The First Glorious Mystery – The Resurrection

For Saint Paul, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the foundation upon which our Christian faith is based. ‘If Christ has not been raised’, he tells the Christians of Corinth, ‘your faith is pointless and you have not, after all, been released from your sins’ (1 Corinthians 15:17). He goes on to teach that Christ’s rising to life on the third day took place ‘in accordance with the scriptures’. Some have suggested that Paul may have had in mind the passage from the prophet Isaiah which talks of the suffering and exaltation of the servant of the Lord: ‘He was wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt […] And we have been healed by his bruises […] After the ordeal he has endured, he will see the light and be content’ (see Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

The resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our own future resurrection. It is of course difficult to imagine what this resurrected life will be like, but Saint Paul offers us some helpful images. He compares, for example, our present life and the life to come with the sowing of a seed and its growth into a plant. While the seed does not tell us what the future plant will look like, this image does suggest some sort of continuity between our present and future existence while pointing at the same time to the fact that our resurrected bodies will be much more glorious and beautiful that our present existence. Paul thinks of our future life as a change from bearing the likeness of the first man Adam, to bearing the likeness of Christ, the last Adam. The resurrection of Christ is the first fruits of a new creation. In this new creation we shall no longer be patterned according to the earthly man Adam, but to Christ the heavenly man, enjoying like him a new and glorious, incorruptible bodily life.