Spiritual Quote of the Day (Karl Rahner, on Easter, ‘Our True and Eternal Life’)

“The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter, the persistent hope for the final glory of God. If we live the Holy Saturday of our existence properly, this will not be a merely ideological addition to this common life as the mean between its contraries. It is realized in what makes our everyday life specifically human: in the patience that can wait, in the sense of humor which does not take things too seriously, in being prepared to let others be first, in the courage which always seeks for a way out of the difficulties. The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible and expects God to do the impossible. To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously: the worst has actually already happened; we exist, and even death cannot deprive us of this. Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life, but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life.”—German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Grace in Freedom (1969)

The image accompanying this post, The Resurrection, was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1510) around 1490.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (First Letter of St. Peter, on the ‘Living Hope’ of Easter)

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” —1 Peter 1:3-5

The image accompanying this post, The Resurrection, was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1510) around 1490.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (George Herbert, on the Resurrection)

“Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
    Christ's resurrection thine may be;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
    Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee:
                                            Arise, Arise;
    And with His burial linen drie thine eyes.
Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.”—English poet and Anglican minister George Herbert (1593-1633), “The Dawning,” in The Poems of George Herbert, edited by Ernest Rhys (1885)

The image accompanying this post, The Resurrection, was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1510) around 1490.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Henry Newman, on Christ’s Rising—and Ours)

“He rose in the night, when no one saw Him; and we, too, rise we know not when nor how. Nor does anyone know anything of our religion’s history, of our turnings to God, of our growing in grace, of our successes, but God Himself who secretly is the cause of them.”—English theologian, historian, poet, educator, and memoirist St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), "Rising with Christ,” originally delivered Aug. 13, 1837, later Sermon 15 in The Newman Reader, Vol. 6: Parochial and Plain Sermons

The image accompanying this post, The Resurrection, was painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1510) around 1490.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (The Gospel of John, on the Raising of Lazarus)

“Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’

“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’

“Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

“Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?’

“So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’

“The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”—John 11: 32-44

This episode is among the most unusual, even the most strange and affecting, among all of them in the four gospels.

From the viewpoint strictly of storytelling, it shifts perspectives, with Christ addressing Martha and Mary, making his way through the crowd, addressing his Trinitarian “Father,” and having moments of interior consciousness (Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled”).

Moreover, for the inevitable doubters of this very public miracle hearing this years later, John includes the grittiest details associated with the event: the bandage- and cloth-bound, risen Lazarus, and even the gruesome invocation of a stench associated with removing the stone.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in George Stevens’ reverential but slow-moving 1965 Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told, this appears to have been the one event to call out all the great director’s skills.

As you’ll see in this YouTube clip, the scene dispenses with the all-star cameos that are so distracting elsewhere in the film.

Instead, Stevens frames everything—including the climactic moment when Jesus urges his friend to “Come forth”—as if we were viewing a great Renaissance tableau—maybe something like The Raising of Lazarus, by the Italian painter Sebastiano del Piombo, in the image accompanying this post.

How unusual is this chapter in the ministry of Jesus? Well, the Lazarus story is not told in any Gospel other than John’s. This story has the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” And of course, it ultimately foreshadows the Easter that the Church year looks forward to and that Christians hope for.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on Jesus, ‘A Specialist at Turning Our Deaths Into Life’)

“Jesus is a specialist at turning our deaths into life, our mourning into dancing (cf. Ps 30:11). With him, we too can experience a Pasch, that is, a Passover– from self-centredness to communion, from desolation to consolation, from fear to confidence. Let us not keep our faces bowed to the ground in fear, but raise our eyes to the risen Jesus. His gaze fills us with hope, for it tells us that we are loved unfailingly, and that however much we make a mess of things, his love remains unchanged. This is the one, non-negotiable certitude we have in life: His love does not change. Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I looking? Am I gazing at graveyards, or looking for the Living One?” —Pope Francis, “Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter: Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis,” Apr. 20, 2019

The depiction of the Resurrection of Jesus in the accompanying image is by the German painter and graphic artist Bernard Plockhorst (1825-1907).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Chrysostom, on How ‘Forgiveness Has Risen From the Grave’ With Easter)

“Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it.” — Eloquent Archbishop of Constantinople and early Church Father St. John Chrysostom (c. 349-407 AD), “Easter Sermon”

The image accompanying this post is the fresco painting The Resurrection, by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1415-1492)

Quote of the Day (Lucien Deiss, on the Resurrection)

“Your resurrection destroys the power of death and changes tears of agony into cries of joy. Blessed are you!” — French pastor, liturgist, author, lecturer, Scripture scholar and composer Lucien Deiss (1921-1997), Come, Lord Jesus (1981)

Quote of the Day (Anne Lamott, on Christ at Easter, ‘Resurrected and Broken’)

“The thing about Easter is that Jesus comes back from the dead both resurrected and broken, with wounds from the nails still visible.  People needed to see that it really did happen, the brutality, the death.  He came back with a body, not like Casper or Topper. He didn’t come back as the vague idea of spirit returning. No, it was physical, a wounded body. He had lived. He had died, and then you could touch Him, and He could eat, and these four things are as bodily as life gets.”—Anne Lamott, “Falling Better,” in Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (2014)

(The image accompanying this post is a detail from the painting Resurrection, by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca.)

Quote of the Day (Mother Teresa, on ‘The Joy of Christ Risen”)

“Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.” —Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love, edited by Becky Benenate and Joseph Durepos (2002)

Quote of the Day (Dorianne Laux, on Dying and Rebirth, at Easter)

“Once upon a time . . .

we begin our saddest stories.

Once bitten. Once burned.

Once in a blue moon. Once more

unto the breach. We die a while

into each other’s arms and are

reborn like Lazarus, like Jesus.”— Dorianne Laux, “Error's Refuge,” published as part of “Two Poems,” Oxford American, Fall 2015

George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told will undoubtedly be broadcast countless times this Easter Sunday. Though that is not my favorite film about the life of Christ (that honor goes to Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth), it does have one scene of such striking visual power that it throws the rest of the movie (dominated by distracting cameos by the likes of John Wayne and Shelley Winters) into sharp relief. It is the moment caught here, where Jesus commands his dear friend Lazarus (who had died a few days before) to come out of his tomb.

The appearance of Lazarus, it can be seen in this Renaissance-like tableau, has social as well as obvious individual implications. Those on the spot are stunned by what they have just seen, and their witnessing to the event will make them all the more receptive, not too long later, to the idea that Jesus himself could perform a similar miracle with Himself rising from the dead.