The readings for the Solemnity of Easter show how the faith of the first Christians was squarely based on historical events and objective truth.

Resurrection and Witness

by Carl E. Olson

Imagine for a moment that the Apostle Peter, standing before the Roman centurion Cornelius, had said, with a somewhat embarrassed grimace, “Well, it’s my personal opinion that Jesus rose from the dead—whatever that means. But that’s simply my truth, and is just one possible explanation.”

It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it’s impossible to ignore that such words have often come from the lips of many modern-day Christians. Perhaps they have only a passing knowledge of what Scripture, Tradition, and history say about the Resurrection. Perhaps they don’t wish to offend those who scoff at such a “simplistic” acceptance of a supernatural event.

Or perhaps they feel that different people really can have different “truths”, none better than another.

But Peter’s words were direct and bold. “We are witnesses of all that he did…” he said, “This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance…” (Acts 10:39, 40). Such words are, to many people today, triumphalistic and exclusive and arrogant. But, then, we live in an age in which the only firm belief given a free pass is the belief that faith is not believable. “Faith” is seen as superstitious, based—at best—on feelings and intuitions, not related to anything verifiable and concrete.

Yet St. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing some 1700 years ago, noted that when Peter and John first ran to the empty tomb they did not, at that very moment, “meet Christ risen from the dead, but they infer his resurrection from the bundle of linen clothes” and connected that physical fact to Jesus’ own words and the prophecies of Scripture. “When, therefore, they looked at the issues of events in the light of the prophecies that turned out true, their faith was from that time forward rooted on a firm foundation.”

What the two men saw was unexpected and astounding, but they didn’t give themselves over to irrational judgments or emotional conjectures, but began to logically put together the pieces of the prophetic puzzle.

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