Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum, alleluja.
Posuisti super me manum tuam, alleluja.
Mirabilis facta est scientia tua, alleluja, alleluja.

Intr. ad Missam in die Paschatis

Resurrexi, we have sung in the solemn Introit of this most holy day. It is the voice of the Incarnate Word who addresses the Father: I have risen and am with you again; you have placed your hand upon me, your wisdom is worthy of admiration. They are verses from Psalm 138 of the Vulgate, which act as a counterpoint to the cry of Golgotha, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? A cry launched not as a voice of desperation, but as an antiphon of the Perfect Sacrifice that the High Priest celebrates on the Cross by offering Himself as an immaculate Victim. We hear in them the reference to the Introit of Christmas Night: Dominus dixit ad me: filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te (Psalm 2:7) – The Lord said to me: you are my son, today I have begotten you. For this reason, Easter Day is truly dies quam fecit Dominus, the day that the Holy Trinity has prepared since the foundation of the world in view of the Incarnation and Redemption. In the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 10:5-10), Saint Paul takes up Psalm 39 and interprets it in its Christological meaning: Then I said: Behold, I come to do your will, O God – the will of the Father, who asks his Only-Begotten Son to offer Himself for us, pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (Phil 2:8). Beholding the obedience of the Son, the Father exalted Him and gave Him a name that is above every name, so that every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. The Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead is the tribute of glory to Him who sits at the right hand of the Father, Who makes His enemies His footstool (Psalm 109:1).

Ipse verus est Agnus, qui abstuilit peccata mundi – I will soon intone in the Preface – qui mortem nostram moriendo destruxit, et vitam resurgendo reparavit. He is the Lamb who takes charge of our sins, the One who by dying destroyed death, and by rising again restored life. A great combat took place on Calvary: Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando: dux vitæ, mortuus, regnat vivus. The Lord of life, who was dead, reigns alive. Agnus redemit oves, the lamb has redeemed the sheep, the innocent Christ has reconciled sinners to the Father. For this reason, in the silence of Holy Saturday, the deacon bursts into the triple exclamation of the Exsultet: O inæstimabilis dilectio caritatis: ut servum redimeres, Filium tradidisti! O certi necessarium Adæ peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est! O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem! O happy fault, which deserved to have such a Redeemer! O love of infinite charity: to redeem the servant, you delivered up your Son! O certainly necessary sin of Adam, cancelled by the death of Christ! O blessed fault, which merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!

When the Holy Liturgy has us sing Surrexit Dominus vere, we proclaim the Resurrection of Christ not as an object of Faith, but as a historical reality that gives body and substance to Divine Revelation. He is risen indeed, as He said. He is risen despite the soldiers placed to guard the Sepulcher. He is risen and has appeared to His Mother, to Mary Magdalene, to the Apostles. He left the Shroud as irrefutable scientific proof of His divine power. Surrexit Dominus vere. Because everything that concerns God is true, just, good, beautiful and free; while what comes from Satan is false, unjust, bad, ugly and an object of commerce. God gives us His Son to restore to us the destiny of Blessed Eternity that He had freely granted us at the beginning. Satan uses fraud to sell us the deception of an ephemeral present of fleeting pleasures, at the price of our soul that we condemn to damnation. By the Cross this mercantile relationship is overturned, and the rational folly of Divine Charity forcefully reasserts itself, because where sin has abounded, grace has abounded all the more (Rom 5:20).

The world does not accept the glory of the Resurrection as a historical fact even before it is a miracle, for two reasons. The first is that only God can resurrect the dead: the Resurrection is therefore an extraordinary event of incontestably divine origin that makes not only credible, but credenda – worthy of being believed – the Christian Revelation and the Holy Church that is its guardian. The second is that the Resurrection is the reward for the Passion and Death, faced in obedience to the Will of the Father in order to restore the Divine κόσμος shattered by sin. Accepting the Resurrection therefore means accepting the need for an Atonement, a Redemption for us, children of wrath subjected to Satan. It means recognizing that the Son of God gave his life for us, that the Creator paid for the creature, that the Master offered himself for the servant. Only those who belong to God can perceive the abyss of infinite Charity that moves the Holy Trinity to save us; while those who do not belong to God rebel not only against the Justice of the punishment that they deserve for having broken divine orders, but even more against the Mercy of the Redemption that they could not even remotely hope for, obtained by the Incarnation of God and through His Passion and Death.

Accepting the Resurrection therefore means recognizing ourselves as standing in need of forgiveness for a sin, the gravity of which is infinite because of the infinite offense against the Divine Majesty. Accepting the Resurrection means recognizing a superior order – so superior as to be necessarily supernatural – that does not deny necessary Divine Justice, but also affirms the gratuitousness of superabundant Divine Mercy, moved by that same Love that proceeds from the Father and the Son. It means recognizing ourselves in our nothingness before the All of God, allowing ourselves to be saved not by our merits, but by His Infinite Goodness. It means being humble in welcoming with grateful amazement the Magnificence of the Lord, who is generous beyond all imagining: a Lord who invites us to the banquet even though we are crippled, lame, and beggars, who also gives us the wedding garment of Grace after we have soiled the one He had given us in justitia et sanctitate veritatis.

There is something absurd and wretched in wanting to remove ourselves from needing Redemption, and this trait of suicidal madness is what tears so many souls from eternal bliss. The horror of sin does not consist only in its being the cause of Our Lord’s suffering, but because it blinds our spiritual sight, making it incapable of being overwhelmed by Divine Mercy. Pride, cursed pride. While God gives us material and spiritual life to make us participants in His glory, Satan gives us death by leading us to violate the Commandments and to refuse the Salvation that God offers us in the Sacrifice of Christ. We sin through pride, and through pride we are induced to remain in enmity with God.

Let us worthily celebrate Holy Easter, dear brethren. Let us celebrate it with the serene adherence of intellect and will to the ineffable plans of the Lord, aware that it is precisely in the inæstimabilis dilectio caritatis that the entire economy of Salvation is centered; a Salvation that is thwarted not so much and not only by sin, but also and above all by pride that makes that sin inexpiable because it removes it from the impetuous torrent of Infinite Graces that flows from the Pierced Side of Christ.

Let us celebrate Holy Easter in humility, that is, by putting all things back in their place, in their original hierarchy. And in that metaphysical order that is already perfect in itself may we learn to perceive with humility the gratuitousness of the Redemption, the need to correspond to it with all our being, the indispensability of preaching Christ – and Christ crucified – whom the Father glorified after the ignominy of Golgotha by resurrecting Him from the dead.

The world hates and rebels against the Universal Lordship of Christ, not because it does not want to recognize and serve a sovereign – Non habemus regem, nisi Cæsarem, cried the deicide crowd standing outside the Praetorium – but because He has put on the Royal Crown on the Throne of the Cross, defeating once and for all the kingdom of darkness of sin and death. Let us make our own the words of the Apostle that we sang on Holy Thursday: Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in quo est salus, vita et resurrectio nostra, per quem salvati et liberati sumus (Gal 6:14). May she who remained at the foot of the Cross, the Regina Crucis, be at our side, in this hour of victory and triumph, as Our Mother and Our Lady. And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

April 20, MMXXV
Dominica Resurrectionis