The resurrection of the flesh of Jesus and the renewal of creation

In contrast to the conviction at the heart of the Catholic Faith that grace perfects - not destroys - nature, much liberal theology is actually very gnostic in its dealing with the incarnation of Jesus. Anglican liberals still like to claim that they are “incarnational.” This is curious when at the most basic level there is among them a kind of snobbish discomfort, born of “enlightenment” assumptions about the universe, with the idea that matter should really have anything to do with spirit, that God could literally become man in the flesh of Jesus taken from Our Lady, and that “salvation history” could coalesce with real history. 

When we consider their watered down ideas about Jesus rising from the dead (i.e. it was "just spiritual"), we want to ask them, “What is it that makes matter so unworthy that it cannot participate in the resurrection?” 

We look forward to the restoration and transformation of the entire creation. In Scripture, God’s creation of heaven and earth - all things visible (material) and invisible (spiritual) - is seen to be integral to the ongoing expression of his life and love. In Jesus, the unseen and the seen, spirit and matter, God and Man, are forever joined. The resurrection of the flesh of Jesus is the first stage of the transfiguration and glorification of the entire universe.

St Paul:

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . . because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19-21)

Raymond Brown (1928–1998):

In our anticipation of God’s ultimate plan, one of two models is usually followed: the model of eventual destruction and new creation, or the model of transformation. Will the material world pass away all be made new, or will somehow the world be transformed and changed into the city of God? The model that the Christian chooses will have an effect on his attitude toward the world and toward the corporeal. What will be destroyed can have only a passing value; what is to be transformed retains its importance. Is the body a shell that one sheds, or is it an intrinsic part of the personality that will forever identify a person? If Jesus, body corrupted in the tomb so that his victory over death did not include bodily resurrection, then the model of destruction and new creation is indicated. If Jesus rose bodily from the dead, then the Christian model should be one of transformation. The problem of the bodily resurrection is not just an example of Christian curiosity; it is related to a major theme in theology: God’s ultimate purpose in creating. (The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, p. 128-129)

Roy Fellows (1931-2006): 

Easter reminds us that the Good News is Jesus and the Resurrection. We are not concerned with some vague belief in the immortality of the soul, but with the startling fact of the Resurrection of the body, that is, the whole person. We believe in a new creation of which the Risen Christ is the first instalment. Our God is the one who gives us a share and a promise of this new creation through sacramental signs which use matter - water, bread and wine and the touch of a human hand. There is no room in our Easter faith for a false spirituality which despises the material world. We who worship the Word made Flesh, the Son of Mary, must be concerned for the whole of life and human society in its God-given environment. (The Walsingham Review . . . 1990?)

Gerald O’Collins (b. 1931):

‘Reconciling all things’ (Colossians 1:20), ‘gathering up all things’ (Ephesians 1:10), or ‘making all things new’ (Revelation 1:5) puts the resurrection and redemption in a cosmic context. The resurrection of Christ had not happened without, and certainly not against, creation. It brought a new world in which not only human beings but also all living creatures and the Earth itself would share. (Believing in the Resurrection – The Meaning and Promise of the Risen Jesus, pp. 119-120)

Eric Mascall (1905-1993): 

Because there still appear to be people who, after nearly a century of relativity and quantum theory, think of the material world as composed of indestructible ultramicroscopic billiard-balls controlled by fixed unutterable laws, it may be well to recall that modern physics views the world as a spatiotemporal manifold of centres of energy and spontaneity; in such a world Jesus’ resurrection may well be seen, not as a violation or an overriding of the inherent and proper workings of nature, but rather as their joyful and blessed fulfilment, in bringing nature to a perfection that it could not reach by its own efforts.” (Jesus: Who He Is and How We Know Him)

Newman on Darwin and evolution

In 1859 Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) published On the Origin of Species, setting out the evidence for his theory of evolution. 

Many thoughtful churchmen of the time saw as little contradiction between “theism” and “evolutionary theory” as Darwin himself did. In fact, Darwin’s complex spiritual journey notwithstanding, he had actually written to John Fordyce in 7th May 1879 that it was “absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.”

Of course, Darwin’s theories gave rise to much debate in his own time and throughout the twentieth century. Clearly, it is now unremarkable for Christians to accept many of Darwin’s ideas.

It is interesting to note that in 1868 John Henry Newman wrote to a fellow priest regarding evolution. Newman was open to Darwin’s theories, and was not intimidated by modern science. This is what he said: 

“As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvelous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr. Darwin's theory need not then be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design – It is accidental to us, not to God.” 

(John Henry Newman, Letter to J. Walker of Scarborough, May 22, 1868, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) 

Creation & outward signs of encounter

We are physical beings who live in the physical world, and we communicate invisible realities such as love, trust, friendship, forgiveness and gratitude with each other in physical ways. 

When parents hug their children, they express in a warm and reassuring way the love they have for them. Friends shake hands after a fight or an argument in order to conveys a sense of goodwill and reconciliation. Embracing one another communicates friendship. Sex in marriage communicates and deepens the love husband and wife have for each other. We all use a range of tangible and physical ways of expressing the inner reality of ourselves in our relationships with others - at home, at work and among our friends.

JESUS - THE SACRAMENT OF GOD

In the Gospels we see that Jesus, “God in human Flesh”, reached out in love to all kinds of people in order to heal them, to reconcile them, to pour his love into their lives. He used tangible and physical actions to reassure them that something real was happening. He touched them in blessing and prayer. He laid his hands on the sick. He sent his disciples out to anoint the sick with oil. And he told the apostles to continue his ministry by using water in Baptism, and bread and wine in Holy Communion. Through the physical presence of Jesus, his actions and the created things used by him, men and women received God’s blessing, love and power. They were made whole.

The earthly, physical body of Jesus, then, was an “outward sign” of God’s saving, healing, reconciling presence among his people. 

That’s exactly what a SACRAMENT is. 

THE CHURCH HIS BODY

Jesus no longer reaches out and touches people in his historical body, because, since his ascension, he is no longer present in that way. But, as we have already seen, he is present in a tangible way through his new Spirit-filled community of love, the Church, which is also called his “body.” We read in the New Testament:

“[Jesus] is . . . the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.” 

- Ephesians 1:22-23

“[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . . .”

- Colossians 1:17-18

“. . . just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body . . . the body does not consist of one member but of many . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

- 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27

Taking up this theme, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

“The Church in this world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and men”

- Catechism 444 

This is what Abu Daoud writes about the connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the Church:

“Christianity is built on the conviction that out of the most radical and disastrous despair, God turned the tables on the Empire and the Temple that killed his Son, and his resurrection was nothing less than the victory of God. The power of life in that resurrection flowed out into a community called out by God, the Church. That community was called to be a sacrament of secret life and an imperfect but real embassy of God’s reign, which, like yeast in dough, spreads and leavens.”

- Abu Daoud  in St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 April 2012

Through the physical presence in the world of his many membered body, as well as in the sacred actions of that body, Jesus continues to touch people’s lives today. These “actions” are called sacraments.

MEETING JESUS TODAY

A sacrament is “a tangible encounter with the risen Jesus.”

We use the word tangible in these notes because it means “involving the senses.” The word encounter is used to describe a meeting with the risen Jesus in which he shares with us personally his life and his love - just as he did with people in Gospel times.

Of course, his greatest act of self giving love was his death on the cross, and that is why we often say that the sacraments make the victory of the cross effective in our lives.

While the whole of life is  sacramental, there are special moments when the risen Jesus acts through his many-membered body, his new community of love, to share his life with us. These are the seven Sacraments, channels of his love and power, through which he forgives us, renews us, equips us, deepens our union with him, and pours his risen life into our waiting hearts. 

An older definition of  “sacrament” is: 

“. . . an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”

While this definition may seem a bit more “static” than the way we have been speaking, it is quite useful because it emphasises that each sacrament has two parts: the outward sign which relates to our senses, and the inward grace, the special blessing we receive from God through that particular sacrament.  

The sacraments assure us that Jesus really is touching our lives.

In more technical language, a theologian wrote:

“Upon the Cross the God-Man intended his act of redemption for all without exception. The sacrifice of the Cross, in all its eternal-actuality in mystery, is still intended for all people, for each one personally. Now it is this personal intention of Christ’s act of redemption for a particular human being that is brought out in the sacraments . . .

“As the personal redemptive act of Christ in his Church, a sacrament is therefore the personal approach of Christ to a particular human being. In the fullest sense of the word, a sacrament is the pledge of Christ’s availability to a particular individual; the tangible pledge of his willing readiness to enter upon an encounter.”

- Edward Schillebeeckx, in Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God, p 80

Creation renewed

According to the Old Testament, when we pushed God out of our lives in order to run things our own way, we ended up undermining all our relationships. But that’s not all. There were serious cosmic consequences. The created universe itself was wounded and became disordered.

If we keep reading through the Old Testament, however, we discover that the healing of these wounds, and the reconciliation of all creatures with one another, are aspects of the salvation and ultimate restoration promised by God. In the Book of Isaiah we read:

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” 

- Isaiah 11:6-9 

This vision continues in the New Testament. In fact, St Paul says that creation’s “bondage to decay” will be overcome: 

“. . . the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves . . .”

- Romans 8:19-22

In his letter to the Christians at Colossae, St Paul says that the unity of all things - including earthly things - is being restored through the dying and rising of Jesus:

“[Jesus] is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” 

- Colossians 1:19-20

Seen from one angle, then, our salvation is part of a much bigger picture: the salvation, renewal and transformation of everything that has been impacted and disordered by sin, including the world of matter.

THE INCARNATION

“When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman . . .” (Galatians 2:4) God the Son - Jesus - became one of us in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, not in some vague mystical way, but by joining himself to the world of matter, the atoms and molecules of the created order, the physical universe. He came to us in a visible and tangible way. “True God” really did become “true Man” for our salvation.

This tangibility of God in Jesus is beautifully expressed by the Apostle John:

“Something which has existed from the beginning

which we have heard;

which we have seen with our own eyes;

which we have watched

and touched with our own hands;

the Word of life - this is our theme.

That life was made visible:

we saw it and are giving our testimony -

declaring to you the eternal life

which was present to the Father

and now has been revealed to us”.

- 1 John 1:1-2 (Jerusalem Bible translation)

That’s why we speak of Jesus as “God in the Flesh.” The word “incarnation” means just that . . . his “enfleshing”, when he came among us in his humanity as the actual revelation of God. In discussing this mystery the 20th century Anglican theologian, Eric Mascall, quotes these lines of the 19th century poet, H. R. Bramley, from what is now a well-known Christmas carol, referring to them as “the most profound theological statement ever made in the English language”:

“The Word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,

yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;

he is that he was and for ever shall be,

but becomes that he was not, or you and for me”. 

- Eric Mascall (1905-1993), in Jesus - Who he is and How we Know Him

In fact, those words are a startling meditation on the key Gospel text:

“The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.”
            - John 1:14

By becoming Man, Jesus joined himself to the created universe, ending the separation between the divine and the human, the visible and the invisible, spirit and matter, heaven and earth. Creation is “good” - not now just because of its origin in God, and not now just because it will be transfigured and glorified on the Last Day. For Christians, creation is “good” chiefly because of the Incarnation in which it becomes the means by which God shares with us his life and love.

“It must surely have pleased the Lord . . . for divinity and humanity and thus all creation to be united in the only begotten and consubstantial Son, so that God might be all in all.”

- St John of Damascus (676-749), in On the Transfiguration 

“We might even say that the universe was created so that God might become incarnate, revealing creation as a descent from the Father of lights which is itself a participation in the eternal begetting of the Son.”

- Tracey Rowland, in No Bloodless Myth 

“In Jesus Christ, God has engraved his name upon matter; he has inscribed it so deeply that it cannot be erased, for matter took him into its innermost self.”

- Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988), In the Fullness of Faith, p. 122

Creation revealing . . .

The Grampians National Park, Victoria, Australia

Over the next couple of days I am sharing with you the introduction to the section on Sacraments from my adult confirmation material, mainly because someone who has recently started out on their faith journey told me I should!

The first book of the Bible (“Genesis”) is very positive about the physical universe. God is even portrayed as surveying what he had made, and concluding “that it was good” (Genesis 1:31). This reflects mainstream Jewish and Christian traditions which have always regarded the world of matter as part of God’s loving and glorious self-expression. 

Maybe it seems strange that we emphasise such a basic idea. But we must, because there have always been religious people (including mistaken Christians) for whom physical existence is something negative, either a kind of prison from which we will one day be set free, or, worse, an intrinsic evil, a source only of temptation, and the chief cause of our undoing, our fall into sin. As Richard Holloway wrote, such people erroneously see the creation as 

“. . . a mine-field through which we must pick our way with anxious care, never pausing to gaze about and enjoy ourselves lest we stumble upon some explosive evil.”

- in New Vision of Glory

In contrast with these ideas, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944, famously acknowledged that

“Christianity is the most avowedly materialistic of all the great religions.”

- in Nature, Man and God, p. 478

Indeed, the created order is celebrated throughout of the Old Testament, in which the Lord is praised, not just for creating the world, but also for revealing aspects of himself through it. One such passage, Psalm 19, begins:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

- Psalm 19:1

When we come to the New Testament, we find St Paul echoing this theme in his letter to the early Christians in Rome:

“. . . what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”

- Romans 1:19-20

Pondering the natural world has been for many an aspect of their journey to a real knowledge of God. It has also given rise to some of the most sublime art and poetry down through the ages.  As Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

- in Aurora Leigh, Book VII

And Wiliam Wordsworth wrote:

“. . . I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things . . .”

- in Tintern Abbey

St Irenaeus (d. 220) spoke for many when he said that

“Nothing is a vacuum in the face of God. Everything is a sign of God.”

- in Against Heresies 4:21

The created world has the potential to evoke within us a sense of wonder which often includes, or leads to, a kind of revelation of God - provided we are not stubbornly closed to the possibility of transcendence. In fact, “natural” life is often the context in which we first sense God’s love trying to reach us. This is not just a case of experiencing created “things”, whether breathtakingly beautiful or terrifyingly awesome. It can also happen in significant events such as falling in love, the birth of a child, the death of someone close to us, or being reconciled with someone from whom we have been estranged. 

“Heaven is just behind the veil of the outward and visible, even here on earth. That tree over there with its gnarled branches and weighed down by mistletoe growth hides the heavenly tree which shimmers with an unearthly beauty. Sense the sense of the Presence, the Numinous, now and then.” 

- Doug Peters, personal correspondence

Resurrection & transformation of the material world - Dr Eric Mascall

Eric Lionel Mascall OGS (1905 -1993), a priest of the Church of England, a theologian, Thomist philosopher, staunch Anglo-Catholic, and prolific writer, was known for his brilliance at mathematics from an early age, winning a scholarship to Pembroke College Cambridge where he took the Mathematical Tripos. 

In 1931, after three unhappy years as a schoolmaster, Mascall entered Ely Theological College and was ordained two years later. He served in London parishes until his appointment as Sub-Warden of Lincoln Theological College in 1937. He taught at Christ Church Oxford from 1945 until he became Professor of Historical Theology at King’s College London in 1962. 

Upon his retirement in 1973 he became Canon Theologian of Truro Cathedral and continued to live in the clergy house of St Mary’s Bourne Street, London, where he was Honorary Assistant Priest. He spent part of 1976 in Rome as a Visiting Professor at the Gregorian University. He was awarded a DD by Oxford in 1948 and by Cambridge in 1958. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1974. 

Mascall travelled extensively abroad, especially in the USA, Rome, and Romania, for the purpose of meeting and addressing a variety of Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox individuals and groups. 

In The Christian Universe he wrote: "The faith which the Church has proclaimed throughout the ages, embraces and coordinates a wider range of human experience, opens up more possibilities of human living and offers in the end a deeper and richer ecstasy of fulfillment than any alternative way of life and thought . . ." 

Here are some Mascall quotes on the implications of the resurrection of the flesh of Jesus for the renewing of the whole creation: 

"As the scholastics say, grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. By their very dependence upon God, finite beings are inherently open to him; an absolutely autonomous and incapsulated finite entity would be a contradiction in terms. A created universe—and there can be no other—is necessarily not only a finite but also an open one. Nature has, simply as nature, a potentia oboedientialis for the supernatural."

- from The Openness of Being (p. 146) 

“Because there still appear to be people who, after nearly a century of relativity and quantum theory, think of the material world as composed of indestructible ultramicroscopic billiard-balls controlled by fixed unutterable laws, it may be well to recall that modern physics views the world as a spatiotemporal manifold of centres of energy and spontaneity; in such a world Jesus’ resurrection may well be seen, not as a violation or an overriding of the inherent and proper workings of nature, but rather as their joyful and blessed fulfilment, in bringing nature to a perfection that it could not reach by its own efforts.” 

- from Jesus: Who He Is and How We Know Him 

“The stupendous theme [of Christianity is] that God’s ultimate purpose for the human race and for the whole material universe is that they should be taken up into Christ and transformed into a condition of unimaginable glory, and that it is for this that God took our human nature, in which spirit and matter are so mysteriously and intricately interwoven.” 

- from the Christian Universe (p. 109)

"Because we are by nature physical beings linked by our bodily metabolism both with one another and with the rest of the material world ('Whatever Miss T. eats', Mr de la Mare has reminded us, 'turns into Miss T.'), our resurrection will involve nothing less than the transformation of the whole material order."

- from Christian Theology and Natural Science (p. 17) 

Resurrection and the new (renewed) creation - Gerald O'Collins

Father Gerald O'Collins SJ, born in Melbourne Australia, taught theology for 33 years at the Gregorian University in Rome. He has published hundreds of articles and 56 books, including major works on Christology and the Resurrection. He is at present an adjunct professor at the Australian Catholic University, based in Melbourne. His latest book, published early this year, is Believing in the Resurrection: The Meaning and Promise of the Risen Jesus . Here are some quotes: 

Christians claim that the crucified Jesus had been raised from the dead and remains powerfully present in our world – a claim that deserves serious attention from any thoughtful person. If we accept this claim as true, it should radically change the way we live our lives as well as the hopes that we entertain for ourselves and for our world. We are not destined at death to lose consciousness forever and return our bodies to the pool of cosmic matter. The resurrection promises us a glorious personal future beyond this life, a future that, in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1), will bring a radical transformation not only for our bodily existence but also for our material world. (Preface v)

********** 

For New Testament Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is inextricably linked to a new creation that touches the entire universe. This resurrection is nothing less than a (new) creative activity of God that initiates the end of all things (Rev 21-22). (p. 101) 

********** 

"Reconciling all things" (Col 1:20), "gathering up all things" (Eph 1:10), or "making all things new" (Rev 1:5) puts the resurrection and redemption in a cosmic context. The resurrection of Christ had not happened without, and certainly not against, creation. It brought a new world in which not only human beings but also all living creatures and the Earth itself would share. (p. 119)

********** 

The new creation, which opened with the events of the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday, produced a state of affairs that anticipated the consummation of life in the new Jerusalem conveyed by Revelation 21-22. The risen and transformed Jesus was the first installment of what would come at the end (1 Cor 15:20). . . . We live now in the situation of the already present kingdom that anticipates, in reality and not merely in thought, the final fullness of the kingdom. (p.120).

Raymond Brown on the Resurrection of the Body

"Doubting Thomas" by Caravaggio (ca. 1571 - 1610) 

Well-known Roman Catholic Biblical scholar, Father Raymond Brown S.S. (1928 - 1998), wrote these words about the resurrection of the BODY of Jesus in his book The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (pp 128-129). They are significant, as Brown's scholarship, groundbreaking in many areas, is generally thought of as being neither "conservative" nor "liberal." In this paragraph, Brown makes quite clear the connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the transformation and renewal of the whole of creation: 

"In our anticipation of God’s ultimate plan, one of two models is usually followed: the model of eventual destruction and new creation, or the model of transformation. Will the material world pass away all be made new, or will somehow the world be transformed and changed into the city of God? The model that the Christian chooses will have an effect on his attitude toward the world and toward the corporeal. What will be destroyed can have only a passing value; what is to be transformed retains its importance. Is the body a shell that one sheds, or is it an intrinsic part of the personality that will forever identify a person? If Jesus, body corrupted in the tomb so that his victory over death did not include bodily resurrection, then the model of destruction and new creation is indicated. If Jesus rose bodily from the dead, then the Christian model should be one of transformation. The problem of the bodily resurrection is not just an example of Christian curiosity; it is related to a major theme in theology: God’s ultimate purpose in creating."

Vladimir Lossky on the resurrection of Christ and cosmic redemption

Vladimir Lossky 1903 – 1958), a great Orthodox theologian, was born in in St Petersburg. He completed his education after the 1917 Revolution in Prague and Paris, and then spent most of his life in exile from Russia in Paris, teaching and writing.

He emphasized theosis (becoming divine) as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity, and is best remembered for his book, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. 

The following homily is taken from the English translation of Lossky's book "Orthodox Theology: An Introduction." 

The Father accepts the Son's sacrifice "by economy" ("po domostroitelstvu"): "man had to be sanctified by God's humanity" (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45, On the Holy Pascha). Kenosis [God's self-limitation, His Divine condescension, especially in taking on human nature in Christ] culminates and ends with Christ's death, to sanctify the entire human condition, including death. Cur Deus homo? Not only because of our sins but also for our sanctification, to introduce all the moments of our fallen life into that true life which never knows death. By Christ's resurrection, the fullness of life is inserted into the dry tree of humanity. 

Christ's work therefore presents a physical, even biological, reality. On the cross, death is swallowed up in life. In Christ, death enters into divinity and there exhausts itself, for "it does not find a place there." Redemption thus signifies a struggle of life against death, and the triumph of life. Christ's humanity constitutes the first fruits of a new creation. Through it a force for life is introduced into the cosmos to resurrect and transfigure it in the final destruction of death. Since the Incarnation and the Resurrection death is enervated, is no longer absolute. Everything converges towards the apokataspasis ton panton, that is to say, towards the complete restoration of all that is destroyed by death, towards the embracing of the whole cosmos by the glory of God become all in all things, without excluding from this fullness the freedom of each person before that full consciousness of his wretchedness which the light divine will communicate to him. And so we must complete the legal image of redemption by a sacrificial image. Redemption is also the sacrifice where Christ, following the Epistle to the Hebrews, appears as the eternal sacrificer, the High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek Who finishes in heaven what He began on earth. Death on the cross is the Passover of the New Alliance, fulfilling in one reality all that is symbolized by the Hebrew Passover. For freedom from death and the introduction of human nature into God's Kingdom realize the only true Exodus. This sacrifice, this surrender of will itself to which Adam could not consent, certainly represents an expiation. But above all, it represents a sacrament, sacrament par excellence, the free gift to God, by Christ in His humanity, of the first fruits of creation, the fulfillment of that immense sacramental action, devolving first upon Adam, which the new humanity must complete, the offering of the cosmos as receptacle of grace. The Resurrection operates a change in fallen nature, opens a prodigious possibility: the possibility of sanctifying death itself. Henceforth death is no longer an impasse, but a door into the Kingdom. Grace is given back to us, and if we carry it as "clay vessels," or receptacles still mortal, our fragility will now take on a power which vanquishes death. The peaceful assurance of martyrs, insensible not only to fear but also to physical pain itself, proves that an effective awareness of the Resurrection is henceforth possible to the Christian. 

St. Gregory of Nyssa has well emphasized this sacramental character of the Passion. Christ, he said, did not wait to be forced by Judas's betrayal, the wickedness of the priests, or the people's lack of awareness: "He anticipated this Will of evil, and before being forced, gave Himself freely on the eve of the Passion, Holy Thursday, by giving His flesh and blood." It is the sacrifice of the immolated lamb before the beginning of the world that is so freely fulfilled here. The true Passion begins on Holy Thursday, but in total freedom. 

Soon after came Gethsemane, then the cross. Death on the cross is that of a divine person: submitted to by the humanness of Christ, it is consciously suffered by His eternal hypostasis. And the separation of body and soul, the fundamental aspect of death also breaks in upon the God-man. The soul that descends to Hell remains "enhypostasized" in the Word, and also the body hanging on the cross. Similarly, the human person remains equally present in His body recaptured by the elements, as in His soul. That is why we venerate the relics of the saints. But even more so is this true in the case of Christ, for divinity remains attached both to the body which slumbers the "pure sleep" of Holy Saturday in the sepulchre, and to the victorious soul which batters down the doors of hell How, indeed, could death destroy this person who suffers it in all its tragic estrangement, since this person is divine? That is why the Resurrection is already present in the death of Christ. Life springs from the tomb; it is manifested by death, in the very death of Christ. Human nature triumphs over an anti-natural condition. For it is, in its entirety, gathered up in Christ, "recapitulated" by Him, to adopt the expression of St. Irenaeus. Christ is the Head of the Church, that is to say, of the new humanity in whose heart no sin, no adverse power can henceforth finally separate man from grace. In Christ, a man's life can always begin afresh, however burdened with sin. A man can always surrender his life to Christ, so that He may restore it to him, liberated and whole. And this work of Christ is valid for the entire assemblage of humanity, even beyond the visible limits of the Church. All faith in the triumph of life over death, every presentiment of the Resurrection, are implicit belief in Christ: for only the power of Christ raises, and will raise, the dead. Since the victory of Christ over death, the Resurrection has become universal law for creation; and not only for humanity, but also for the beasts, the plants and the stones, for the whole cosmos in which each one of us is the head. We are baptized in the death of Christ, shrouded in water to rise again with Him. And for the soul lustrated in the baptismal waters of tears, and ablaze with the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection is not only hope but present reality. The parousia [the Second Coming of Christ - Ed.] begins in the souls of the saints, and St. Simeon the New Theologian can write: "For those who became children of the light and sons of the day to come, for those who always walk in the light, the Day of the Lord will never come, for they are already with God and in God." An infinite ocean of light flows from the risen body of the Lord.

Love Without Limits 4 (Fr Lev Gillet)

"My child," God calls, "expand your vision to the dimensions of universal Love, to the dimensions of my Heart. Love without limits does not end with the human person. My Love upholds the entire universe. It is the essential connection, the vital bond, between all persons and things, and Him who loves them.

"Let yourself be carried away by the immense current of boundless Love. Be transported by this movement, this dynamic and aspiration of nature itself, which waits plaintively to be delivered from the consequences of the Fall.

"It is possible for man to ascend toward me; but do not lose sight of my descent toward mankind and toward all created things. Take a flower in your hand. Take a stone. Contemplate them, not in a scientific perspective, but from the point of view of Love. They represent a recapitulation of the world's evolution. They are signs of the Love that aspires to reach the heights, as they are of the Love that comes to you from across the ages: the Love that reveals itself to you, that gives itself to you, that increasingly draws near to you.

"Behold the beauty of Love in a blade of grass, in a leaf or a branch, in an odour or a colour. Enfold your life into the life of the universe, submitting it to the same divine purpose. Think of the mountains and the sea, of winds and storms, of wild beasts and the smallest animals. They all have their place in my Heart. Grant them a place as well in your prayer. May they orient that prayer toward greater venues than those of some simple piety in which the universe has no place.

"Look for a purpose of Love in every created reality. I have loved every grain of sand, every tree, every animal. Each of them represents both an ascension and a condescension. Unite yourself to them all. Express thanks in the name and in the place of mute nature. And may an adoration as vast as the world be your response to Love without limits.

"Do you admire the sun, the stars, the galaxies? Do you thank me for their creation and their presence in your life? Can you enter into divine Love for everything that exists?

"That may be difficult for you. How can we love snakes, after all? Yet even if you are bitten by a snake, you should attempt to love that snake, even as it bites you. Animals are not culpable. They merely do what their natural organism commands. They, too, were victims of an original Fall. Nevertheless, I never cease to love them all . . .

"My child," God whispers, "this world is a world of signs. You must learn to decipher its secret writing.

"It is good that you discover and admire at every step of the way the beauty of the world. It is good that you remain aware of the creative act that brought it into being. Yet beyond a certain point, that is no longer enough. You must set this created splendour in its total context, which is marked by both pain and victory.

"If you have perceived that the mystery of the universe is Love without limits, yet a Love that sacrifices itself for you, you can no longer see things as they appeared before. 'Natural' beauty simply disappears with the vision of the Sacrifice of Love.

"You see the sun. Think then of Him who is the Light of the World, veiled in shadows. You see the trees, and their branches adorned anew with every new spring. Think of Him who, nailed to the wood, draws all things to Himself.

"You see the rocks and boulders. Think of the stone which, in a special garden, covered the entrance to a tomb. That stone was rolled away; and ever since, the door of that tomb has never been closed.

"You admire the crimson streaks that embellish the whiteness of certain petals. Think of the precious Blood that poured forth from Him who is absolute Purity.

"You see the sheep and the lambs. These innocent ones are led to the slaughter, yet they never open their mouths. Think of Him who, in a unique way, desired to be the sacrificed Lamb of God!"