In this week of celebration of our Risen Lord, let us remember this: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only a pillar of Christianity, it is the pillar. If it falls, everything else falls with it. The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the be-all and end-all of the Christian faith. It is not a trivial event or something to be casually overlooked.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, all bishops, priestsNuns and monks should go home and get honest secular jobs and all faithful Christians should leave their churches immediately and never return. Why? As St. Paul says: "But if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain" (1 Cor 15:14).
Of course, it is no use trying to dismiss the Resurrection, simplify it or rationalize it as a myth, a figure of speech or a subjective experience. Either we accept it as reality, or we do not. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is a joke or, at worst, a fraud. But if Christ did rise from the dead, then Christianity is the fullness of God's revelation and Jesus must be the absolute center of our lives. There is no third option.
Bribery of guards
One issue that is often raised to the Resurrection of Christ is that "his body was stolen by the Apostles", but such an argument does not really make sense.
Let us first examine what Matthew's Gospel says about the aftermath of the Resurrection: "While the women were on their way, some of the guard went into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. They, meeting with the elders, came to an agreement and gave the soldiers a large sum, charging them: 'Tell them that his disciples went by night and stole the body while you were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will earn it and bail you out.' They took the money and acted as instructed. And this story has been spreading among the Jews to this day." (Matthew 28, 11-15)
First, there was the problem of what would be done with Christ's body after the disciples had possession of it. All that our Lord's enemies would have had to do to disprove the resurrection would have been to present the body. Surely they could have arrested his disciples and tortured them into confessing where the body was hidden.
Moreover, it was highly unlikely that an entire guard of Roman soldiers would sleep while on duty and, moreover, it would be absurd for them to say what had happened while asleep. Logically, it makes no sense, the soldiers were told to say they were asleep. However, being asleep, were they awake enough to see the thieves who stole the body of Christ? And could they not only see them but specifically identify them as disciples of Christ?
If all the soldiers were asleep, they could never have discovered the thieves. If few of them were awake, they would have prevented the robbery. It is also amusing to think that the same disciples who fled into the garden when Christ was arrested, a few days later, somehow overcame their timidity and fear and dared to attempt to steal their master's body from a stone-enclosed tomb, officially sealed and guarded by Roman soldiers, all without waking the sleeping guards.
Furthermore, the orderly arrangement of the burial clothes present in the tomb is proof that the body was not stolen by his disciples. Why would Christ's disciples steal the completely naked body of their master, without giving him the basic dignity of also stealing the burial clothes that wrapped his body? It makes no logical sense.
The secret removal of the corpse would have been of no use to the disciples, since, from their point of view, their master was dead, his life was therefore a failure and so were his 3 years of follow-up. What use would it be to them to steal his body?
In a somewhat poetic sense, I would argue that the crime was certainly greater in the bribers than in the bribed. For the council of the high priests was learned, while the soldiers were uneducated and simple. From a certain point of view, the resurrection of Christ was officially proclaimed first to the civil authorities, the Sanhedrin believed in the resurrection before the apostles. They knew that the body had not been stolen, yet they devised a plan to say that the body had been stolen. They paid Judas only 30 pieces of silver to betray Christ to them and here as the Gospel of Matthew says "they gave the soldiers a large sum of money". They tried to buy submission and silence with money, in the hope that this would solve their problems and in this way, they made it clear that despite the signs and wonders performed, the high priests and elders would always serve their true master, which was wealth and power, even in the face of the Resurrection.
The transforming power of the Resurrection
The Apostles, out of fear, shut themselves up in "a house" (John 20:19). The stark contrast between their fear and hesitation before the Resurrection and their boldness and courage after meeting the risen Christ is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the truth of the Resurrection.
The same men who formerly feared death, who abandoned Christ when He was arrested in the garden, now went to their deaths proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ. The will of this would be unthinkable unless they were fully convinced of what they had personally seen.
The best example would be St. Peter himself, who went from denying Christ three times to boldly preaching at Pentecost (Acts 2). Again, such a dramatic transformation could only come about by seeing the risen Christ. Peter trembled at the voice of a servant girl who claimed to recognize him as one of Christ's followers, and later confronted rulers and chief priests without fear. What then is the cause of such a change? The Resurrection.
Undoubtedly, it was the Resurrection of Christ that awakened the wavering and fearful hearts of the Apostles, transforming their weakness into strength. I say this somewhat jokingly, but perhaps it is more miraculous that these ignorant and simple fishermen were able to persuade the world to embrace the Gospel than to raise a dead man or heal a sick person.
The Resurrection was a spiritual explosion that transformed human history through the lives it touched. From fearful to fearless, from doubtful to devout, the radical transformation of the Apostles is one of the most powerful testimonies to the truth of the Resurrection.
Founder of "Catholicism Coffee".
