The feast of Resurrection is continuous in the church since it is held every Sunday, and this weekly Paschal service precedes having the annual Pascha. The resurrection is not important for us as an event but as a meaning, and this meaning begins on the Good Friday because Christ’s predominance over death appeared on the cross. Glory, in John’s gospel, is mainly what appeared from the Master while hung on the cross according to his saying: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Interpreters agree that glory means the crucifixion.
So, since the Calvary we taste the triumph of Christ over death and sin. Likewise, The dwelling Christ in the tomb is not under the dominance of death but dwells in the entire universe since he is victorious.
Christ’s glory shines as his body did not stink. And you could notice that the church in its gospel and worship does not use the term “Christ’s corpse” or “Christ’s remains”.
His body is always in light and never tasted corruption.
We call his body a luminous body according to Paul’s sayings when he spoke in the first epistle to the Corinthians about the resurrection of the dead on the last day: “The body is sown dead; it is raised eternal… it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power, it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body”.
In fact, Paul applied on the resurrection of the dead what he knew about the resurrection of the Savior whose body became “spiritual”. Spiritual does not mean ethereal or gaseous as Jehovah’s witnesses say. Spiritual means that it is not subject to the limitations of the earthly human being whose body is opaque or concentrated. The luminous body which the Master got penetrates barriers. He entered to the disciples while the doors were closed.
And the spiritual body which the Christ got was not recognized neither by the disciples when appeared to them nor by Mary Magdalene in the garden, but he introduced himself which means that he gave their earthly eyes a grace from him to be able to know him. And when he ate with them fish and honey he made himself capable of that (eating) in order to participate with them, since his luminous body was not in need of food.
Based on this, the need to instincts is ended in heaven. This is why the Master said: “They neither marry, nor are given marriage”. This was a trend related to our life on earth. According to all this, we must recognize that Christ will neither die nor will be ruled over by death, this means that he has put a limit to death and entered into resurrection.
This is why we celebrate Pascha for the Lord because his reception of these things is an introduction to our reception of them. In this sense the apostle says: He is the first out from the dead, which means that he launches the vanishing of the kingdom of death so that we could ourselves emerge from it on the last day.
This is what Paul saw when he said: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom 6: 4). As if he’s saying that Christ put for us the basis of a righteous life that we live thanks to him, because if he hadn’t resurrected we’d be dead forever and without having hope, and the whole world would be drowned in corruption, as if God created us to vanish, and God did not create the world to Vanish. The world vanished itself by sin, and Christ revived it by his resurrection.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “القيامة” – 4.4.2010-Raiati no14
