Today the feast of exultation and joy shone on us, the Easter joy arrived bringing immense joy , because we are invited to the wedding of the risen Lamb and his wife, who is the mother Church. Therefore, dearest ones, let us rejoice in the depths of our soul, let us exult abroad in displays of joy, let us pay glory to God with words, so that it resonates in honor of Christ the Redeemer and his wife, joyful and worthy praise of him. Let us rejoice, I say, in the increase of our joy, let us rejoice in the fruit of our hope, let us give glory to God for the triumph of victory. And let us proclaim Christ victorious by saying to him with a heart overflowing with joy: You are the hope in our combat and the glory of our race for having defeated the adversaries ". Indeed: Christ, at birth, made us sharers in nature, while suffering, sharers in the benefit of grace, and, upon rising, sharers in the complement of glory. Precisely for this reason, the prophet David, because he wished to see fulfilled in his days the Easter joy and the immeasurable benefit of glory, exclaimed with inflamed desires with these words: Arise, Lord; save me. Words in which, in accordance with the most correct order, three things are indicated, namely: burning desire for the resurrection of the Lord, perfect liberation of the captive man and just extermination of the diabolical power. And not without reason, because on a day like today our Lord Jesus resurrected by his own virtue, rescued the captive man from the domain of the devil and submerged the devil and his army in the depths of the infernal abyss. According to this, in the first place, the ardent desire for the Lord's resurrection is indicated, and this when it is said: Arise, Lord; that is, rise from the dead. Secondly, the perfect liberation of the captive man, and this when it is added: Save me and, lastly, thirdly, the just extermination of the diabolical power, and this when added: You wound those who oppose me without cause. And it is to be noted that it is said without cause to imply that, although the man was justly detained, nevertheless, the devil was unjustly holding him captive; whereby it must be concluded that the extermination of his power was just.
1. Turning now to the subject, you must say that the first thing that is offered for our consideration is the burning desire for the Lord's resurrection, in accordance with what the prophet says: Arise, Lord. And really such a resurrection deserved not only to be desired with medullarly cordial love, but also to be celebrated with a full mouth with sweet accents like honey because of three privileges that the risen Christ had, which are convenient for us to the highest degree. As a first privilege, the primacy of novelty not used before (resurrection by itself); as a second privilege, the virtuality of one's own power and, as a third privilege, the example in order to our resurrection or in order to the need we have for the resurrection.
Coming to the first, it must be said that Christ had primacy over unused novelty. The reason is because Christ, having deposed the miserable old age of death, rose from the dead, inaugurating the inestimable joy of new life, since the Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, was the firstborn among mortals, who, after having subdued the empire of death, was crowned with the diadem of the new incorruption. And, to tell the truth, who was to be the first to overcome the sadness enclosed in inveterate death and to initiate the joy that comes from our perpetual life, if not the one whose key opens the door to eternity? He is, in fact, the one who, as having authority, could command the angels when he said: Raise up, O princes!, your gates; and you, oh doors!, rise up. And it is that the fruit of my blood is the reparation of universal harmony and the remission of judicial punishment. In view of which, what I now want is that, removed from the entrance of paradise the flaming sword, the door of heaven be opened, as I, the Lord of hosts, having defeated the devil, conquered, at a price of my blood, the kingdom of heaven. From where we have that Christ is, not only as God, but also as man, the King of glory. And, without a doubt, this kind of novelty was referred to by Saint Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, c15: Christ, says the Apostle, rose from the dead as the first fruits of the dead. For as through one man came death, so through another man came the resurrection of the dead. And as all die in Adam, so also all will revive in Christ. And from there it is that the Apostle, by virtue of being discreet and prudent, when pointing out the new qualities that correspond as first fruits to the risen Christ, offers two things for our consideration: first, in effect, so that the consolation is not diluted in joy, it puts before our eyes the misery of death, matter of desolation; and this when it is said: through a man came death; and next, so that desolation is not absorbed in sadness, the Apostle proposes the medicine of the resurrection, matter of consolation; and this when it is added: So also by a man, that is, by Christ, came the resurrection of the dead. Consequently, his intention was to mitigate the one with the other, that is, misery with medicine, or desolation with consolation; and since death, although it has as occasion the fraudulence of the enemy, it nevertheless recognizes, as origin or cause, the arrogance of the mind and, as consummation, the concupiscence of the flesh; That is why the Apostle says: Just as in Adam, due to the demerit of his prevarication, they all die . And because the medicine of death comes from divine mercy in response to the merits of the Lord's passion, that is why it is added: In the same way all will revive in Christ through the merits of his passion. - Where we have that the first and immediate cause of death is not God, since God is being supreme and indeficient, and death is the maximum defect among all penal miseries, but the will of man who deviates from righteousness and justice. perpetual rule of justice, according to that of Wisdom, c.1: God did not make death nor rejoice in the extermination of those who die, He created, on the contrary, all things to endure, and healthy are all that are born in the world; neither is there a principle of death in them nor is there an infernal kingdom on earth. Because justice is prefect and immortal, and injustice has death as its reward.
As for the second, Christ, by rising, showed how virtuous his own power is. It was not necessary for him, in fact, although he saw himself constituted as the obsequious center of the celestial army, to resort neither to devout prayer nor to the angelic ministry; and to this, without a doubt, what the psalm refers to: because of the misery of the helpless and the groaning of the poor, I will resurrect right now, says the Lord. It is known that poor and helpless were the holy fathers held as in a very dark prison in limbo, who were, in truth, powerless to free themselves; and for this reason, reduced to a miserable and pitiable state, they ardently desired to see the benefit of the resurrection accelerated. The Lord heard such vehement desires, in meaning of which we have that the Lord says: I will resurrect right now;
But perhaps some physical philosopher will say: How can it be that an animal body, corruptible and composed of contrary elements, becomes incorruptible and perpetually durable? To which the theologian replies: If you want your argument to be universally valid, in all matters, you must come up against many inconveniences or absurd nonsense.
So it is, indeed. The first nonsense is that you pretend that God does not surpass nature in power, nor is the craftsman superior to his work; and how absurd it is to say this, there is no one who can doubt it. The reason is because the whole argument of the physicist boils down to this: It is impossible according to nature; then it is absolutely impossible. And it is manifest that such a consequence cannot be inferred in any way. The second nonsense or inconvenience is that you claim that, on the one hand, nature contains hidden things, which we also admit, since many, in truth, they are latent, as is to be seen in the lodestone that is attracted to iron, in the salamander that is preserved in fire, and in other similar things and in what do you want, on the other hand, that God has only operations accessible to your eyes; and it is true that saying this constitutes maximum nonsense, since, according to Ecclesiasticus' sentence, c.43: We have seen little of his works, and many greater things than these are hidden. The third drawback is that you claim that God has promised obedience to nature; which, if it were true, we would have to admit that God neither gave sight to the blind, nor freshness to lepers, nor life to the dead.
And, lastly, the fourth inconvenience is that you proceed on the basis of presuppositions that are not granted, as when you affirm that the body is corruptible and is composed of contrary elements, since the soul preserves it in perpetual and immortal life implies, not and corruptible animality, but spirituality, elevation and disposition, above the variety of contrary elements, by virtue of the deiform habit of glory. Such feeling can be inferred from the words of Saint Augustine in his letter to Consencio, where he expresses himself as follows: human frailty measures the divine things never experienced and is arrogant, boasting of acuteness when he says: if there is flesh, there is blood; if there is blood there are also the other humors; and if there are humors there is corruption” In this way I could say: If there is a flame, it burns; if it burns, it burns; and if he burns, then he burnt the two young men in the furnace of fire. However; if you believe that such an event was a miracle, why do you doubt wonderful things? And if you don't believe them, I take it for certain that your blindness is greater than that of the Jews. Therefore, it must be said that the divine power can remove from nature the qualities that it wants, leaving others, and, for the same reason, strengthen, deposed the corruptibility, the mortal members keeping them in force, so that the form is true. corporal, but without any stain; the movement be real, but without fatigue; the power to eat be true, but without the need to suffer from hunger".
And, finally, regarding the third, it must be said that the resurrection of Christ should be desired as an example of our resurrection or of the demand or necessity that our resurrection demands. Christ, in fact, being the head and exemplary cause of our resurrection, had to resurrect to communicate to those of us who are his members the certainty about it, since it is a monstrous thing to resurrect the head without the members. Whereby, against those who denied the resurrection, the Apostle argued, not without much reason and effectiveness, in the first letter to the Corinthians, c.15, with these words: if the dead do not rise, neither did Christ rise. Indeed: since it is necessary for Christ to be resurrected, since what happened in fact has not happened is not possible at present, the resurrection of the dead follows by necessity. To which cause the Apostle goes on to say: Because what is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and what is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. In context with which, to insert in the hearts of the faithful, removing doubts, mistrust and bitterness of despair, the Apostle writes in the first letter to the Thessalonians, c.4: Well, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so too God will take with him those who have fallen asleep in Him, and here we conclude that those of us who have firm hope, like blessed Job, should not be sad without consolation at the death of a good Christian like the others who lack hope.
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