The event of Easter Sunday – Christ rising from the dead, his bursting forth from the spiced tomb following his terrible suffering and abject death, the more than amazing turnaround that this represents – from crucified criminal to triumphant Son of God – this event lies at the heart of the Christian message.
First of all, it was only because Christ had risen that the 12 Apostles and the other disciples (about 70 people in all) were able to spread the message of Christ throughout the known world within little more than a generation. Within 50 years of the Resurrection, the name of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, was known more or less everywhere in the Roman Empire, and he had disciples in every major town and city.
The success of the apostolic witness can be attributed to the fact that the Apostles told people of something they had seen with their own eyes: it was true; there were no carefully crafted stories, but rather a divine revelation. As St Paul was to say in his very first letter to his converts: “Another reason why we continually thank God for you is that as soon as you heard the word that we brought you as God’s message, you welcomed it for what it really is, not the word of any human being, but God’s word, a power that is working among you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
The witness to an actual historical event set the Apostles apart from the exponents of other new religions from the east, and the peddlers of myths. Moreover, each of them was quite prepared to die for this truth, sealing their witness to the Risen Christ with the witness of their blood as martyrs. When people saw the early Christians die in the arena, they were convinced that they were not lying about their hope in God or the basis of their beliefs: after all, one dies for truth, not for made-up stories.
The other factor that led to the rapid spread of Christianity was that this new religion promised eternal life to those who believed in Christ. The martyrs were happy to lay down their lives because they knew that in dying for Christ they would soon rise with Him again.
The people in the Roman Empire were frightened of death, and their pagan religions, of which there were many, gave them little reassurance about life after death. But Christianity did: by preaching the Resurrection of Christ, in which all the baptised will share, it banished from the troubled mind the thought of personal extinction.
To be human is to know that one day the world will continue without us, but to be Christian is to be assured that this earthly life will be subsumed into a better and truer life in God, from which all imperfection and weakness will have been purged. The pagan religions could only promise a future life that was a pale shadow of the present life: Christianity offered a risen life, this life transformed and renewed. The news that Christ was risen, and that one could share in this risen life through the initiation of baptism, must have spread rapidly because it was new.
The newness consisted in this: the Christian neophyte did not just watch the mystery being celebrated, as one had done with the old Roman gods, or Isis or Mithras. Salvation, once at a distance, had now drawn near. You yourself were truly part of the mystery, and the place where the mystery happened was not in the cella of the temple, but in your heart, for you were now the temple of the Holy Spirit, and your own heart was the sanctuary of God. The place where God interacts with human beings is the interior of the human being, as St Augustine taught, and as we know from our experience of the reception of the sacraments.
In his novel Helena, Evelyn Waugh has his heroine, the Emperor Constantine’s mother, ask the same question of all religious teachers: “When and where did these things happen?’’ Only the Christians can give her a satisfactory answer. It happened in Palestine in the month of April, 33 AD (as we now calculate it) and – this is the most important thing – all who are baptised can share in that paschal mystery. It is not something that is impossibly remote from us: rather, by the grace of God, all who believe and are baptised can come to know the saving power of this event.
It happened in Jerusalem then; it happens in the hearts of all believers now. Our faith and the sacrament of baptism are the bridge between us and the saving event of the death and Resurrection of Christ.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.