This page was added
April 22, 2004
Homily 11 April 2004
By Fr. Hathaway FSSP
Mater Dei Latin Mass Community

Easter Sunday
On the Historical Resurrection


You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He is risen, He is not here.  Behold the place where they laid Him.
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The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is an historical fact.  This doctrine of the Church is not merely a supernatural truth, rather it is able to be substantiated by natural facts. 

There is evidence besides the gospels.  The empty tomb needs an explanation; if the body of Christ had remained in the tomb the claim of the resurrection would never have been made.  The martyrdom of the apostles needs an explanation; if the resurrection were a big lie it is incredible to think that the apostles would have suffered all manner of abuse in its defense.  The consistent belief of the Church in time and place needs an explanation; if the resurrection were but fraud it is incredible to think all manner of people could be so easily duped.  

There is evidence of the gospels.   The men who wrote the gospels are reliable witnesses; they were contemporaries who knew what they were writing about and who left an honest account of their experience.   Matthew and John were apostles, Mark consulted with the apostle Peter and Luke traveled with Paul and wrote from other sources; modern scholarship agrees with the gospel record of the Holy Land as it was before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD; in recounting the life of our Lord, the gospel writers also record their sins and failings, but no man would place himself in a bad light unless he were honest and simply recording a factual account of what happened. 

And what do these gospels tell us?

Two thousand years ago, after many cruel torments, Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried.  Jesus Christ truly died... like we shall all one day  truly die.  His human soul separated from His body and He ceased to live.  Indeed, even the Jewish leaders believed in His death for when they asked Pilate for permission to seal the tomb and post a guard of soldiers, it was not to keep the body from walking off, but to keep the disciples from walking off with the body.  These Jews feared the disciples would steal the body and say to the people, “He has risen from the dead.”  So they had the tomb sealed and a guard of soldiers posted.

On the third day, however, Christ returned to life... never more to die.  The earth trembled and the Lord arose; the stone rolled back and guard were terrified and lay as if dead. 

Later, the Jewish leaders shrewdly paid the soldiers hush money (a large sum), telling them,  “say that the disciples came while you were asleep and stole the body.”  St. Augustine ridicules their plot, “you summon sleeping witnesses! Shrewdness itself has fallen asleep when it devises no better plan then to call sleeping witnesses to testify.”

Unlike many others, we are not faking sleep but awake with the truth.  We know and profess that Jesus Christ of Nazareth truly rose from the dead in His own body, alleluia.  This is what we celebrate on Easter Sunday and on every Sunday of the year.  Anyone who says that the Resurrection of the Christ is not an historical fact but only some figure of speech, a dream of the Christians to describe some spiritual experience of the early Church, is himself dreaming, another sleeping witness whom the world has bribed so that he not wake up and see the empty tomb and the place where they laid Him and believe.



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