Acts 5:12-20; John 20:19-31
St.
Paul taught, “[I]f Christ
has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith.” (1 Cor.
15:14) The Savior proclaimed His
divinity by forgiving sins and saying that He and the Father are one (John
10:30) and that “before
Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) The
high priest asked Him at His arrest, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Christ
responded, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14:
61-62) If One Who had claimed to be God
was wrong in predicting His resurrection and had simply decayed in the tomb
like anyone else, there would be no reason for anyone to remember Jesus Christ today
as anything but a failed Messiah with grandiose delusions.
Orthodox
Christian faith is not grounded in sentimental memories or warm feelings about an
inspiring personality who lived a long time ago, but in the joyful proclamation
that “Christ is Risen!” in victory over death as a whole Person. His bodily resurrection is our hope for “the
resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” as we confess in
the Nicene Creed. To quote Saint Paul
again, “[I]if Christ
has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then
those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this
life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor.
15: 17-19) If Christ did not rise from the dead as an embodied Person, then St.
Paul and all the martyrs wasted their lives for nothing. Remember that he became a Christian only
after the Risen Lord miraculously appeared to Him in blinding light on the road
to Damascus Apart from the reality of
the Savior’s resurrection, the conversion of St. Paul from a persecuting
Pharisee to the apostle to the Gentiles makes no sense at all.
St.
Thomas believed only when he touched the wounds of the Risen Savior’s glorified
body. In our reading from Acts, the
apostles healed the suffering bodies of many sick people. The Lord’s resurrection reveals the great
dignity of the human body, which is destined for heavenly glory. Salvation is
not an escape from the physical dimensions of our lives, but requires our purification
and fulfillment as whole persons united to Christ. True faith in the Savior demands
that we offer every aspect of our existence to Him for healing and
transformation, holding nothing back. Even
as He healed the sick and fed the hungry, the most obvious practices of faithfulness
involve caring for people in their bodily weaknesses and infirmities. By showing tangible signs of mercy for our
neighbors, we also touch the wounds of Christ, for He is present to us in
everyone in need. In light of His resurrection, the bodily sufferings and
struggles of others appear not as irrelevant distractions, but as invitations
to manifest a foretaste of “the life of the world to come.” Regardless of any
context or circumstance, to refuse to abandon our neighbors in their bodily sufferings
and to provide whatever care we can provides a sign of God’s gracious purposes
for all who bear His image and likeness. If we refuse to do so, then we live as though
He had not conquered the tomb. Because
“Christ is Risen!,” we must show our neighbors the care due those who are
called to heavenly glory.
In
order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must also open
our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing. The problem is not that we have bodies, but
that we have allowed the fear of death to fuel our passions in ways that corrupt
every dimension of who we are in this world.
Because God creates and saves us as whole persons, we must embrace the Savior’s
victory over death by living as those who are in a “one flesh” communion with Him
in every dimension of our existence. We are living members of His Body, the Church,
and nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. We must live accordingly with our bodies
every day of our lives, for Christ’s resurrection has glorified the human body
and calls us to holiness. All our
relationships, actions, and desires must be healed and reoriented to the
Kingdom in order for us to enter into the joy of our Lord’s resurrection as
whole persons. That is not a disembodied
or abstract vocation, but a tangible and practical calling.
Because
“Christ is Risen!,” we must not use the fact that we have bodies as an excuse
to remain enslaved to corruption in any form.
We fall into hatred, greed, sloth, gluttony, drunkenness, lust, vanity, and
other sins not because we are flesh and blood, but because we have refused to
enter fully into the joy of the resurrection of Christ. The season of Pascha calls us all to embrace
our Risen Lord as the restoration and fulfillment of every dimension of our
personhood. We cannot become truly human
apart from Him, for only He has conquered the fear of death that is at the root
of our corruption. We must unite
ourselves to Christ in joyful obedience,
even as we remain flesh and blood in this world. Then we may say with St. Paul:
“It is no longer I who
live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) The struggle to
do so is ultimately one of joy as we enter more fully into the gloriously good
news of this radiant season of Pascha.
It is a struggle that we must all undertake if we are to respond like
St. Thomas to the God-Man Whom death could not destroy, for “Christ is Risen!”
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