On the Resurrection of Christ

Contents

Reading pages: 1.599–1.615 · 1.617–2.633 · 2.635–3.651 · 3.653–3.671 · 3.673–5.689

1. 1.599Gregory opens by saying that every blessing, law, figure and prophecy of the Old Testament belongs to the grace of Easter.
2. 1.601Like the many lamps of the Easter vigil, the blessings of Abraham, the Sabbath, Isaac's sacrifice, Moses' raised hands and Isaiah's virgin are all gathered into the light of the feast.
3. 1.603Gregory argues for the painless virgin birth from Isaiah, points to Jeremiah's lamb and Jonah as figures of the passion, and describes the new birth of the baptized as a whole new life.
4. 1.605Easter is Zechariah's day that is neither day nor night, the day the Lord made, a new creation; in three days the Lord in the heart of the earth made a fool of the devil, the 'great mind'.
5. 1.607The devil, deceived by Christ's flesh, swallowed the bait and was caught on the hook of the Godhead, as Job and Isaiah foretold; in three days the Lord undid the evil heaped up through all generations.
6. 1.609The whole heap of evil gathered since the fall was destroyed in three days without effort; the three days correspond to the three in whom evil arose: the serpent, the woman, and the man.
7. 1.611Gregory solves the problem of counting three days and nights by reckoning from the Last Supper, where Christ freely offered himself as sacrifice by giving his body to be eaten.
8. 1.613Gregory counts the three days and three nights by treating the darkness at the crucifixion as an extra night and, following Matthew's 'late on the Sabbath', placing the resurrection on Saturday evening.
9. 1.615Christ is at once in the earth, in paradise and in the Father's hands; Gregory explains that at the incarnation the Godhead was mingled with both the soul and the body of the man Christ, as the healings and the feeding of the crowds show.
10. 1.617In Christ's death the Godhead stayed with both the separated soul and body and so reunited them in the resurrection; Gregory then turns to a Jewish objection about the Christian keeping of the Passover.
11. 1.619The law's commands cleanse from evil in figures: the seven days of unleavened bread mean a whole life kept free of old evil, the bitter herbs mean self-control, and the fourteenth day means the full moon.
12. 1.621The full moon of the fourteenth day, with no darkness at evening or dawn, is a symbol of a whole life kept as one bright Passover; Gregory then asks why Christ had to die by the cross.
13. 1.623The four arms of the cross, Paul's 'breadth, length, depth and height', and Psalm 139 show that the divine power holds together all things above, below and on every side.
14. 1.625The iota and stroke of the law that never pass away are the cross; Joseph of Arimathea's clean linen and tomb teach how to receive the Lord's body, and the women at the tomb invite all to the resurrection.
15. 1.627Christ, by becoming our brother, brings his humanity to the Father and draws all who share it after him; the bitter herbs of the Passover give way to the bread and honeycomb of the risen Lord.
16. 2.627The preacher takes up the complaint that the Gospels contradict one another about the time of the resurrection, and begins to answer that they date the women's visits, not the rising itself.
17. 2.629The angel's 'He has been raised' shows that the resurrection had already happened, by Christ's own power, before the women came; the apostles' 'raised by the Father' means the same, since Christ is the Father's power.
18. 2.631'Late on the Sabbaths' means late in the week, toward cockcrow; the women, first to fall through Eve, are the first to hear the risen Lord's 'Rejoice'.
19. 2.633The author identifies 'the other Mary' with the mother of Jesus, who told the disciples; Mary Magdalene, like Peter freed from prison or doubting Thomas, slipped into doubt and returned to the tomb.
20. 2.635Mary Magdalene thinks the body stolen; Peter and John find the grave clothes and the folded napkin, which prove that no thieves took the body and hint that Christ's Godhead remained beyond our grasp.
21. 2.637The apostles believed but did not yet understand the Scripture; Christ rose without grave clothes, restoring Adam's first state, and Mary, still doubting, mistook him for the gardener, a fitting figure of the true gardener of paradise.
22. 2.639Christ calls Mary by name and forbids her to touch him because she still doubts his divinity; he ascends as the firstborn of many brothers; Mary then joins the other women going to the tomb at dawn.
23. 2.641The women at the tomb hear the angels; Peter returns to the tomb; Mary Magdalene comes again with Salome and Mary the mother of James, and only Salome, who had not been there before, asks who will roll away the stone.
24. 2.643The seals and guard show that only Salome could have wondered who would move the stone; the young man sends the women to tell the disciples and Peter, and they flee in fear.
25. 2.645The author notes that the best copies of Mark end at 16:8, reconciles the longer ending by punctuation, and argues that the four Gospels describe four different visits of the women, which together make one harmonious account.
26. 2.647The author holds that 'Mary the mother of James and Joses' is the mother of Jesus, called so because she was stepmother of Joseph's sons, and that Christ's appearances in Jerusalem do not contradict his promise to appear in Galilee.
27. 2.649The promised meeting in Galilee is the appearance on the mountain where Christ received all authority and sent the apostles to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
28. 2.651The command to baptize spread from the mountain over the world; the disciples waited in Jerusalem for the Spirit, and the ascension recorded briefly in Luke and Mark took place on the fortieth day.
29. 3.651Opening of the third Easter oration: like poor people who borrow finery for a feast, the preacher will borrow his adornment for the day.
30. 3.653Taking Psalm 117 as his text, the preacher foresees the day when all nations, willing or unwilling, will praise Christ as King and Judge, and praises God for raising the dead.
31. 3.655A feast must be kept in a fitting way; Christ, God and impassible, went knowingly to his passion and resurrection out of compassion, like a man who plunges into a torrent to save another, so the day must be kept with godly joy, not revelry.
32. 3.657On Easter the whole world rests and rejoices as one household, a foretaste of the last day; prisoners and debtors are released and slaves freed in church, and masters are urged to show mercy.
33. 3.659Masters are urged to free the afflicted; the hope of the resurrection is the ground of virtue, and on that day every body, however destroyed, will be restored in the twinkling of an eye and reunited with its soul.
34. 3.661The mind, unable to explain how souls find their own bodies and memories, falls into unbelief; but God, who made man immortal and honored, would not create him only to destroy him, and in his goodness restores him.
35. 3.663Those who deny the resurrection think it impossible for God; but the forming of Adam from dust and of Eve from a rib are greater wonders, and God's works are beyond human understanding.
36. 3.665Those who cannot explain how creation came to be should not demand an explanation of the resurrection; the almighty Creator, who showed his power in Lazarus and other risen dead, can raise all as easily as one.
37. 3.667As a small model shows the heavens, Lazarus shows the general resurrection; the forming of a child from seed and the potter's remaking of a broken jar show that God can remake bodies from dust.
38. 3.669Paul's example of the seed and the yearly revival of trees show the resurrection: the rotted grain rises with many others, while man only takes back what he had.
39. 3.671Snakes revived by thunder, and the changes of human life from infancy to old age, show that change and renewal are natural; sleep is an image of death and waking of resurrection.
40. 3.673Sleep shows how the living can seem dead and revive; bodies are not annihilated but dissolved into their elements, from which God can more easily remake them; those who deny the resurrection do so to escape judgment.
41. 3.675Without the resurrection there is no judgment, no reason for virtue, and no restraint on crime; the parable of Lazarus and the rich man and Ezekiel's valley of bones point to the resurrection of the body.
42. 3.677The soul does not die and so does not rise; but since a man is soul and body together, and both share in every sin and every virtue, both must stand together at the judgment.
43. 3.679The punishments Scripture names, fire, darkness and the worm, belong to bodies, so bodies must rise for judgment; the way ancestors' features reappear in their descendants shows God's power to renew each person's own body.
44. 3.681Closing doxology of the third Easter oration.
45. 4.681The fourth Easter oration opens: the Easter vigil, with its light, singing and joy, is an image of the good things to come; the day of resurrection reverses the condemnation of the fall, giving birth by the Spirit.
46. 4.683Adam's fall is reversed point by point: death by life, the fig leaves by the tree of life, exile by paradise; the church, watered by the four Gospels, should leap and shout for the victory of the cross.
47. 5.683The fifth Easter oration opens with praise of the only-begotten God, buried and risen, who gathered the apostles and the church and brought the nations to know God.
48. 5.685The nations remember the fall and the resurrection; the preacher lists the moments of Christ's dishonor in his trial and passion, with a long invective against those who demanded his crucifixion.
49. 5.687The passion and burial of Christ are followed by his glorious resurrection: as the Virgin bore God the Word, the earth gave birth to the risen Lord; Psalm 93 celebrates his robe of incorruption.
50. 5.689The risen Christ made the earth, shaken by sin, firm by the cross; Paul and the Psalms proclaim his incorruption and eternal kingdom.