Resurrection: The Crucial Context
The Monday Mystery Part 16: The Resurrection
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus (Luke 24:2-3)
Welcome to the sixteenth entry of The Monday Mystery. Each week I will write a reflection on a mystery (i.e. an episode in the life of Jesus or Mary) from the Rosary. My hope for this series is to provide fuel and inspiration for your own meditations. When you finish reading the reflection, I encourage you to do a ‘test run’ of the mystery by praying a decade of the Rosary (i.e. one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be) while meditating on the mystery.
This week we enter the home stretch of the rosary. After five weeks of relentlessly delving into Jesus’ misery, humiliation, and seemingly utter defeat, we now enter into the explosively triumphant glorious mysteries.
If you’ve followed these reflections for the past five weeks, you may have noticed a lot of poetic waxing going on about Jesus’ suffering. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not apologizing for that. The cross truly is “…the power and wisdom of God” (1 Cor 24). Whoever has the courage and faith to peer beyond its frightening and discouraging surface will find an inexhaustible fountain of love, heroism, and wisdom (there I go again).
In my years of praying the rosary and meditating on the scriptures, I’ve sometimes become so encouraged by and enthusiastic about the sorrowful mysteries that I’ve wondered whether they could also be called ‘the glorious mysteries.’ I still think one could make a strong and pious argument for that. But I think calling them the sorrowful mysteries is very instructive for illustrating a crucial distinction between Christianity and other spiritualities.
The difference lies in why we embrace suffering. In other spiritualities, such as stoicism or various strains of Buddhism, the path to enlightenment entails accepting everything just the way it is. It involves realizing that your suffering isn’t actually bad; ‘bad’ is just a label you’ve arbitrarily placed on your experience - your distress comes from the torment you feel from being wrapped up in an illusion of your own making.
As I’ve written about in a previous post, there’s certainly a lot of truth to be found there, but at the end of the day these theories of suffering are too clever by half. To paraphrase Fr. W. Norris Clarke, rather than explaining our experience of suffering, they explain it away. And they also offer a radically pessimistic view of reality: extinguishment is the best you can hope for.
By contrast, Jesus taught us to embrace suffering not because suffering is good, or an illusion, but because of the hope we have in him. In Hebrews we read:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God (Hebrews 12: 1-2)
The resurrection, and the joy that lies before us provide the crucial context for the sorrowful mysteries. This context is all too often missing. Although Catholics are infamous for myopically dwelling on Jesus’ suffering, even non Catholic explanations of the Gospel (e.g. The Four Spiritual Laws) present Jesus’ crucifixion as the most crucial element of our salvation. I find that the resurrection, if it is mentioned at all, is usually an afterthought.
This is a perilous oversight, and I say this as a member of a community called ‘The Companions of the Cross.’ The resurrection is just as, if not more important than the crucifixion. In First Corinthians, Paul writes:
if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all (1 Cor 15:17-19).
Jesus’ death on the cross wouldn’t have done us any good whatsoever without the resurrection. That’s because his sacrifice would not have been worth anything if the Father did not accept it, and raise him up from the dead. Below is one of my favorite paintings of Jesus. I think it beautifully gives us the full picture of how Jesus saves us.
When Adam and Eve sinned, we began to drown in the raging waters of sin and death. By his incarnation, Jesus became the type of being who could pull us out of the water. By his crucifixion and death, he plunged himself into death and grabbed ahold of our hand. But this would not have done us any good if he did not pull us out of the water. He did this by his resurrection; he pulled us out of the water and into a new and beautiful life with and in him. This is what happens to us when we are baptized. We are joined to Jesus and we become members of the body of Christ by being plunged into his death and then risen out of the waters into his new life.
In short, Jesus’ sufferings and death were crucial, but they are only half of the puzzle, and they are not ‘the good part.’ And when we only present half the puzzle, only half the picture comes across. It’s not a pretty sight. Those trapped in this disfigured Christianity live a tortured existence. The Christian life becomes a masochistic exercise in wallowing in our own wretchedness and the suffering we made the Father inflict on his Son, as well as doing our best to cover our spiritual rear ends against a vengeful God. In this version of Christianity, a successful life means realizing what a wretch you are, and managing to not get cast into hell.
You may have met Christians like this. I think it explains why some Christians are so bitter and nasty. Imagine asking a couple if they had a good marriage, and they reply “well, we didn’t get divorced.” Without the context of the resurrection and of new life in Christ, we are left with a completely suffocated and dysfunctional view of what it means to have a good relationship with God.
Praise be to God, this version of Christianity couldn’t be further from the truth. We are not merely saved from something, we are also, and even more importantly saved for something: eternal bliss with God and our brothers and sisters in Christ. This life is a test, but it is also, and perhaps more importantly a preparation for this new and vibrant life. By following God’s will and avoiding sin, we are not merely avoiding hell, we are learning how to live and love the way we will live and love in heaven. We are not merely avoiding indescribable suffering, we are seeking after indescribable joy, and indescribable glory.
As you do your test run, picture Jesus waking from his sleep and sitting up in the tomb. Follow his movements and watch him walk through the entrance past the stone which was rolled away. In him you too can walk away from sin and death. Jesus is finishing his mission, and returning to his Father. Follow him into the joy that lies before you.