The Resurrected Christ: Weekly Summary

Sunday
Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time. Jesus willingly died—and Christ arose—yes, still Jesus, but now including and revealing everything else in its full purpose and glory.
—Richard Rohr

Monday
I want to enlarge your view of resurrection from a one-time miracle in the life of Jesus that asks for assent and belief, to a pattern of creation that has always been true, and that invites us to much more than belief in a miracle.
—Richard Rohr

Tuesday
Our joy is not confined to ourselves but radiates out to all. Just as Jesus intended to enter into us, that his joy might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11), so neither can we contain our joy: our peace and happiness envelop all those around us.
—Beatrice Bruteau

Wednesday
Resurrection is the announcement that life cannot ultimately be conquered by death, that there is strength added when the labors increase, that multiplied peace matches multiplied trials, that life is bottomed by the glad surprise.  
—Howard Thurman

Thursday
Who does not seek Resurrection? Who does not seek a full and fuller life? Did Jesus not promise, “I have come that you may have life, life in abundance” (John 10:10)?
—Matthew Fox

Friday
A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail us, always demand more of us, and give us no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.
—Richard Rohr

Imagining Our Cosmic Origin

Catholic writer Judy Cannato (1949–2011) describes the pattern of death-to-new-life which began with the Big Bang and invites us to consider our cosmic origin:

It seems that the giving over of life on behalf of ever-expanding creativity is integral to life itself. The massive star that was mother to our Sun met with fiery death, her form completely annihilated by the explosive force of the blast. And yet she exists in each of us, in the cells of our bodies that are composed [of] her dust. Consciously or not, we carry her within us as surely as we carry the DNA of our biological parents. We are the children for whom she sacrificed all.…

Imagine that you are a witness to the supernova that gave birth to our Sun. See the giant burning star grow redder and redder and then die as it explodes into billions of pieces, rippling space and spewing cosmic debris in all directions. Acknowledge the loss that this death has brought about.… Envision the debris from the supernova interact with a great cloud of hydrogen, and then see bits and pieces pulled together by gravity and take the shape of a new star. Watch as the Sun cools and begins a regular rotation that holds planets in orbit.… Identify the planets that you know: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.… Bring your attention back to Earth. See how her outer crust hardens, the seas gather, and life begins to emerge.… Become aware of how closely connected our life is to the Sun.… What new perceptions about life and death are emerging in you? What is it you want to say to the Creator?

What are the “supernova experiences” of your own life? Where have you encountered the life-death-life-death movement that is a painful yet necessary part of the universe?…

Sit quietly for a moment. What does the Spirit want you to see? How do you respond?

Reference:

Judy Cannato, Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2006), 119–120, 124–125.

Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Jenna Keiper, Photo of a beloved artpiece belonging to Richard Rohr (Artist Unknown.) McEl Chevrier, Untitled. CAC Staff, Untitled. Used with permission. Click here to enlarge image.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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Seeing and Recognizing Are Not the Same

The apostle Paul teaches that the resurrection confirms what the incarnation anticipates—Christ is another name for every thing. Father Richard writes:

The core message of the incarnation of God in Jesus is that the Divine Presence is here, in us and in all of creation, and not only “over there” in some far-off realm. The early Christians came to call this seemingly new and available Presence “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

Read 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, where Paul describes how Christ appeared a number of times to his apostles and followers after Jesus’ death. The four Gospels do the same thing, describing how the Risen Christ transcended doors, walls, spaces, water, air, and times, eating food, and sometimes even bilocating, but always interacting with matter. While all of these accounts ascribe a kind of physical presence to Christ, it always seems to be a different kind of embodiment. Or, as Mark says right at the end of his Gospel, “he showed himself but under another form” (16:12). This is a new kind of presence, a new kind of embodiment, and a new kind of godliness.

This, I think, is why the people who witnessed these apparitions of Christ seemed to finally recognize him, but not usually immediately. Seeing and recognizing are not the same thing. And isn’t this how it happens in our own lives? First we see a candle flame, then a moment later it “blazes” for us when we allow it to hold a personal meaning or message. We see a homeless person, and the moment we allow our heart space to open toward them, they become human, dear, or even Christ. Every resurrection story seems to strongly affirm an ambiguous—yet certain—presence in very ordinary settings, like walking on the road to Emmaus with a stranger, roasting fish on the beach, or one who appeared like a gardener to the Magdalene. [1] These moments from Scripture set a stage of expectation and desire that God’s presence can be seen in the ordinary and the material, and we do not have to wait for supernatural apparitions. We Catholics call this a sacramental theology, where the visible and tactile are the primary doorway to the invisible. This is why each of the formal Sacraments of the church insists on a material element like water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands, or the absolute physicality of marriage itself.

Christ is the light that allows people to see things in their fullness. The precise and intended effect of such a light is to see Christ everywhere else. In fact, that is my only definition of a true Christian. A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail us, always demand more of us, and give us no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.

References:

[1] See resurrection accounts in Luke 24:13–35, John 21:1–14, and John 20:14–18.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2021), 29–30, 33.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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Story from Our Community:

The church I grew up in was like a dying restaurant—no one wanted to eat our food. It didn’t taste good! Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ is full of genuinely good news. My reaction has been a lot of tears—both of relief and gratitude. Hiking through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains listening to the audiobook, I am leaving so many hurtful, abusive ideas of God behind me. I knew God was bigger than any church, but now I actually feel it. I am seeing Christ in the wrist of a tree branch, the face of a fellow hiker, a dog running down the path. Now the poet’s words actually make sense! “For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.” Thank you! —Meghan D.

Be Resurrection

Matthew Fox is one of the primary contemporary theologians to articulate a renewed vision of the universal or cosmic Christ. Here, he focuses on the Resurrection’s cosmic implications:

Who does not seek Resurrection? Who does not seek a full and fuller life? Did Jesus not promise, “I have come that you may have life, life in abundance” (John 10:10)? How am I Resurrection … [and] Life for others?

To be Resurrection for another I need to be Resurrection for myself. That means I cannot dwell in [despair] and death and anger and oppression and submission and resentment and pain forever. I need to wake up, get up, rise up, put on life even when days are dark and my soul is down and shadows surround me everywhere…. I have to listen to the voice that says:

“Be resurrection.”… “Be born again. And again. And again. Rise up and be counted. Rise up and imbibe the good news deeply—that death does not conquer, that life, not death, has the last word….”

Fox insists that resurrection carries both grace and responsibility:

Resurrection is a commitment to hope and being reborn. It is a commitment to creativity, to the Spirit who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Resurrection is the Spirit’s work. It is the life of the Spirit.

And what about Life? How am I Life? How living and alive am I? How much in love with life am I? Can anyone or any event separate me from my love of life? Paul the mystic asks (and then answers), “Who shall separate us from the love of God? Neither death nor life, height nor depth, neither present nor future” (Romans 8:35, 38). Is my curiosity alive? My gratitude? My mind? My imagination? My laughter and sense of humor? My creativity? My powers of generosity and compassion? My powers for continually generating and regenerating life?

Many mystics … say, “God is life.” Thus to say, “I am fully alive and fully in love with life” means that I am feeling fully the God presence in me—I am in love with God who is Life; the living God. And to say “I am the Life” is to say “I am God,” or at least a part of God, a son or daughter of God, an expression, an offspring, a manifestation, an incarnation of God. Another Christ.

How are we doing? Are we growing in God-like-ness? In God action? In works of justice and compassion and healing and celebrating? To celebrate life is to celebrate God, to thank God for life, to worship. How are we doing in expressing the “sheer joy” of God (Aquinas) [1] as well as the justice of God?

Yes, I am, yes, we are, the Resurrection and the Life. We bring aliveness and rebirth and plenty of hope into the world, however [distressing] the news becomes. That is what it means to believe in Easter Sunday and the Resurrection. We become Resurrection and the Life. Christ rises anew.

References:

[1] Thomas Aquinas, 1 Sentences, 2.1.4.

Matthew Fox and Marc Andrus, Stations of the Cosmic Christ (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 2016), 138–139.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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Watchful for Resurrections

Author Judy Cannato (1949–2011) believed we experience Christ’s resurrection through ongoing growth and transformation:

[Jesus] engaged death with every bit of consciousness and freedom that were his, and what we all discovered as a result is that death—while inevitable, while altering our dreams and causing us to let go of everything—does not have the final word. There is always—always—resurrection. And what is resurrection for us, in the context of the new universe story? It is a transformation in consciousness, an experience of transcendence in which we live out of the connectedness that is our truth. As we continue to evolve in consciousness, continue to emerge as more and more capable lovers, we share in the resurrection of Christ. We not only walk in the Light, we become light for others. Even little resurrections that come after choosing to die to fear and egocentricity release the Spirit. When we engage in a lifetime of death and resurrections as Jesus did, we become ever more empowered to do the work God asks us to do.

Life and death are a single mystery. That is what the Paschal Mystery teaches us. Death is inevitable—but so is resurrection. We can be sure that dyings will intrude upon our lives, and we may have some choice about how we can respond to their coming. We can be awake and watchful for the resurrections as well, for the creative ways that new life streams into our lives even in the midst of death. Like supernova explosions that shatter every recognizable fragment of life [and scatter elements for new stars], we are capable of transcendence, capable of never allowing death to have the final say. [1]

Theologian and mystic Howard Thurman (1899–1981) poetically described the surprise of resurrection and renewal:

It is ever a new thing, a glad surprise, the stirring of life at the end of winter. One day there seems to be no sign of life and then almost overnight, swelling buds, delicate blooms, blades of grass, bugs, insects—an entire world of newness everywhere. It is the glad surprise at the end of winter. Often the same experience comes at the end of a long tunnel of tragedy and tribulation. It is as if a person stumbling in the darkness, having lost their way, finds that the spot at which they fall is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise. This is what Easter means in the experience of the [human] race. This is the resurrection! It is the announcement that life cannot ultimately be conquered by death, … that there is strength added when the labors increase, that multiplied peace matches multiplied trials, that life is bottomed by the glad surprise. Take courage, therefore:

When we have exhausted our store of endurance, 
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done, 
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, 
Our Father’s full giving is only begun. [2]

References: 

[1] Judy Cannato, Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2006), 122. 

[2] Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2022), 77–78. Note: minor edits made for inclusive language.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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Story from Our Community:

I’ve been an artist and art teacher for over 30 years. A few years ago I was commissioned to paint the words from Wendell Berry’s [poem] “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” on a tall circular column in a downtown restaurant.… I had never read the manifesto before this project, so each day, as I painted the words in a slow rhythm to create each calligraphic letter, I was slowly caught up in his message. On Easter morning, I was finally finishing the manifesto, laying on the floor, looking up at my work, when these two words brought me to the end: PRACTICE RESURRECTION. Easter—resurrection—my painting lesson. —Mary M.

A New Energy and Joy

Contemplative theologian Beatrice Bruteau (1930–2014) describes the profound effect that our participation in the eternal life of God can have on us:

Now that we know that our “roots” are “immortal” … we are reconciled to taking up again the work of the world. We come again into everyday life. But the transformation is still going on, both in ourselves and in the world that we touch. It has begun in earnest and is proceeding. What is different is that we are no longer concerned to gain eternal life for ourselves. We have that, we know it, we are sure of it. And because of that confidence, “faith,” we turn our attention and concern to manifesting the divine life in the forms of cosmic reality. We are looking now from a point of view that is rooted in our sense of our own reality in God. It makes everything look quite new to us, and our new ability to offer love-and-meaning energy to our world helps it to become “new” (Romans 6:4; Revelation 21:5).

For Bruteau, resurrection starts in our lives now and transforms our engagement with the world:

Coming back to our small private selves in very ordinary daily life, we also incarnate the Wondrous Being. One of the most striking things that happens to us in our resurrection of the body is that tiny, trivial things seem beautiful and marvelous—which, indeed, they are, as we recognize when we take time to study them carefully. Such a humble and common thing as water is almost miraculous in its varied properties, so essential to our survival…. What artistry and orderly connections we find all about us, how astonishing the complex world is.

When we take a little time to remember to look, to marvel, we find that there are sources of joy, of esthetic delight, of quiet happiness on every hand….

Our joy is not confined to ourselves but radiates out to all. Just as Jesus intended to enter into us, that his joy might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11), so neither can we contain our joy: our peace and happiness envelop all those around us. When we interact with people—or circumstances—we do not feel drained of energy, as we did when we were still obliged to protect and defend our ego-self. Perceiving creative action and interaction as reality itself, we feel ourselves fully living, full of the richness of God’s life, the interior fountain that never fails.

The divine life now becomes natural for us, no longer something to be compared to an alternative. We are really “saved” when we no longer think of ourselves as “saved,” because there is no alternative. This is when profound incarnation takes places. The reality of God is intensely perceived as present in everything.… The kingdom is hidden right here, even in the passions and illusions of our superficial consciousness. When we are shaken awake, we see it.

Reference:

Beatrice Bruteau, The Easter Mysteries (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 173, 182, 183.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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The Resurrection of All Things

Father Richard invites us to expand our understanding of resurrection:

I want to enlarge your view of resurrection from a one-time miracle in the life of Jesus that asks for assent and belief, to a pattern of creation that has always been true, and that invites us to much more than belief in a miracle. It must be more than the private victory of one man to prove that he is God.

Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything. We might just as well use non-religious terms like “springtime,” “regeneration,” “healing,” “forgiveness,” “life cycles,” “darkness,” and “light.” If incarnation is real, and Spirit has inhabited matter from the beginning, then resurrection in multitudinous forms is to be fully expected.

Richard explains:

The Christ Mystery anoints all physical matter with eternal purpose from the very beginning. We should not be surprised that the word we translate from the Greek as Christ comes from the Hebrew word mashiach, which means “the anointed one,” or Messiah. Jesus the Christ reveals that all is anointed!

If the universe is anointed or “Christened” from its very beginning, then of course it can never die forever.

Resurrection is just incarnation taken to its logical conclusion.

If God inhabits matter, then we can naturally believe in the “resurrection” of the body.

Most simply said, nothing truly good can die! (Trusting that is probably our real act of faith!)

Resurrection is presented by Paul as the general principle of all reality (see 1 Corinthians 15:13). He does not argue from a one-time anomaly and then ask us to believe in this Jesus “miracle.” Instead, Paul names the cosmic pattern, and then says in many places that the “Spirit carried in our hearts” is the icon, the guarantee, the pledge, and the promise, or even the “down payment” of that universal message (see 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; Ephesians 1:14).

One reason we can trust Jesus’ resurrection is that we can already see resurrection happening everywhere else. Nothing is the same forever, states modern science. Geologists with good evidence can prove that no landscape is permanent over millennia. Water, fog, steam, and ice are all the same thing, but at different stages and temperatures. “Resurrection” is another word for change, but particularly positive change—which we tend to see only in the long run. In the short run, it often just looks like death. The Preface to the Catholic funeral liturgy says, “Life is not ended, it is merely changed.” Science is now giving us a very helpful language for what religion rightly intuited and imaged, albeit in mythological language. Remember, myth does not mean “not true,” which is the common misunderstanding; it actually refers to things that are always true!

Jesus’ first incarnate life, his passing over into death, and his resurrection into the ongoing Christ life is the archetypal model for the entire pattern of creation. He is the microcosm for the whole cosmos, or the map of the whole journey.

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2021), 169, 99, 20, 170–171.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

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Story from Our Community:

I recently lost my 60-year-old son to cancer. One of the greatest memories I have is that we both discovered the Universal Christ in his last years. A month before he died, he wrote: “Totally immersed in the Universal Christ. I have never felt God’s presence so overwhelmingly and so real.” —Pete J.

Christ Is Risen

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

As we celebrate Easter, the Daily Meditations explore Father Richard’s teachings on the Universal Christ, which reconnect Christ to his cosmic origin.

Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing this Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.

Many people don’t realize that the apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16–17).

Jesus’ historical transformation (“resurrected flesh”) and our understanding of the Spirit he gives us (see John 16:7–15; Acts 1:8) allow us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and guarantee of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; Ephesians 1:13–14).

In the historical Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete, and personal referent. God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could “hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love.

But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface in Jesus that we forgot about the Eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the First Incarnation. Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) noticed that the Christ was clearly older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; and Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.

Jesus willingly died—and Christ arose—yes, still Jesus, but now including and revealing everything else in its full purpose and glory. (Read Colossians 1:15–20, so you know this is not just my idea.)

When we believe in Jesus Christ, we’re believing in something much bigger than the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and all of creation since the beginning of time (see Romans 1:20).

References:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Cosmic Christ (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2009). Available as CD and MP3 download.

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 222, 210.

On retreat, the CAC staff used watercolors to connect to our collective grief. This is one of the watercolor paintings that came from that exercise.

The Resurrected Christ: Weekly Summary

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Seeing and Recognizing Are Not the Same

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Be Resurrection

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Watchful for Resurrections

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A New Energy and Joy

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The Resurrection of All Things

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Christ Is Risen

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The Resurrected Christ: Weekly Summary

Seeing and Recognizing Are Not the Same

Be Resurrection

Watchful for Resurrections

A New Energy and Joy

The Resurrection of All Things

Christ Is Risen

Category Archive

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