Contemplating the Risen Christ at Easter

The Difficulty of Contemplating the Resurrected Christ

For many Catholics, it is easy to meditate on the Passion of Christ during the Lenten season and Holy Week. Because of the Incarnation (God becoming man in Jesus Christ), the sufferings that Our Lord went through for the sake of man’s salvation are easy to reflect upon since we can readily visualize them through our senses. During His Passion, Our Lord’s fragile human nature was put on full display for all to see. He did not allow His Divinity to overpower or annihilate the mystery of His suffering and death. So there are many powerful images which our imagination can grasp and hold on to when it comes to the mystery of Our Lord’s Passion. For example, we can reflect upon the wounds in His hands and feet and side. Or the crown of thorns that mercilessly pierced His sacred head. We can reflect on the agony of Christ in the garden, the scourging of His holy Body at the pillar; we can contemplate His betrayal by the kiss of Judas, or His being locked up in a small, dingy prison cell on the night of Maundy Thursday until His unjust trial in the middle of that same night. The Passion offers us an almost infinite number of things to consider and ponder over, because the sufferings of the sacred humanity of Jesus are very real and concrete.

But when we arrive at Easter, and when the Church’s focus shifts from the Passion to the Resurrection, many Catholics find themselves at a loss when it comes to personal meditation. How does one meditate on the Risen Christ? What are we to place before our imagination? We have never seen a risen, glorified Body, and most of us are not even fully sure what it means when the Church teaches that Christ’s Body after the Resurrection is now in a glorified state. As a result of this, many Catholics find their prayer life to be at a loss when Easter arrives. It’s one thing to focus on the concrete ways in which Jesus suffered during His Passion; it’s quite another to contemplate his risen, glorified Body, of which we have no experience in this world.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Church, teaches that glorified bodies (that is, the bodies of the Saints in Heaven, in imitation of Christ’s own glorified Body) have four characteristic traits that set them apart from the physical, material bodies in this world. A glorified body is endowed with the qualities of: (1) impassibility; (2) subtlety; (3) agility; and (4) clarity.

By impassibility, St. Thomas means that a glorified body is incapable of suffering. It cannot suffer physical illness or pain. Subtlety means that a glorified body is not purely physical but that it has spiritual characteristics as well. It is "spiritualized" by the soul that inhabits it, a soul that is now glorified and purified from all sin. This subtlety is the characteristic that allows glorified bodies to pass through closed doors, for example.

The third trait of a glorified body is agility. Agility means that the glorified body is fully obedient to the will of the soul. This allows the body to be where the soul wills it to be, in an instant. We see this in the glorified Body of Our Lord, and in those of some of the Saints who had the ability to bilocate or to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. And finally, the fourth characteristic of a glorified body is clarity. Clarity means that the glorified body is bathed in a supernatural brightness, in the light of the glorified soul in Heaven. The lumen gloriae (Light of Glory) overflows from the soul into the body, such that the glorified body takes on a radiance and a beauty unknown in this world.

Thus a glorified body in Heaven (and a fortiori the glorified Body of our Risen Lord) is incapable of suffering or illness; it is spiritualized and completely conformed to the glorified soul; it is agile in movement making it instantly present where the soul wants it to be; and it is bathed in a brilliant radiance that reflects the glory of Heaven.

It is not easy for us who are still in this world to contemplate such truths in the Risen Body of Christ after the Resurrection since we have no concrete experience of such things in this life. Hence the difficulty in meditating on the mystery of Easter and what it means that Christ is Risen in a glorified state.

Such a contemplation can only occur through the intermediary of Faith. Faith gives us eyes to see the invisible, and that is why the Divine Mysteries of God always appear to be hidden behind a veil — a veil that can only be pierced by the virtue of Faith. This is, in fact, what the Catholic Church means by the word Mystery. A Mystery is a divinely revealed truth that can only be known and contemplated through Faith. The Resurrection is one such Mystery. And so is the Holy Eucharist. In fact, the Greek word for mystery (mysterion) is often expressed in Latin as sacramentum (sacrament).

The Resurrection and the Blessed Sacrament

The Eucharistic Mystery of Christ's precious Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament is a privileged place to encounter the Risen Christ. The same Faith that gives us eyes to contemplate our Risen Lord in heavenly glory gives us eyes to contemplate Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament, as we saw in a previous post published during the season of Passiontide, veils both the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ and His divine nature as God. And it is only Faith that allows us to "see beyond the veil," as it were. Without Faith, one would only recognize the Consecrated Host as a piece of unleavened bread. But Faith gives us a new sight, a new knowledge of the truth that lies hidden under the humble appearance of simple bread. Faith is the key to contemplating Christ both in the Holy Eucharist and in eternal glory.

Because of this, Easter is an especially appropriate season in which to spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. The same Jesus Christ who is glorified in His Body risen from the dead is the One whose glorified Body dwells within our Tabernacles and upon our Catholic Altars. "It is the Lord!", the Apostle John cried out to Peter at the miraculous catch of fish after Easter Sunday (Jn. 21:7). The beloved Apostle John recognized that it was Our Lord who was calling the Apostles to cast their nets into the sea, because he had the eyes of Faith to discern Our Lord's presence. So too we, whenever we find ourselves at the foot of the Blessed Sacrament during the season of Eastertide, should be quick to cry out in an act of Faith, Dominus est! and recognize that it is indeed the Lord.

To contemplate Christ's glorified Body in the Holy Eucharist should be our primary occupation during Eastertide. Each of the liturgical seasons of the year gives us particular graces in relation to the mysteries that that season highlights. Since the Easter season is primarily focused on the risen presence of Christ, we should strive to bring that grace with us to the foot of the Tabernacle when we pray before the Blessed Sacrament. There is no better place to discover the wonders of the mystery of the Resurrection than before the presence of the Risen Christ in the Holy Eucharist!

Contemplation in Silence

While many Catholics use their time before the Blessed Sacrament to pray vocal prayers and novenas, or to speak intimately with Our Lord in their heart (all of which are good things, because they all express our love for God), we sometimes forget that the true language of love is silence. To contemplate Christ’s Resurrection during Eucharistic Adoration does not just mean to “think about things” or to “say prayers” or even to “speak with God” directly in our heart; to contemplate the Risen Christ in the Blessed Sacrament means primarily to enter into a sacred silence, a simple gaze beyond words and vocal prayers, a gaze of love that is, above all, an encounter with the Presence of Our Lord. Communion with the Presence of Christ is the goal of our entire existence, and we commune with Him primarily through the language-love of silence. This attitude of silently remaining before the Blessed Sacrament, of resisting the temptation to do things or say things but instead allowing Jesus to act silently within our soul… this is a type of communion with God that truly reflects the power of the Resurrection! The Apostle John, while mentioning the singing of the Angels, the trumpet blasts, and the various ways in which God’s creatures worship the Divine Presence of the Most Holy Trinity in Heaven, also says in the Apocalypse that there will be moments of prolonged silence in the eternal Kingdom:

When the Lamb opened the 7th seal, there was silence in Heaven… -Apoc. 8:1

This silence is not, of course, due to the absence of God. It is, on the contrary, the very means by which the Angels and Saints encounter the Presence of God in the deepest way.

Eastertide is, in a certain sense, a time of profound silence. Despite the constant refrains of Alleluja! that are ever-present in the Church’s Paschaltide liturgies, we also have a deep, instinctual sense that there is no better way to contemplate the Resurrected Christ than to simply listen silently and allow His glory to pervade our souls. Mother Teresa of Kolkata famously said that “Silence is God speaking to us.” This means that the language that is proper to God, who is the Eternal Word, is paradoxically the language of silence. It is for this reason that silent Eucharistic Adoration is so powerful. It is often there, while silently contemplating the Risen Christ in the Consecrated Host, that many Catholics receive their most profound insights and inspirations. It is not uncommon to hear expressions like, “God spoke to me in Adoration.” And while it is important to maintain a discerning spirit and not fall into the excesses of charismaticism by which we believe that God is speaking to us at all times in an indiscriminate manner, it is nonetheless equally important to acknowledge the significance of the fact that it is often in silence before the red Tabernacle lamp that many of us receive the answers to our prayers and the most profound insights into the mysteries of our Faith.

During this season of Eastertide, let us use every opportunity we have to spend some quiet, silent time before the Blessed Sacrament. Let us ask for the grace this Easter season to enter into the true spirit of quies, which is a Latin word meaning “quiet” or “rest.” Let us learn to “rest in Our Lord” or to “remain in Him,” as He Himself invites His disciples to do:

Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. […] Remain in My Love. -John 15:4,9

When we learn to remain in Christ and to rest in Him — something that we learn how to do primarily in silent Eucharistic Adoration — it is then that we experience the true power of the Resurrection and the true meaning of Easter.