Yesterday, Today, and Forever

From Hebrews we confess Christ still lives and he remains always the same. (Heb 13: 7-8). The Crucifixion could not kill the divine nature of God, and once the Resurrection occurred both natures were once again united. With the Incarnation the divinity of Christ assumed humanity and the two can never be separated Once the two natures became one person even death on the Cross did not divide them. Yes, the humanity of Jesus did die as you and I will also die. However, the divine nature of Christ could not die since he is part of the Trinity of God. It is the essence of an eternal God that awaits our own resurrection, as we die and are awakened in our grave by an angel whose task is to call us forth and reunite with our spirit.

Since the humanity of Jesus is exactly like you and I he had to succumb to death on the Cross. If not then he really was not human and all the teaching of the Paschal Mystery means nothing. Jesus was crucified, died and buried. A man without human life. In some mysterious manner the Holy Spirit brought about the restoration of a dead body and his soul was reunited with the once living body of a human being and again through a type of life the two natures of Christ are once again holy and completely alive in a resurrected life.

Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him. He who is both their God and the son of Eve. “I am your God, who for your sake has become your son. I order you, O sleeper, to awake, I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.” (from an ancient homily reprinted in the CCC) (following CCC 635)..

Finally, Christ’s Resurrection - and the risen Christ himself - is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. ….For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful while they await that fulfillment. In Christ, Christians “have tasted the powers of the age to come” and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their own sake died and was raised.” (CCC 655).

O truly blessed Night, sings the Exultet of the Easter Vigil, which alone deserved to know the time and the hour when Christ rose from the realm of the dead! But no one was an eyewitness to Christ’s Resurrection and no evangelist describes it. No one can say how it came about physically. Still less was its innermost essence, his passing over to a new life, perceptible to the senses. Although the Resurrection was an historical event that could be verified by the sign of the empty tomb and by the reality of the apostle’s encounters with the risen Christ, it still remains at the very heart of the mystery of faith as something that transcends and surpasses history. This is why the risen Christ does not reveal himself to the world, but to his disciples, “to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.” (CCC 647).

Therefore the words “Yesterday, Today, and Forever” signify a beginning and ending of the Mercy and Forgiveness Almighty God foreknew at our creation.

Ralph B. Hathaway