Now the Green Blade Rises:
Recognizing Resurrection
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord are at the heart of our faith; we are an Easter people. Unlike Gnosticism, Christianity proclaims that death (not the body) is the “last enemy” and that Jesus, dying, has destroyed our death.
However, our secular culture vastly prefers self-improvement to self-offering, and affirms a vague notion of spiritual immortality rather than the darker but infinitely more powerful promise of death and rebirth by the power of God alone.
These largely unexamined attitudes have infiltrated even the Church and its liturgies, to the impoverishment of our lives in God. As a consequence, we are in danger of no longer recognizing resurrection in our own experience, or the presence of our Risen Lord in our broken world, or the real “weight of glory” our faith offers for “the life of the world to come.” We are also at risk of missing God’s invitation to us to participate in the New Creation inaugurated with Christ’s Resurrection. Using a three-part structure based on the liturgical affirmation “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again,” this retreat explores the mysteries of death and resurrection using Scripture, poetry, art and science in order to reclaim—and rejoice in—orthodox Christian teaching on the resurrection of the body.