He Is Risen!! Let Us Glorify the Risen Lord!

First Glorious Mystery

✨ The Resurrection

He Is Risen — Lord Over Life and Death

Luke 24:1-12 Fruit: Faith

As already noted, the Resurrection of Our Lord is of paramount importance to the Christian Faith. He rose from the dead; He defeated Death to show that He is Lord over both Life and Death. The Resurrection is a testament of His power and authority, an indication of His divinity, for He said that He has the power to lay down His life and to take it up again (John 10:18). This belief in Christ, in His lordship over life and death, is the hope of the eternal life that He promises.

⚆ A Trinitarian Act

While the First Mystery is a meditation on His Resurrection, it is also a moment to meditate on our own future resurrection. As the Catholic Faith professes in the Creeds, and indeed as most of Christianity professes, we hold to a bodily resurrection:

"I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen." The Nicene Creed

I include the portion that names the Holy Ghost because the act of Christ's Resurrection, and our future resurrection, is an action of the whole Holy Trinity, not of one divine Person acting alone. Christ is Lord over life and death; the Holy Ghost, as professed, is the Giver of Life. So for one to be given life is to partake of the action of the Holy Ghost and to come under the lordship of Christ, both acting in union according to the Divine Will of the Father. The Resurrection is a Trinitarian act, by the act and will of all three Persons of the Holy Trinity (CCC 648-650).

✝️ How We Share in the Resurrection

As Christians we participate in Christ's Resurrection in two ways.

First, Now

In Baptism

We die to sin and rise in Christ. Just as He offered Himself as a sin-offering according to the Mosaic and Levitical Law, we partake in His eternal and infinite sacrifice, uniting our nature to it: His divine and human natures, and our sinful human nature; His sin-offering, and our sin. Baptism is our metaphysical death and resurrection, itself a Trinitarian act, done "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Second, To Come

In the General Resurrection

We participate also in the resurrection still to come, the resurrection of the body at the Second Coming of Christ and the General Judgment, which we profess in the Creed and for which we hope.

St. Thomas

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a great deal on the Resurrection: on the Resurrection of Jesus, on His glorified body afterward (the powers of the soul over the body, first shown in the Transfiguration), and on the general resurrection we profess and hope for. He treats the qualities of the glorified body in the Supplement to the Summa Theologiae, and the general resurrection and the states of the blessed and the damned in the questions that follow.

Further reading in the Supplement: the glorified body and its gifts, qq. 82-85; the general resurrection, q. 75; the resurrection of the blessed unto glory and of the damned, qq. 86-96.

🍞 Known in the Breaking of the Bread

It is fitting that the scriptural rosary for this mystery ends on the road to Emmaus, where the risen Lord walks unrecognized beside two disciples, opens the Scriptures to them, and is finally known to them in a single act.

Emmaus and the Eucharist

"When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him" (Luke 24:30-31). The four verbs, took, blessed, broke, gave, are the very verbs of the Institution of the Eucharist.

The risen Christ is made known in the breaking of the bread. What began in the upper room continues at every altar: the same Lord, truly present, recognized by faith where the eyes alone see only bread. The Resurrection and the Eucharist are bound together, and the road to Emmaus is the road to every Mass.

🌱 The Fruit of the Mystery

Fruit of the First Glorious Mystery

Faith

The fruit of this mystery is faith. As St. Paul told the Corinthians, if Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain; but He is risen, and so our faith is not in vain but is the ground of all our hope. To meditate on the Resurrection is to strengthen the faith by which we die to sin now and look for the resurrection of the body to come.

📿 A Scriptural Rosary for This Mystery

Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria, letting St. Luke's account of the Resurrection carry the decade. (Scripture here follows the RSV-2CE.)

The First Glorious Mystery: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Pater Noster

Luke 24:1-2 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:3-5 But when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:6-7 "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise."

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:8-9 And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:10-11 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Jo-anna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home wondering at what had happened.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:13a, 15 That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem … While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:22-24 "Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see."

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:30-31 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight.

Ave Maria …

Luke 24:33-34 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!"

Ave Maria …

O My Jesus …

Gloria Patri …

The Glorious Mysteries

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