QUESTION: We celebrate Easter in the coming week, an experience of the Risen Lord. In the context of the corona, the invasion of Ukraine and other similar unjust and devastating experiences around us what is the meaning of the resurrection of Christ? – Viji Paul

ANSWER: Saji Mathew Kanayankal CST

The different experiences of people of today are challenging and devastating especially in the context of the present war, pandemic, climate change, degeneration of statesmanship and the collapse on the ethos of leaders of the community and so on. In such a context a kind of cynicism may grow in the society. The title of the second chapter of the encyclical of Pope Francis, ‘Dark Clouds over a Closed World’ very well expresses the distressed situation of the contemporary world. The pervading presence of senseless suffering in the world indeed falls outside the bounds of every rational system and when we confront traumatic experiences one after another, we may be forced to reflect on the meaning of our life. Christians who are confronted with such kind of traumatic experiences inevitably look to the death and resurrection of Jesus in their quest for meaning and hope. The quest for an authentic resurrection experience may help us to contemplate the mystery of the resurrection in a nuanced way. It leads us to reflect on the story of Calvary that finally leads us to the empty tomb!

Christ is Risen!

It would be enriching to see the meaning of Christian-living and the experience of the risen Jesus through the eyes of Nicholas Kazantzakis, which is narrated in his novel, ‘Christ Recrucified.’ This novel begins with the narration of an Easter season where the glory of resurrection permeates everywhere. “It was Easter Tuesday; Mass was just over. Exquisite weather, tender: Spring, sun and rain; the lemon blossoms were fragrant, the trees budding, the grass reviving, Christ rising from every cold. The Christians were coming and going across the square and embracing one another with the Paschal greeting: ‘‘Christ is risen!’’ ‘‘Risen indeed! … Christ is risen from all cold!” The villagers were good people and they were in a joyous mood. The entire plot slowly moves on devaluation of the message of the resurrection. Manolios, the centre character of the story is a shepherd and he was chosen to play the part of Christ in a passion play conducted in the village for the next Passion Week. With the arrival of refugees to the village, seeking protection under the leadership of Pope Fotis, the lives of different characters in the passion play come to the parallel with the passion of Christ. Grigoris, the head of the church in the village, denies the fugitives shelter and sends them and their priest Fotis to starve on the mountain of Sarakina. There can be many political, social or cultural reasons behind it. In spite of the protest of Grigoris, Manolios, Michelis, Yannakos and Kostandis help the poor refugees in their suffering and agony. Though Manolios inspires the people of the village to follow him and to support the refugees and save their life, the mob were misled by the conspiracy of Grigoris and Panayotaros and accused Manolios as a murderer and kills him on the eve of Christmas. In the end, the question of Fotis, ‘When will You be born, my Christ, and not be crucified any more, but live among us for eternity?’ resonates in the world of atrocities, deception and fraudulence.
Kazantzakis is well thought of in communicating the message of the risen Christ. The action and motifs of ‘Christ Recrucified’ are constructed in such a way to redirect one’s attention from the risen Christ to Christ crucified, to the struggle of Christ that leads to the way of the cross. The struggles of Christ are encapsulated by the struggles of the people who were forced to leave their land under the treachery of a monarch. The head of the local church and his henchmen are worried about a drama to be staged in the coming passion week. But people who are imbibed by Christ wanted to articulate the experience of the Risen Lord to the suffering people. Crucifixion here is not an emblem of atonement, but the outcome of the spiritual struggle. It becomes a living experience of the persons who follow Christ. Crucifixion and resurrection are not a mere drama to be staged yearly but become a living reality. Kazantzakis explains how the values of Christ is slain within the hands of power, money and treachery.
Like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, where the author tries to bring back Jesus into human suffering, Kazantzakis explicitly warns about the dire consequences of what happens when one tries to bring God back into society. There we have to expect some breaks downs, some dilemmas, challenges, and oppositions. Mostly it is from the ‘followers of Christ’! The question becomes open now. Who is his follower? Whether one is a believer or not, one that forced to recognize that Christ does not cease to be crucified every day. Here he goes deep into the meaning of resurrection. As Karl Rahner asserts, the resurrection of Jesus should not be seen as resuscitation of the body of Jesus as he had done for Lazarus, rather it is the validity of the life and message of Jesus, as he proclaims the reign of the Kingdom of God. When one tries to witness the resurrection, s/he has to undergo certain traumatic experiences, but this event itself turns into an experience of resurrection. It can be seen radically in the crucifixion, where Jesus embraces not ‘the cross’, but the value he fostered throughout his life. Thus, embracing the cross is not a painful experience but an experience of self-actualisation and fulfilment of his commitment, the commitment to the heavenly father and to the entire humanity and cosmos. The experience of human suffering presents an ongoing challenge to believers who seek to sustain their relationship with God in the face of the tragedies of human history. The most significant element in the death of Jesus was not the terrible suffering he endured, but rather his complete obedience to the divine will, even to death on a cross (Phil 2:1-12).

Crucifixion: A Death into Resurrection

In his analysis, Edward Schillebeeckx relates the death of Jesus with the radical human experience. For the human community, the experience of evil is a universal phenomenon, and there is a bitter awareness that the history of the human race is a history of suffering. He acknowledges that suffering is a fact of life that often has positive effects. There is such a thing as a ‘school of suffering’ which can be transformative and lead to greater spiritual maturity. Schillebeeckx insists that in our history there is a ‘barbarous excess’ of suffering and evil, much of which cannot be described as meaningful. Accordingly, “this suffering is the alpha and omega of the whole history of mankind; it is the scarlet thread by which this historical fragment is recognizable as human history; history is an ‘ecumene’ of suffering” (Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 725). Death, darkness, and negativity do not in any way find their source in God. Following the footage of Thomas Aquinas, Schillebeeckx argues that evil has its origins in the possibilities, not the necessities that are inherent in a finite creation. As soon as there are creatures there is the possibility of a negative and original initiative of finitude, a defect of the will. Evil and the suffering that comes from it result from finitude and finite freedom. One should not look for a ground or motive for evil and suffering in God. They have their origin exclusively from the side of the finite without any contribution from the side of God.
The death of Jesus and his resurrection are to be interpreted in this context of suffering. His death is not to be minimalised as the death of the physical body rather it is a death into resurrection. For John, it is the hour (Jn 17:1), the hour of the glorification of the son, the meta-historical time, the hour of the fulfilment of the will of the father, the culmination of his ‘Abba Experience.’ It is neither the negation of history nor the exclusion of the historical events rather it is an interpretation of the historical moment within the frame of entire salvation history. It is the hour that definitely conquers all forces of evil as the terminal point of the old creation and the inauguration of the new era. As Virginia Orton comments, “as the completion of the Father’s will, the hour of his death on the cross is crucially not an hour of humiliation but paradoxically the hour of his glorification; being ‘lifted up’ to give life to the world.”
In the death of Jesus, the silent presence of God to Jesus becomes manifest; the faithful presence and the power of God erupt from within. The cross can be understood as salvific only in light of what God has accomplished in the resurrection. Through his death and resurrection, Christ has created a vast reservoir of spiritual energy which assures the final victory of good over evil. The resurrected Jesus carries the historical burden of his message about the Kingdom of God, and by accepting the suffering that comes to those who try to historicize today the values of the Kingdom that defined the historical reality of Jesus. “In the risen Jesus God shows himself to be the power of anti-evil, of unconditional goodness that in sovereign fashion refuses to recognize, and breaks, the overweening power of evil’ (Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 641).
When confronts with evil there is a natural human reaction to it mostly with an instinctual feeling of revulsion and protest. This is the negative moment in a contrast experience. But this is not the end, there is more. The resurrection enables us to believe what we desperately hope is true, that all of our good actions have a permanent validity and that none of our efforts to love others is ever wasted. As Christians, in the baptism, we have died with Christ and in eternity we shall live with him forever. We follow Jesus not because he has suffered terribly and met with the atrocities and injustice of people of his time, rather we follow him because He has risen and won the victory over the malicious forces of the world. The experience of the resurrection offers inexhaustible spiritual energy into the world which sustains and guides not only Christian believers but the entire human community. To live with the risen Christ thus demands us to overcome the temptations of mere ritual practices and ceremonial festivities and to give witness to him concretely in our daily life. Discipleship involves dying to self, but always for the sake of a new, more vibrant life in service of the reign of God. In the novel, ‘Christ Recrucified’, Manolios and his companions personify this authentic experience of resurrection. He symbolises every Christian who wanted to become a better person and fight against his selfishness and the selfishness of the society wherein he lives. Irrespective of various hostility and dissent, the resurrected Jesus offered them the power to stand before the atrocities, hatred and conspiracies. It is about the struggle one takes in his life in articulating the values of the gospel in a concrete situation. Ultimately it will triumph over all the dark forces in the world.