{"id":16883,"date":"2016-08-18T17:09:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T21:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/?p=16883"},"modified":"2016-11-21T16:48:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:48:45","slug":"reflections-risen-christs-appearances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/2016\/08\/18\/reflections-risen-christs-appearances\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on the Risen Christ\u2019s Appearances"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sense of our Lord\u2019s post\u00ad-Resurrection appearances throughout the New Testament is\u00a0intensely paradoxical: we can say, in fact, that their sense is that they make no sense<\/em>. Now\u00a0we need to dwell<\/em> on this impossibility of making sense of what we are shown, rather than\u00a0try to ignore or overcome it: we need to accept<\/em> it, even embrace<\/em> it, and see it as belonging\u00a0intrinsically to what is being revealed to us.<\/p>\n

Consider St John\u2019s Gospel. Jesus stands on the beach<\/em>, making Himself physically present\u00a0to His disciples, to all intents and purposes as you and I can be physically present to each\u00a0other -\u00ad and yet His disciples do not know Him by way of physical presence; they see<\/em> Him,\u00a0He speaks to them, He even eats<\/em> with them, and yet they do not recognize Him bodily<\/em>.\u00a0Mysteriously, here, perception is un-\u00adperceiving<\/em>, the ordinary and familiar paths of\u00a0knowledge are simultaneously engaged and frustrated, the physical is insisted upon but\u00a0also strangely transcended, and bodily presence is no longer obvious, incontrovertible, but\u00a0a kind of hiddenness<\/em>. And this persists. For when His disciples\u2019 inability to recognize Him\u00a0is eventually overcome, it isn\u2019t that they suddenly see, in the ordinary way<\/em>, that this man\u00a0standing among them, speaking and eating with them, is in fact Jesus, as if a screen or veil\u00a0is at this point removed that, earlier on, was concealing Him physically. For one thing, it\u00a0is apparently only John Himself who, in some unspecified way, discerns who the stranger\u00a0really is: he alone is able to say It is the Lord<\/em>, which suggests that discerning<\/em> Jesus here is\u00a0more like spiritual perception<\/em> than merely looking at what\u2019s there<\/em>. Peter, for example,\u00a0hears<\/em> and reacts<\/em> to John\u2019s words, but in a way which suggests that what they convey is a\u00a0truth which he cannot access directly<\/em>, but must somehow believe on the basis of John\u2019s\u00a0unique intuition. The other disciples, too, seem to fall short of John\u2019s insight, inhabiting a\u00a0mysterious zone of indeterminacy in which, on the one hand, they do not doubt that it is\u00a0Jesus -\u00ad we are told they know<\/em> this -\u00ad even while, at the same time, they are incapable of\u00a0confirming<\/em> it in any straightforward way -\u00ad they did not dare<\/em> to ask \u2018who are you?\u2019, we are\u00a0told, as if such a plain enquiry would somehow betray the more mysterious awareness\u00a0which they have been granted. And, finally, not even John apprehends Jesus in Himself<\/em>\u00a0but rather in something else<\/em>, in the utterly unexpected haul of fish which is the fruit of\u00a0obedience: for it is only after<\/em> so many fish are caught, indeed it is only in<\/em> and through<\/em> the\u00a0fish being caught, that the identity of the mysterious stranger, even for John, is suddenly,\u00a0but indirectly<\/em>, clarified. The abundance of fish is seen: Jesus, even though He is physically\u00a0present, isn\u2019t<\/em> seen, but in some mysterious way is discerned as the one to Whom the\u00a0abundance is owing.<\/p>\n

The whole point here is not to try to resolve the difficulties, but to let them stand. They are\u00a0a sign<\/em> to us \u00ad a sign that something is being given which is beyond<\/em> us, which exceeds\u00a0anything we could conceive or produce. The Resurrection, after all, isn\u2019t our<\/em> work but\u00a0God\u2019s<\/em>, and we must let Him act precisely as He wills, even when what He does baffles and\u00a0defeats us. Of course we like to understand, we even demand<\/em> it. But instead, as Christ says\u00a0at the end of today\u2019s Gospel, we will find ourselves taken beyond ourselves, beyond the\u00a0limits we find tolerable, and be carried where we do not wish to go<\/em>\u00a0-\u00ad beyond our power to\u00a0comprehend or control. The Resurrection narratives aren\u2019t meant<\/em> to make sense, in fact it\u00a0is impossible<\/em> that they should. If we could see how<\/em> the Resurrection is possible, then it\u00a0wouldn\u2019t be the Resurrection<\/em> that we were being shown; if we thought we could interpret\u00a0it all in terms of our existing sense of the world, in terms which respected the limits of our\u00a0present understanding, then we would in fact be failing entirely to apprehend what is\u00a0being revealed.<\/p>\n

Well \u00ad- what is<\/em> being revealed? When we read about and meditate on the Resurrection, we\u00a0are not being shown something which takes place and discloses itself within<\/em> the world,\u00a0but rather the world itself is being uncovered in its destiny of being transformed within\u00a0the Resurrection<\/em>. The\u00ad-world-\u00adas\u00ad-it-\u00adis cannot<\/em> contain the Resurrection, because the\u00a0Resurrection isn\u2019t the present<\/em> of the world but its future<\/em>. What the Resurrection reveals is\u00a0the future as God desires it to be. And for this reason, when the Resurrection shows itself\u00a0to the world, worldly limits of possibility are necessarily exceeded \u00ad- exactly as we see in\u00a0today\u2019s Gospel.<\/p>\n

What does it mean, though, to say that the Resurrection is the future as God desires it<\/em>? It\u00a0means something like this -\u00ad In the Resurrection, which is nothing other than the\u00a0transformation of the flesh of Christ, we are shown, in anticipation, the transformation of\u00a0all<\/em> flesh, which means not just human<\/em> flesh, but the physical, material world as such.\u00a0According to St John, for example, Christ on the Cross draws all things to Himself<\/em>, which\u00a0means that in the single mysterious reality of Cross and Resurrection all<\/em> things \u00ad- the\u00a0whole of creation<\/em> -\u00ad will be transformed according to the pattern of transformation\u00a0inaugurated on Good Friday and completed on Easter Day. There is precisely the same\u00a0teaching in St Paul, who tells us that the creation waits with eager longing…has been\u00a0groaning in travail … until now … because the creation itself will be set free from its\u00a0bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God<\/em>. Creation itself,\u00a0St Paul tells us, has been waiting until now for its destiny to be revealed. And the now<\/em> to\u00a0which He refers is the \u2018now\u2019 of the Resurrection<\/em>, the now revealed on Easter Day which,\u00a0from then until the end of time, works itself out according to God\u2019s redemptive desire to\u00a0draw all things to Himself in the Risen Christ. In a way, then, Easter Day did not conclude\u00a0on the day that Christ rose from the dead. The \u2018now\u2019 of Easter Day lasts for as long as it\u00a0takes for all flesh to rise, renewed and transformed, in the Risen flesh of the Incarnate\u00a0Word.<\/p>\n

St Paul elsewhere announces what he calls a mystery<\/em>, the mystery of a great change<\/em>, in\u00a0which perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and … mortal nature must put on\u00a0immortality<\/em>. This is precisely the promise of the Resurrection. But until the Resurrection\u00a0is completed we cannot see<\/em> or even foresee<\/em> it, we cannot grasp or anticipate what is\u00a0promised. That is why our Lord\u2019s Resurrection appearances are so mysterious, and why\u00a0they have<\/em> to be. The interaction or intersection of the imperishable with what is still\u00a0perishable, of the immortal with what is still mortal, unavoidably leads to paradox, a\u00a0sense of the impossible, for we there encounter that mysterious overlapping of present\u00a0and future which is so characteristic of the New Testament accounts of Christ risen among\u00a0us.<\/p>\n

St John tells us that it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He\u00a0appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is<\/em>. And from this teaching it\u00a0follows that while we are still un<\/em>-\u00adlike Him, while we remain as yet un<\/em>-\u00adrisen, we cannot<\/em> see\u00a0Him, cannot apprehend the Risen One as He truly is. This is what the disciples discover in\u00a0the Forty Days in which the Risen Christ discloses Himself to them \u00ad- and to us \u00ad- so\u00a0enigmatically. The enigma, however, isn\u2019t in Him<\/em>, it\u2019s in the disciples, and in us. It is they,\u00a0it is we, who are caught, suspended, between the mortality which belongs to the present\u00a0order of things and the immortality which is the future in Christ. The Risen Christ already\u00a0fully and sovereignly inhabits the space in which all things are renewed. Indeed in His\u00a0own Person He is<\/em> that space, that renewal, for everything is in Him, and He is Himself, as\u00a0He tells us, the Resurrection and the Life. It is<\/em> we, the as\u00ad-yet-\u00adunrisen, who are in\u00a0transition, poised between present and future, incapable of truly apprehending the\u00a0Resurrection because we cannot, yet, apprehend what is ultimately real.<\/p>\n

And yet, like the disciples in today\u2019s Gospel, neither do we fail altogether<\/em> to apprehend it.\u00a0For the ultimate reality, the Resurrection, which presently lies beyond our grasp, is\u00a0nonetheless not another<\/em> reality, separate and different from the world that we already\u00a0know; it is a transformation<\/em> of the world we know -\u00ad of this very world, just as it will be\u00a0our very bodies, our bodies here and now, that one day rise again. So there is continuity,\u00a0and there is transformation. Like the Risen Christ, the future -\u00ad which is His -\u00ad is both\u00a0present and hidden, given and still awaited, it is both now and is also not-\u00adyet. This is the\u00a0condition precisely of Faith and of Hope, in which we await from God the gift of fully\u00a0receiving what He has already given us. We await the gift of finding ourselves and our\u00a0world handed to us by the Risen Christ, to Whom everything has already been handed\u00a0over by the One He calls my Father and yours<\/em>. And in this, beyond even Faith and Hope,\u00a0we behold the seal of Love, the Love of the Father by which the Son was raised from the\u00a0dead, the Love which, in the Risen Son, pledges to raise us too.<\/p>\n

By Fr Philip Cleevely, Cong. Orat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sense of our Lord\u2019s post\u00ad-Resurrection appearances throughout the New Testament is\u00a0intensely paradoxical: we can say, in fact, that their sense is that they make no sense. Now\u00a0we need to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/doubting-thomas-cropped.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8brX6-4oj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16884,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions\/16884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}