heard himself

called to be an apostle (though not one of the Twelve),

inasmuch as he was an eye-witness of the living Christ. Paul received from him the

power to face all the toil and bear all the suffering of his

mission.

Paul's spirit was so marked by that experience that in his teaching and witness

he gave precedence to the idea of the power of the risen one over that of sharing in Christ's

sufferings, which was also dear to him.

That which he had verified in his personal experience he proposed to the faithful as a

rule of thought and a norm of life:

"Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus

my Lord...in order that I may gain Christ

and be found in him...so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and

may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead"

(Phil 3:8-11).

At this point his thought turned to his experience

on the road to Damascus: "...because Christ Jesus has made me his own"

(Phil 3:12).

Christ's resurrection is closely connected with the

mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

It is its fulfillment, according to God's eternal plan.

It is the supreme crowning of all that Jesus had revealed

and wrought throughout his whole life,

from his birth to his passion and death,

by his deeds, miracles, teaching, example of perfect holiness and above all by his

transfiguration.

He had never revealed directly the glory which he had with the Father "before the world was

made" (Jn 17:5),

but he concealed this glory in his humanity until the definitive emptying of

himself (cf. Phil 2:7-8)

through his death on the cross.

The resurrection reveals the fact that

"in Christ the whole fullness of the deity dwells

bodily" (Col 1:19).

Thus the resurrection completes the

manifestation of the content of the Incarnation.

It can therefore be said that it is also the fullness

of revelation. It stands therefore, as we have said, at the center of the Christian faith and of the Church's preaching.