The Holy Cross and the Resurrection

The Holy Cross and the Resurrection

Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, - John 11:25 (NABRE)

Preface:

As Eastern Christians and Eastern Catholics, we have a calling to remain faithful to our Patristic heritage. While the great Saint Augustine from the Western Fathers and Medieval Western Scholasticism, especially rooted in the thought of the great Saint Thomas Aquinas shaped the Roman or Latin tradition for many centuries; the Post-Vatican II Era in the West is only now recovering the foundational elements of Sacred Scripture and the Patristic Era, in the Church’s ongoing dialogue with Modern World.

Indeed, the world of the Fathers of the Church was more like our Modern Era than the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages. For the the late Ancient World into which the Church was born, was a world of great diversity of thought, great schools of learning, and due to Roman roads, a great deal of interchange between peoples.

It is our calling to once again arm ourselves with sure Faith, knowledge of Sacred Scripture, Patristic Thought, and love of Catholic theology and philosophy; and enter the arena of evangelization and catechesis.

I. Introduction: Who is God? God is Love

The Holy Cross and the Glorious Resurrection of the Lord is the Church’s celebration of Christ’s victory over sin and death. It is the revelation of our new birth in Christ, in which we discover the true nature of God, and of ourselves. Recalling the words of the seventeenth century French philosopher, mathematician, and inventor Blaise Pascal; God is “not of the philosophers and savants.” God is the “God of Jesus Christ.” (Blaise Pascal, “Memorial”, 1654 AD)

The God of Jesus Christ is the God who is love, who loves us, and made us to love him and our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Matthew 22:37-39). He is the only true God, as John proclaims: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” - 1 John 4:16 (NABRE)

Reflecting on this truth, St. Ephrem the Syrian writes: “Since God is love, …let us not prefer anything, let us not hasten to obtain anything more than love. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, … Because what gain is there, my children, if someone has everything, but does not have love which saves?” - (St. Ephrem the Syrian, On Love)

We were created by Love to be beings of love, as the Fathers of the Church proclaimed (Saints Irenaeus, Athanasius, John of Damascus) God took on our nature, so we could take on His. “God became man so that we in our turn may become God.” - Saint Clement of Alexandria; "God became man so man could become God.” (Ο Θε?ς ?γινε ?νθρωπος για να γ?νει ο ?νθρωπος Θε?ς!)- Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Most eloquently Saint Irenaeus of Lyon writes:

For it was for this purpose that the Word of God was made man, and he who was the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, having been taken into the Word and receiving adoption, might become the son of God.”

Irenaeus, ‘Against Heresies’, 3.19.1

“Now the Scriptures would not have testified these things about him, if, like others, he had been a mere man. But the divine Scriptures do testify both these things of him: that he had in himself that pre-eminent birth that is from the Most High Father; and also that he experienced that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin.”

Irenaeus, ‘Against Heresies’, 3.19.2

II. “According to the Scriptures”

There are two realities that we should remind ourselves of when we approach Sacred Scripture, which is always an encounter that deepens the understanding and practice of our Christian faith. First of all we should remember that to the Apostles and the New Testament/Apostolic Church, the Scriptures were the Jewish Scriptures or what Christians came to call the Old Testament. Second, that the Sacred Scriptures are just that, sacred; the Sacred Scriptures are not ultimately about history, laws, or even ethics; they are about Jesus Christ.

The words that St. Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians are also intended for every generation of believers:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. - 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (NABRE)

This passage from First Corinthians is an instruction in the very foundations of our Apostolic Faith. The followers of Jesus in his earthly ministry were Jews who knew their Scriptures and in experiencing the Risen Lord, they came to realize that he was the fulfillment of their Scriptures. They realized that the Mosaic Law, the Davidic Kings, the Prophets, the Temple, the holy city of Jerusalem; that all the traditions and Scriptures of Judaism were about Jesus and fulfilled by him.

The Risen Christ “appeared” to the Twelve, and to St. Paul and other disciples, and by the power of the Holy Spirit they realized he was the long awaited Messiah. That he was the fulfillment of Israel, and more, he was the Savior of the world, the Lord of all.

III. The Cross and Resurrection

Why did Jesus die? Let us examine three passages from the New Testament:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23 (NABRE)

For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. - 2 Corinthians 5:21(NABRE)

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” - Luke 23:42-43 (NABRE)

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans speaks of the great mystery of sin and death. In doing so he reveals the limitations of being creatures, of knowing that we are going to die. The wages of sin is death, and the knowledge of death leads to sin. In the Old Testament of the Sacred Scriptures, the oldest definition of sin was “missing the mark.” This being “missing the mark” of what God calls us to be, failing to love, failing to sacrifice self for others. Choosing rather, to feed our false self in the hopes that we can control life and death. Yet, as created beings we must suffer the fate of all created things, which is death; but as graced created beings, as beings created in the image and likeness of God, we discover that the gates of eternal life have been opened by Jesus Christ. He who knew no sin became sin for us as St. Paul says to the Corinthians, so that by his death and victory over it, the abode of the dead can no longer lay hold on us.

Our Lord died on the Cross so that we might have life, by placing our total trust in him (faith) in which we cry out remember me, the words of the Prophet Isaiah are fulfilled (I will never forget you) in Christ’s response to the good thief and to us all: “today you will be with me in Paradise.” - Luke 23:43 (NABRE)

IV. The Resurrection

Sin and death can only be fully understood from the perspective of our salvation; the Cross, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, and the Pentecost of the Holy Spirit. This is how we overcome our “flesh,” our nature of fear and rebellion due to our fear of death. Then we shall come to full stature as the children of God (Christ-like Love) this is our calling, what the early Church called metanoia (transformation) and theosis (becoming God-like). We were created not for eternal death, but for eternal life in the Kingdom of God. In Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Father has exchanged our flesh for the robe of immortality.

At times in the history of Christianity, there has often been a tendency to overly dwell on our sinfulness, without seeing it in the light of our salvation. This especially happens when the Scriptures are understood as a salvation-history presented from Genesis to Revelation, rather than seeing all of salvation-history in the light of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, first and above all else. Christianity is a faith that celebrates redemption, newness of life (even in the midst of pain and suffering), as Jesus proclaimed, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” - John 15:11 (NABRE)

The Resurrection is the triumph of love over hate, peace over war, life over death. In our society, that is seemingly obsessed with its pursuit of self-identity, one need only to embrace in faith the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord, to discover who they are in Christ. Our false conceptions of self creates lives that look only inward, and seek only self-satisfaction. Yet, the message of truth given to us by the Resurrected Lord is this:

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another. - John 15:11-17

V. The Human Person in the Light of the Patristic Synthesis

Drawing primarily from St Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzus, as interpreted and explained by the contemporary thinkers, the late Greek Metropolitan John Zizioulas, and the late Greek lay theologian Christos Yannaras; the Patristic synthesis unfolds for modern minds.

The two gifts of the biblical tradition to Greco-Roman ontology are those of

Creation ex-nihilo (out of nothing) and God as Trinity (the divine being is communal/relational). Creation out of nothing establishes the world as the product of a “free act” by a “free being”. Reality is not without a beginning, is not impersonal, and without purpose, rather the universe is created by a Person (God), is personal (relational) and has purpose (love). Indeed, the biblical pronouncement of the Kingdom of God is the realization of divine purpose – the eternal intimacy of Person (God) to persons (human beings). God as Holy Trinity means that the fundamental characteristic of being, what is constitutive of being is not individuality, isolation, substance, function, or choice, but relationship or communion. God is God because the being of God realizes from all eternity the perfection of communion. From all eternity the Person of the Father (as hypostasis) communicates his total self in the Person of the Son, and communicates his charismatic power in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

The human being as created being suffers from ontological limitations (necessity) due to the fact of being a creature. The result of this type of created nature means that the human is born with individuality rather communion when life begins. The establishment of the true person as hypostasis (a free person ontologically) cannot be on the functional or moral level. Soren Kierkegaard showed that Kant’s autonomous moral person is a moral failure – he or she can never perfect a “good will”, humans will always fail their moral norms. The person as “choice” leads ultimately to nihilism; Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Camus repeat this theme. Since the human being cannot even choose to be brought into this world, to push the notion of choice to its radical end as total free choice would mean suicide. Suicide would be the most powerful choice of a person defined in this manner, and in doing so - annihilation of life rather than affirmation of life is the ultimate defining moment. Dostoevsky in the fictional person of Kirilov expresses this point by saying that anyone who wished to become God must be willing to put an end to their life, to commit suicide. Albert Camus reflecting on a world that he thought was without God, remarked that life has no meaning, so either kill yourself or like Sisyphus roll the rock up the hill. Lastly, in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche we hear the sounding of the alarm of nihilism. Although on the one-hand he celebrates the end of Judeo-Christian culture as the defining moral system of western society, he declares that without a replacement, a revaluation of values as he puts it, society will be destroyed in the embrace of nihilism.

Salvation and the gift of a true hypostasis, becoming a free person on the ontological level, in the Patristic synthesis involves God bestowing upon human beings a “new birth” – a baptism into a new “mode of existence”, where being is constituted by communion.

Possibly the most profound statement in sacred scripture is in the first letter of John, which states “God is love”. This means God is a free being (hypostases), because of the eternal intimacy of the three free persons – God is ontological perfection, communion, love. For God to grant his mode of existence to his creatures (human beings) their ontological limitations have to be destroyed and thus their nature transformed, what early Christians referred to as divinization or metanoia. Death is the greatest limitation; death makes human beings “tragic figures”. As humans strive to make loving relationships with others and overcome their individuality – the sentence of death hangs over their heads; death means ceasing to love and to be loved and the “person” is reduced to a “thing”, a corpse.

Salvation is therefore the destruction of death and the giving of “new life”, God’s way of life – being constituted by communion. The Father reveals his love for human beings by giving his total self-communication (Logos/Word), the Son, to become human, and his charismatic power (Pneuma), the Holy Spirit – for the life of the world. The God, who created space, time, and matter, enters space, time, and matter, thus making human history, salvation history. Jesus the Christ is not a guru, prophet, or moral teacher; rather Jesus is the Christ because he and he alone is the “first-born”, the first to realize “in” human history the liberation of the human person from death. The one who for three years preached the ultimate purpose of the Father, the Kingdom of God, who suffered and died like all humans, in Jesus death is not the final world, the “tragic figure” is now the “Resurrected Lord”. The charismatic power of the Father, the Holy Spirit, raised Jesus from the dead; the Son who was loved by the Father from all eternity never ceased to be loved, the life giving love of the Father, the Holy Spirit, bestows life and destroys death.

In speaking of this final stage of history sacred scripture proclaims, “I shall place your enemies beneath your feet”. Humanity now lives in a time of dialogue with God, the greatest enemy of Jesus and therefore human beings, death, has been destroyed, but there are other enemies which keep humans from accepting full incorporation into this “new life” and the Kingdom which is “in our midst”. This is therefore the time of the church, the ecclesia of free, transformed believers (hypostases). By the realizing this “new life” in the sacraments, by preaching this “new life” to the world, the church becomes a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

VI. The Resurrection: According To The Scriptures

“According to the Scriptures”

Saint Paul established the Christian community in Corinth around the year 51 during his second missionary journey and wrote his First Letter (Epistle) to the Corinthians in 56 while he was in Ephesus. In this letter as well his letters to the Thessalonians, we are allowed to see the working dynamics of the Church in its infancy and know of the themes of the apostolic preaching.

How did the apostles preach? Saint Irenaeus (c.130-c.202.) was one of the earliest and greatest of Church Fathers and a disciple of Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, who was a disciple of Saint John the Apostle. Saint Irenaeus tells us in his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching that the apostles preached by showing how Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures. “Scriptures” in the Apostolic Preaching were the Jewish Scriptures, (i.e., Old Testament), received by the early Church primarily in its Greek translation known as the Septuagint, a translation of the seventy scholars of Alexandria, Egypt, which was compiled in 200 BC.

By making the Jewish Scriptures the context of the Messianic fulfillment in Jesus, the apostles were able to present to Jewish Christians how their scriptures were all about the Eternal Word of the Father, the long-awaited Messiah. For Gentile Christians, the Jewish scriptures became a type of catechism from which could be drawn the fundamental truths of the Christian in faith, prefigured in the Old Testament.

In proclaiming to both Jewish and Gentile believers that, according to the scriptures,Jesus died and resurrected. Such an approach made Christian faith a public, historical revelation open to all. Revelation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was neither a philosophical school or system, nor a mystery cult based on ecstatic experiences of a few elect, but a divine truth revealed in the prophetically-lived reality of a chosen people, always pointing toward the Savior of the world. These chosen people were given the vocation of creating the Sacred Scripture that would eventually be revealed to the world by the Apostolic Ministry of the Church. The Apostolic Preaching is a living witness of the divine truth that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s plan, revealed according to the scriptures.

The Bodily Resurrection

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)

The New Testament Church inherited from Judaism a strong belief in the integral unity of the human person. The view of the human person differs with the notions of the surrounding Greco-Roman world with its Platonic philosophy. In the thought of Plato, the person is the soul, distinct from the body. When the body dies, the soul travels down the River Styx to Hades, assumes a new body, and returns to the physical world. One of the greatest challenges to the Apostolic Preaching of the early Church was how to explain the fundamental belief of the Church in resurrection of the body.

The Church overcame the teachings of Platonism by explaining that the body is more than flesh; rather, the body is also a spiritual entity as much as the human soul, or the human spirit. Saint Paul told the Corinthians, ending with the words of the Prophet Hosea (according to the Scriptures):

This I declare, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:50-55)

Sharing in the Resurrection of Christ

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43)

The good thief (whom tradition calls Saint Dismas) represents all of us who desire to follow Christ, to share in his Resurrection, to live in His peace, to arrive at Paradise. Like Saint Paul, we come to realize that, “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”(1 Corinthians 15:56). This means that we cannot perfect ourselves nor do we have power to save ourselves; the sting of sin reminds us that we carry death within us, the law reminds us that we always fall short of the commandments of God. Like the good thief, all we are left with is faith in The One who can remember us and share with us eternal life, life in its fullness. In faith we know that only in Christ is our salvation and the preservation of our personal identity: body, soul, and spirit. We long to hear the words of the Lord when we come to the end of our earthly pilgrimage, “Amen, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Then we can say with Saint Paul, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57)

VII. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith (The Creed)

In the year 325, three-hundred and eighteen leaders of the Church met at Nicaea to counter the heresy of Arianism. This first Ecumenical Council was called by the Emperor Constantine and while promulgating various canons for the sake of church order, the enduring work of the Council involved drawing upon the already existing baptismal formulas, such as the “Apostles Creed” to produce the Creed of Nicaea.

In the year 381, the Emperor Theodosius convened the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople. The presiding bishop was Saint Gregory Nazianzen, and drawing upon what now seems to have been a baptismal formula used by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, who was in attendance, the Creed as we know it today, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith was promulgated as the “orthodox” expression of the Church’s faith in the Triune God. By the sixth century The Creed began to be recited at the Eucharistic Liturgies of the Eastern Patriarchates and by the eleventh century began to be recited in the Latin Mass in Rome.

The Creed is more than just a recitation of dogma, it is in a real sense a prayer to and in the Holy Trinity. It is a proclamation and prayer of our faith in how the Eternal Trinity shares the divine life of “Perechoresis” (the term used by the Fathers of the Church to express the interpenetrating life of the three persons of the Trinity), which is a life of eternal perfect love, with us - the children of God.

The Fathers of the Church used the Greek term “prosopon” to say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each had a “face”. The term “prosopon” meaning person had developed from the word “prosopeon” meaning mask, used in ancient Greek theater. This term for mask eventually developed into the term for person, one who shows their face. The Fathers went further to say that although the three persons of the Trinity are “homousias” or “homoousian” (one in being, or con-substantial), there relationship within the divine perechoresis is “hypostatic,” that is relational. The Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople expresses this by means of professing that the eternal relationships within the Trinity originate from the Father. The only-begotten Son from the Father is the one who becomes Our Lord and Savior, and the Holy Spirit who dynamically proceeds from the Father is the one who sanctifies and confirms our faith in the Son who saves us.

This is the faith of the Church, faith in the God who shows us his “face,” who reveals that he is Love, and calls us to take up our cross and follow our Lord through the door to eternal life, where our humanity will reach its full stature in relationship with the Holy Trinity.

Christ is Risen!!!

Rev. David A. Fisher,
Given: 17 July 2025

Saint Michael’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

Shenandoah, Pennsylvania