Easter Bodiliness

The Easter Good News has always involved bodiliness.

Faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ affirms that it is not his soul alone which is saved from death but his whole body-person-self.

Starting with a humiliated body laid in a tomb, the resurrection story tells of the creative power of divine love triumphing over the crucifying power of evil and the burying power of death.

What this means in the concreate is not seriously imaginable: "We see now in a mirror only dimly."

Yet the empty tomb stands as a historical marker that the love of God, stronger than death, embraces biological existence itself and rescues it from annihilation.

The exuberant joy that breaks out at Easter comes from the realization that this destiny is not meant for Jesus alone but for the whole of humanity.

The outcome of Jesus's death signals that a blessed future awaits all who go through the shattering of death, which is everyone.

– Elizabeth Johnson
Excerpted from "For God So Loved the Cosmos"
U.S. Catholic
April 2010

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Considering Resurrection
• Easter: The Celebration of the Sacrament of Transformation
• The Risen Jesus: Our Integral Ground
• The Two Entwined Events of the Easter Experience
• Resurrection in an Emerging Universe
• Resurrection: A New Depth of Consciousness
• Easter Reflections
• Easter Exultet
• The Resurrected Jesus
• Jesus: The Breakthrough in the History of Humanity
• The Passion of Christ (Part 11) – Jesus Appears to Mary
• The Passion of Christ (Part 12) – Jesus Appears to His Friends
• The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
• A Girl Named Sara: A "Person of the Resurrection"
• Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas, and All Possible Theological Formulations
• A Discerning Balance Between Holiness and Wholeness: A Hallmark of the Resurrected Life

Image: Urtreen by Sergei.