The Resurrection in the Easter Liturgy

Extract

One of the effects of the restoration of the Holy Week liturgy and in particular of the Easter Vigil has been to re-direct attention to the Resurrection and its place in the Christian life. It is undoubtedly a new-found emphasis that does not chime very easily with the meditation-on-the-dolorous-passion mentality that has been the tradition since the later Middle Ages. The two are not of course incompatible and the Passion must always have a central place in the life of the Christian in via. But the liturgy does very definitely teach us that the climax of Christ’s redeeming work was not the Cross but the Resurrection and we are now faced with the task of re-incorporating it into our lives. For this at least two things are necessary: one is the rediscovery of what the New Testament has to say about the Resurrection and the other is to live it in and through the liturgy.

A word must be said about the New Testament material if only because it underlies the outlook of the liturgy. It may be divided for our purposes into three strata: the prophecies and accounts of the Resurrection in the Gospels, the earliest kerygma or proclamation of the Resurrection in Acts and the teaching of St Paul. We can do no more here than refer to the Gospel passages in which our Lord foretells his Passion and Resurrection, noting meanwhile that the Resurrection is always mentioned, and to the passages in Luke 24, 26, 27 which seem to have become already a ‘theological’ scheme: ‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so enter into his glory?’ (and cf. verses 44-46).