Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Eight days ago we were standing
near the Cross on which died the Man of Sorrows (Isaias liii. 3)
abandoned by his Father, and rejected, by a solemn judgment of the
Synagogue, as a false Messiah: and lo! this is the sixth time the sun
has risen on our earth since the voice of the Angel was heard
proclaiming the Resurrection of this adorable Victim. The Church, His
widowed spouse, then lay prostrate before that justice of the Eternal
God and Father who spared not even His own Son (Roman viii. 32)
because He had taken upon Himself the likeness of sin: but now she is
feasting in the sight of the triumph of her Jesus, for He bids her be
exceeding glad. But if within this glad Octave there be one day,
rather than another, on which she should proclaim this triumph, it
assuredly is the Friday, for it was on that day she saw Him filled
with reproaches (Lamentations iii. 30) and crucified.
Today, therefore, let us meditate
on our Saviour’s
Resurrection as being the zenith of His own dear glory, and as the
chief argument on which rests our faith in His Divinity. “If Christ
be not risen again,” says the Apostle, “our faith is vain,” (1
Corinthians xv. 17) but because He is risen again our faith rests on
the surest of foundations. Our Redeemer owed it to us, therefore,
that our certainty with regard to His Resurrection should be perfect.
In order to give this master truth such evidence as would preclude
all possibility of doubt, two things were needed: His death was to be
certified, and the proofs of His Resurrection were to be
incontestable. Jesus fulfilled both these conditions, and with the
most scrupulous completeness. Hence, His triumph over death is a fact
so deeply impressed on our minds that even now, [two thousand] years
since it happened, we cannot celebrate our Easter without feeling a
thrill of enthusiastic admiration akin to that which the guards of
His tomb experienced when they found their captive gone.
Yes, Jesus was truly dead. The
afternoon of Friday was at its close, and Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus took down the body from the Cross. They gave it, stiff and
covered with blood as it was, to His afflicted Mother. Who could
doubt of His death? The terrible agony of the previous night when His
human nature shrank at the foresight of the cup He had to drink; the
treachery of one, and the infidelity of the rest of his Apostles
which broke His sacred Heart; the long hours of insult and cruelty;
the barbarous scourging, which Pilate devised as a means for
softening brutal Jews to pity; the Cross to which He was fastened
with nails that opened four founts of blood; the anguish of His
agonising Heart when He beheld his Mother at the foot of the Cross;
the burning thirst, which choked the throbs of life still left; the
spear that pierced His side through to the very heart, and drew from
it a stream of blood and water —these are proofs enough that death
had made God his victim. Dear Jesus! they are now but so many motives
for us to love your beautiful glory. How could we, for whom you
suffered death, be unmindful of the sufferings that caused it? How
could we forget them now, for they enhance the splendour of your
Resurrection?
He, therefore, gained a true
victory over death: He appeared on the earth as a conqueror of a very
different kind from what had hitherto been known. Here was a fact
which it was impossible to deny: a man whose whole life had been
spent in obscurity was put to death by the most cruel tortures and
amidst the insulting shouts of His unworthy fellow-citizens. Pilate
sent to the Emperor Tiberius an official account of the judgment and
death of one whom he represented as calling himself the King of the
Jews. What would men think, after all this, of them that professed
themselves followers of this Jesus? The philosophers, the wits, the
slaves of the world and pleasure, would point the finger of scorn at
them, and say: “Lo! these are they that adore a God who died on a
Cross!” But, if this God rose again from the grave, is not His
death an evidence of His divinity? He died, and He rose again; He
foretold His Death and His Resurrection. Who but a God could thus
hold in His power the keys of death and Hell? (Apocalypse i. 18)
Yet so it was: Jesus was put to
death and rose again from the grave. How do we know it? By the
testimony of His Apostles. They saw Him after He had risen, they
touched Him, they conversed with Him for forty days. But are these
Apostles to be credited? Surely they are, for never was there a
testimony that bore such internal evidence of truth. What interest
could these men have in publishing the glory of their Master, who had
been put to a death that brought ignominy both upon Himself and them,
if they knew that He never rose again, as He promised He would? We
can understand the Chief Priests bribing the soldiers to say that
while they were asleep His disciples, poor timid men as they were,
came during the night and stole away the body. They thought by this
to throw discredit upon the testimony of the Apostles, but what
folly! We may justly address to them the sarcastic words of Saint
Augustine: “What! do you adduce, sleeping witnesses? Surely, you
yourselves must have been asleep, to have had recourse to such a
scheme as this!” But, as for the Apostles, what motive could they
have for preaching the Resurrection, if it never took place? “In
such a supposition,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “they would have
looked upon their Master as a false prophet and an impostor: and is
it likely they would go and defend Him against the accusations of a
whole nation? Would they expose themselves to all manner of suffering
for one who had so cruelly deceived them? What was there to encourage
them in such an undertaking? The rewards He had promised them? But if
He had not fulfilled His promise of rising again, how could they
trust to the rest of His promises?” No: we must either deny every
principle of nature and common sense, or we must acknowledge the
testimony of the Apostles to be a true one.
Moreover, this testimony was the
most disinterested that could be, for it brought nothing but
persecution and death upon them that gave it. It was a proof that God
was with such men as these who, but a few hours before, were timid
cowards, and now are fearless of every danger, asserting their
conviction with an intrepidity which human courage could never
inspire, and this, too, in cities which were very centres of
civilisation and learning. The world is made to listen to their
testimony, which they confirm by miracles, and thousands of every
tongue and nation are converted into believers of Jesus’
Resurrection. When at length these Apostles laid down their lives for
the doctrines they preached, they left the world in possession of the
truth of the Resurrection, and the seed they had sown in lands, where
even the Roman Empire had not extended its conquests, produced a
quick and world-wide-harvest. All this gave to the astounding fact
which they proclaimed, a guarantee and certainty beyond suspicion. It
was impossible to refuse such evidence without going against every
principle of reason. Yes, Jesus! your Resurrection is as certain as
your death. Your Apostles could never have preached, they could
never have converted the world, as they did, unless they had had
truth on their side. But the Apostles are no longer here to give
their testimony: the equally solemn testimony of the Church has
succeeded to theirs, and proclaims, with a like authority, that Jesus
is no longer among the dead. By the Church, we here mean those
hundreds of millions of Christians who have proclaimed the
Resurrection of Jesus by keeping, for now [two thousand] years, the
Feast of the Pasch. And can there be room for doubt here? Who is
there that would not assent to what has been thus attested every year
since the Apostles first announced it? Among these countless
proclaimers of our Lord’s
Resurrection, there have been thousands of learned men, the bent of
whose mind led them to sift every truth, and who, before embracing
the faith, had examined its tenets in the light of reason. There have
been millions of others, whose acceptance of a dogma like this, which
puts a restraint on the passions was the result of the conviction,
that the only way to eternal happiness was in the due performance of
the duties this dogma imposes, and finally, there have been millions
of others who by their virtues were the support and ornament of the
world, but who owed all their virtues to their faith in the death and
Resurrection of Jesus.
Thus, the testimony of the
Church, that is, of the wisest and best portion of mankind, is
admirably united with that of the Apostles whom our Lord Himself
appointed as His first witnesses. The two testimonies are one. The
Apostles proclaimed what they had seen. We proclaim, and will
proclaim to the end, what the Apostles preached. The Apostles made
themselves sure of the Resurrection which they had to preach to the
world, to make ourselves sure of the veracity of their word. They
believed after experience. So so also do wee. They had the happiness
of seeing, hearing and touching the Word of Life (1 John i. 1). We
see and hear the Church, which they established throughout the world,
although it was but in its infancy when they were taken from the
earth. The Church is that tree of which Jesus spoke in the parable,
saying, that though exceeding small in its first commencement, it
would afterwards spread out its branches far and wide (Matthew xiii.
31, 32.; Mark, iv. 31, 32). Saint Augustine in one of his Easter
Sermons has these fine words: “As yet, we see not Christ, but we
see the Church: therefore, let us believe in Christ. The Apostles, on
the contrary, saw Christ, but they saw not the Church except by
faith. They saw one thing, and they believed another: so, likewise,
let us do. Let us believe in the Christ whom as yet we see not, and
by keeping ourselves with the Church which we see, we will come at
length to see Him whom, as yet, we cannot see.”
Having thus, Jesus, the certainty
of your glorious Resurrection, as well as that of your death on the
Cross, we confess you to be the great God, the Creator and sovereign
Lord of all things. Your death humbled, your Resurrection exalted
you: but you yourself were the author both of humiliation and
exaltation. You said to your enemies: “No man takes my life away
from me, but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it up again” (John x. 18) None but a
God could have such power, none else but a God could have exercised
it as you have done: we, therefore, are confessing your divinity when
we confess your Resurrection. We beseech you, make worthy of your
acceptance this humble and delighted homage of our faith!
Epistle – 1 Peter iii. 18‒22
Dearly beloved, Christ died once
for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might offer us to God,
being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the Spirit.
In which also coming, He preached to those spirits that were in
prison, which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for
the patience of God in the days of Noah, when the ark was building;
wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. Where to
baptism being of the like form, now saves you also; not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the examination of a good
conscience towards God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is on the right hand of God.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Again it is the Apostle Saint
Peter who speaks to us, and his instructions are of peculiar interest
to our neophytes. He begins by telling them how the soul of our
Redeemer descended into Limbo and how, among the prisoners detained
there, were some of those who had perished in the deluge, yet had
found salvation in its waters. They were, at first, incredulous, and
despised the threats made known to them by Noah, but when the Flood
came and swept them away, they repented them of their sin and asked
and obtained pardon. The Apostle then goes on to speak of the
favoured inhabitants of the Ark: they are a type of our neophytes
whom we have seen pass through the waters of the font and thereby
become, as did the sons of Noah, fathers of a new generation of
children of God. Baptism, says the Apostle, is not like other
washings of the body. It is the cleansing of the soul, provided she
be sincere in the solemn promise she makes at the font to be faithful
to the Christ who saves her, and to renounce Satan and all that is
his. The Apostle concludes by telling us that the mystery of our
Saviour’s Resurrection
is the source of the grace of Baptism: hence the Church has chosen
the Feast of Easter for the solemn administration of this Sacrament.
Gospel – Matthew xxviii. 16‒20
At that time, the eleven
disciples went into Galilee, into the mountain where Jesus had
appointed them. And seeing Him they adored, but some doubted. And
Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying, “All power is given to me in Heaven and on Earth. Going, therefore, teach all nations, baptising
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded
you. And behold I am with you all days, until the consummation of the
world.”
Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Saint Matthew’s
description of the Resurrection is shorter
than those given by the other Evangelists. His few brief words on the
appearing of Jesus to the Apostles in Galilee are the subject of
today’s
Gospel. It was in Galilee that our Lord vouchsafed to show Himself,
not only to the Apostles, but, moreover, to several other persons.
The Evangelist tells us how some of those that were thus favoured
readily believed and how others doubted before yielding the assent of
their faith. He then relates the words with which Jesus gave His
Apostles the mission to preach the Gospel to all nations, and since
He is to die no more, He promises to be with them forever, even to
the end of the world. But the Apostles are not to live to the end of
the world: how, then, will He fulfil His promise? The Apostles, as we
said before, are perpetuated by the Church. The two testimonies of
the Apostles and of the Church are inseparably linked together, and
our Lord Jesus Christ preserves this united testimony from error or
interruption. The liturgy of today brings before us a proof of its
irresistible power. Peter, Paul and John preached the Resurrection of
Jesus and established the Christian faith, in Rome: five centuries
after, the Church which continued their work received from an Emperor
the gift of the temple which had once been consecrated to all the
false gods, but which Saint Peter’s
successor dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, and to that legion of
witnesses of the Resurrection whom we call martyrs. At the sight of
this magnificent edifice which for three hundred years had been
deserted by the pagans, but now is reconciled by the Church, and
holds within its walls the Christian people, our neophytes could not
refrain from exclaiming: “Oh! truly is Christ risen, who, after
being put to death on the Cross, thus triumphs over the Caesars, and
over the gods of Olympus!”
