The Tomb Is Empty & Jesus Really Appeared
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Saturday, November 08, 2008 11:49 AM
One of the dimensions of Benedict XVI’s teaching I most appreciate is his fearlessness in posing questions of the faith.
He understands the skepticism and cynicism of our times; many people can hear the Good News and ask themselves, “So what?”
He is always the first to ask that question when he preaches, and I always learn so much from it.
Beyond understanding his audience, though, I get the impression the pope himself is uninterested in wasting time on things that aren’t true. If it’s not the truth, why bother?
Perhaps that’s why he opens his particularly lovely reflection on St. Paul’s teaching during this week’s Papal Audience with Paul’s expression in First Corinthians of the same brand of impatience:
if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. … You are still in your sins.
Why do we bother with Christianity? Because the Resurrection is true. That’s the center, the starting point and the summit of everything Paul has to tell us.
Along the way, the Pope also defends the unity of Catholic doctrine by stressing Paul’s fidelity to the “kerygma,” the unified and constant teaching of the apostles from the earliest time of the Church. Paul has his own contribution to make to our understanding of Christ’s person, but every creative expression of Paul’s is both subordinate to and in the service of the Tradition that he’s been handed.
There’s a lesson there for all theologians:
Paul offers a model for all times of how to do theology and how to preach. The theologian and the preacher do not create new visions of the world and of life, but rather are at the service of the truth transmitted, at the service of the real fact of Christ, of the cross, of the resurrection. Their duty is to help to understand today, behind the ancient words, the reality of “God with us,” and therefore, the reality of true life.
The main theme, however, is the reality of the Resurrection. And here come those tough questions:
What is, for St. Paul, the deep meaning of the event of the resurrection of Jesus? What does he say to us 2,000 years later? Is the affirmation “Christ has risen” also current for us?
The answer is simple: the tomb is really empty and Jesus really appeared—and therefore what the Pope amusingly refers to as Christ’s “secret identity” is revealed: Jesus is God!
As always, there’s a “take-home” message, which this week is two-fold. First:
All of this carries with it important consequences for our life of faith: We are called to participate from the depths of our being in the whole of the event of the death and resurrection of Christ. The Apostle says: We “have died with Christ” and we believe “that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him” (Romans 6:8-9).
This translates into sharing the sufferings of Christ, as a prelude to this full configuration with him through the resurrection, which we gaze upon with hope.
but suffering is not all:
St. Augustine says: Christians are not spared suffering; on the contrary, they get a little extra, because to live the faith expresses the courage to face life and history more deeply. And with everything, only in this way, experiencing suffering, we experience life in its depth, in its beauty, in the great hope elicited by Christ, crucified and risen.
[snip]
In sum, we can say with Paul that the true believer obtains salvation professing with his lips that Jesus is Lord and believing in his heart that God has raised him from the dead (cf. Romans 10:9). Important above all is the heart that believes in Christ and in faith “touches” the Risen One. But it is not enough to carry faith in the heart; we should confess it and give testimony with the lips, with our lives, thus making present the truth of the cross and the resurrection in our history.
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