‘To be restored to life we needed a God incarnate and put to death’ (St Gregory Nazianzen). In the face of all the accusations brought against God – or caricatures of God – by modem atheism, the only possible answer that Christians can give is the Innocent one, crucified by all the evil devised by human beings, who thus offers us resurrection.
In the Risen Christ, in his glorified body, in the very opening of his wounds, it is no longer death that reigns but the Spirit, the Breath of life. And the cross of victory and of light, which is the pattern of our baptism, can henceforth transform the most desperate situation into a death-and-resurrection, a ‘passover’, a crossing-point on the way to eternity.
And that is what the Church, this profoundly holy institution, is: it is the baptismal womb, the Eucharistic chalice, the breach made for eternity by the Resurrection in the hellish lid of the fallen world. The Church is the Mystery of the Risen Lord, the place, and the only one, where separation is completely overcome; where paschal joy, the ‘feast of feasts’, the triumph over death and hell are offered to our freedom, enabling it to become creative and work towards the final manifestation of that triumph, the final transfiguration of history and the universe. The whole Christian message, the good news, the news of fullness is summed up in these few lines from the sermon of St John Chrysostom, read at the end of Easter matins in the Byzantine rite:
‘Enter then into the joy of your Master … The feast is ready, let all share in it. The fatted calf is served, let no one go away hungry. Let all enjoy the banquet of faith. Let no one bewail his faults again, for forgiveness has shone forth from the tomb. Let no one fear death, for the death of the Lord has set us free. Hell took hold of a body, and discovered God; it took hold of the earth, and it encountered heaven … “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15.55). Christ is risen and life reigns.’
~Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
