Realizing the Resurrection: Proofs from Scriptures, Saints, and Experience

Today Christianity across the world celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter is a celebration of a miraculous—and seemingly impossible—event. The feast of Jesus' Resurrection holds a special place in my heart.  I wish to share the basic biblical proof of the Resurrection, examples from some saints, and my own personal experience.

Note: If you still have questions related to a more cerebral and logical argument for the Resurrection of Jesus I highly recommend Carl Olson's: Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

Gospel evidence

Since there a lot of evidence to refer to and I prefer to keep today’s post as concise as possible I will only focus on the two strongest pieces of evidence I found to be convincing for me in showing validity in Jesus’ Resurrection. First, the witness of the women being the initial people to notice the empty tomb is strong evidence. The reason for this is due to in 1st century Palestine life women did not enjoy the benefits of voting, membership in the workforce, or even respect to be witnesses in events like today.

Why would the Gospel writers uniformly state that the first witnesses to the empty tomb and to proclaim Jesus as risen were women unless it was true? It still does not make sense to me why the gospel writers would embarrass the apostles by placing women in a place of honor at being the first evangelizers of Jesus’ Resurrection unless that was the truth!

Secondly, the Gospel of Matthew already shows alternative explanations already surfacing to explain the disappearance of Jesus’ body when the tomb was opened. According to Matthew, the priests and elders charged the Roman soldiers to create a story to explain why the tomb was empty. They [priests and elders] state, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him while we were asleep’. If any word of this gets to the procurator, we will straighten it out with him and keep you out of trouble.” (Matthew 28:13-14).  This never made sense to me. If the apostles were fraudulent, why the Matthew plainly write about the theory of the stolen body of Jesus? Such a theory only makes sense as a lie developed by the priests and elders.

Saintly Sources

Because of the vast array of saints to attest to the truth of the Resurrection, I will only focus on two for conciseness’ sake—St. Peter and St. Paul. The thing that I really love about St. Peter is his fervor to follow the gospel after Jesus’ Resurrection. In addition to being the 1st pope of the Catholic Church, Peter testified to the truth of the Gospel as a martyr via crucifixion.

St. Paul represents arguably the greatest conversion in the history of Christianity. Paul went from being a murderer of Christians to the Church’s great evangelizer and writer of almost 2/3 of the New Testament. These two men show us that they encountered someone who transformed them. Peter and Paul’s conversions are an effect of the power of Jesus’ Resurrection!

My Testimony

While my own testimony does not hold the same weight at Scripture and Tradition, I still am convinced that certain things in my life transpired due to a power outside of my control and full understanding. During my darkest days a few years ago I learned of the power of God. He rose me up from the loss of a job and our miscarriages. God continues to demonstrate the glory of His Resurrected Son in seemingly ordinary things too. For example, I asked my cousin to pray for my wife for an important interview. My cousin told me, “Of course, and incidentally she [my wife] was the person my cousin and his fiancée scheduled to pray for, in a special way, anyways.” This is not the first time this seeming coincidence happened to my cousin.

Through Scripture, Tradition [the saints], and my personal experience with daily and extraordinary events I have come to more deeply realize the Resurrection of Jesus as an historical fact. I pray that you come to enjoy this truth in Scripture, Tradition, and your own life’s experiences!