The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ
by
Father Walter Farrell and Father Mattin Healy
Based on the writings of "The Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas"
His Passion and Death
 The glory of Christ in His Body,
and the glory that is to come to all men at the end of the world are purchased with a
great price. Before the Body of Christ could be confirmed in the glory of His
sanctified soul, before men could have any chance to emulate His glory,
Christ had to win redemption
for mankind by His
Passion and His
death upon the Cross
of Calvary.
Christ did not suffer
and then die upon the Cross
because God was under any compulsion to
demand so great a recompense for the sins of
men. God
could have simply condoned men's sins and granted them
pardon when they
repented of their
sins. Nor was Christ
Himself under any compulsion to suffer
and die for the sins
of men. He offered Himself freely and voluntarily
as a sacrifice for men.
But Christ suffered
for men because this was the will of God. God
willed that His only-begotten Son
should become man to suffer
and die for the salvation
of men. This Divine
decision manifests both the justice and the mercy of God.
It manifests His justice, because it shows
that God has actually demanded satisfaction for the sins
of men against Him.
It manifests His mercy, because no one but a
God-man could
have offered a suitable satisfaction for the
sins of men.
Because He was God,
Christ could offer God
an infinite satisfaction for the infinite malice of sin.
Because He was man,
Christ could offer a
man's satisfaction for man's sin.
The Wisdom of God's
Plan in the Passion and death of Christ
is shown, too, by the other purposes which God
accomplished in this way. Christ suffered and died
to win God's pardon for the sins of men.
But His suffering
did more than this. In the first place,
since He was
both God and man, His suffering
was a staggering proof of God's love for men. Could God
do more for men than suffer
and die for them?
Secondly, in His
Passion and death
Christ gave to men
an example of the perfect virtue which will
lead men to heaven:
 Obedience to God's
will,
Humility,
Constancy in following God's
will,
Fortitude in the face of death,
A love of justice even unto death, and so on.
Thirdly, by His
suffering Christ
merited grace and glory for men, and so made it possible for men to attain their real happiness.
Fourthly, by suffering
and dying for all men,
Christ gave to men
a strong additional motive for avoiding sin.
If a father sold all his possessions in order to pay the foolish debts of his son, would
not the son have a strong reason for behaving prudently in the future? If the Son of God suffered
and died because of the sins of men,
to pay the debt of men's
sins, should not all men
have a good reason for avoiding sin in the future? Lastly,
the Passion and death
of Christ are a Divine
tribute to the dignity of man. Man
had destroyed himself
by falling victim to the devil in the garden of Paradise.
Through Christ, a man
conquers the devil and restores mankind to the friendship
of God. Men can
point to Christ with honest pride and say
that their Brother
Man has saved
them.
Passion Scenes - by DUCCIO di Buoninsegna, from
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena
In His Passion
and death Christ
endured extreme suffering. He suffered
at the hands of both men and women. A man
betrayed Him;
a woman betrayed
His Apostle Peter; the Sanhedrin
condemned Him;
His own people cried out for His Blood; Herod and Pilate
washed their hands of Him; Pilate
delivered Him over to scourging
and the crucifixion on the Cross; the soldiers and servants
mocked Him
and spat upon Him and beat Him; He
was abandoned by His Apostles
and friends; His reputation was destroyed by
the ignominy of His
trial and death
as a criminal; His
soul was sad
and weary at the prospect and the reality of
suffering and death;
His sensitive
nature flinched from suffering
and death; His
hands and feet
were pierced by nails; His brow
was crowned with thorns; His whole body
was torn with the lashes of the scourging. And because He
had a perfect human
nature, He felt this suffering all the more keenly.
It is true that the higher part of His
soul continued to enjoy the vision of God. But the lower part
of His soul,
His power to feel sensitive
joy or pain,
was inundated with the anguish of His torments.
Christ allowed His
human nature to experience the length and
the breadth and the depth of human suffering. Because He
suffered to atone for the sins of all men,
He allowed Himself
to endure the fullness of human pain. In Him
the words of the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled:
"There is no beauty in Him, nor comeliness: and we have
seen Him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of Him; despised and
the most abject of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity: and His look was
as it were hidden and despised. Whereupon we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our
infirmities and carried our sorrows; and we have thought Him as it were a leper, and as
one struck by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our iniquities; He was bruised for
our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His bruises we are healed"
(Isaiah 54:2-5).
The sublimity of Christ's love for men
is shown by the fact that He did not
have to suffer and die.
Because He was God,
He could have prevented His enemies
from doing Him any injury.
Because His soul
had perfect control of His
body, He
could have prevented the wounds from
achieving their normal effect. But, in obedience to the will
of His Father, He
submitted Himself to the violent hands of His
enemies. God
and Christ Himself, out of love for men,
delivered Christ to the hands of His torturers
and executioners. But it was these latter who scourged
Christ, crowned
Him with thorns,
nailed Him
to the Cross and so killed
Him. His
own people handed Him over
to the Romans to be put to death,
and the Romans crucified Him. In this way Christ
suffered both from
the Jews and from the pagans
of the world. Since He came to save not only the Jews but also
the rest of men, it was natural
that He should suffer
at the hands of both.
The guilt of those who brought about the death of Christ
varies with their knowledge of what they were doing. Least guilty
of all were the pagan soldiers who tortured and crucified
Christ. They
had no knowledge of the fact that Christ
was the Savior of mankind,
nor the fact that Christ was God, the Son of
God. More guilty
than they was Pilate who,
though he also was ignorant of the true identity of Christ,
nevertheless, out of cowardice, condemned an innocent
man to death.
Next in the mounting scale of guilt comes the multitude of simple people at Jerusalem
who were misled by their leaders. They had seen the wonderful
works of Christ and so might have believed in Him. But their leaders deceived them and made them
doubt Christ. Most
guilty of all were the arch
conspirators among the leaders of the people. They
knew that Christ had fulfilled in His Person and life the signs foretold by the prophets.
But they were unwilling to accept Christ as their
Savior. They
deliberately blinded their eyes to the
evident signs of His Divinity. God was ready to give them faith
in Christ, but, in the hardness
of their hearts,
they refused to accept it.
Because their ignorance of His true identity was deliberate,
it does not excuse their sin.
They committed the most
grievous of sins. They
delivered their Savior
and their God
to death at the hands
of pagans.
Christ suffered
and died on the Cross
of Calvary. As He
hung there, suspended between earth and sky, with His life's
blood draining away in agony,
His enemies
mocked Him. "If
thou be the Son of God," they
said, "come down from the Cross". As Saint
Paul has said, the crucified Christ is "unto the
Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness" (1Corinthians
1:23). Did God fail on the Cross? Was His life
among men a magnificent but futile gesture? Saint
Paul gives us the answer: "But unto them that are
called, both Jews and Greeks, the crucified Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of
God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men." (1Corinthians
1:24-25). On the Cross, Christ seems most helpless. But it is on the Cross that He
accomplished His purpose, the salvation of men.
As Christ hung on the Cross, He willingly
offered His human
life and the sufferings
and death of His
Body for the salvation of men. In the Plan
of God, Christ was the new Adam, the new Head
of the human race. Because He offered His life
willingly out of charity and
obedience to His
Father, His human will merited from God
the salvation of mankind.
Because He suffered
and died out of love
and obedience, Christ
gave God more than
was required to compensate for the sins of
the whole human race.
He satisfied or atoned
for men's sins.
He offered His
life to God to honor God and to appease Him
for the sins of men.
His Passion,
therefore, was a sacrifice most pleasing to God. The life which He
so willingly laid down for men was the price paid to God
for the sins of men
and the punishment due to those sins. By paying the price of men's
sins Christ
redeemed all men.
Christ did all this --- He merited salvation, He
atoned for sin, He sacrificed
Himself to God
for sin, He
redeemed men --- in obedience to the will
of God. His human nature was the instrument
of His Godhead, the instrument
which the Son of God used to save men.
Because it was the instrument
of His Godhead, Christ
accomplished what He had come into this
world to do.
Because Christ is God
as well as man, His
Passion delivered men
from sin and from the power
of the devil.
It freed
men from the penalty
of sin, death
and the loss of the vision
of God. His Passion reconciled
men to God
and reopened the gates of Heaven
to all mankind. His
Passion merited
for Himself the exaltation
of His own human
nature. Because He was put
to death unjustly,
God raised Him
from the dead. Because His
Body had suffered
the humiliation of
burial, He
ascended into Heaven. Because He had endured the mockery
of men, He
now sits at the right hand of the Father
in Heaven. Because He
had been delivered over to the power of men,
He has been made the judge
of all men in the world to come. In the Passion of Christ
the weakness of God is stronger than men. Through the human
death of Christ
the Divine life is restored
to men.
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Descent of Christ to Limbo
by ANDREA DA FIRENZE
from Cappella Spagnuolo, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
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Christ really died
on the Cross. His
human soul
was separated from His body.
But His Divine Personality remained united
to both His body
and His soul.
For this reason the dead body of Christ
was still infinitely precious. Because it was still united to the Person
of the Son of God, any indignity inflicted upon it
by the soldiers who lowered it from the Cross, any gesture of reverence
paid to it by His
Mother or the holy men and women who
reverently buried it, was of infinite value for the salvation
of men.
As soon as He died,
the soul of Christ
descended into Hell. The Hell of which we speak here is Limbo, the place in which the souls of the Just
were awaiting deliverance. He hastened to Limbo
to announce to the Just the reopening of the
gates of Heaven. Through His Passion,
He had made it possible for them to find glory
in the vision of God. He did not descend into
the Hell of the devils and the lost human
souls. There was nothing He could do for them.
By their own free decision, they had cut themselves
off from God forever. Only those united to Himself
in faith and charity
could obtain the benefits of His Passion.
His Resurrection
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Polyptych of the Resurrection
by TIZIANO Vecellio,
from Santi Nazaro e Celso, Brescia
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On the third day after His death
Christ rose again. His
soul was reunited with His
body and He
rose from the tomb glorious and immortal. He
waited three days to convince everyone that He had really died.
He rose from the grave to confirm our faith in His
Divinity. Because He has
risen, we can also hope to rise again at the
end of the world. Because He has risen from
the grave, the new
life of grace is given to our souls.
Because He was God,
He gave to His
body and soul
the power to unite with one another again.
By the power of God Christ, Who had died
on Calvary, rose again on the first Easter Sunday.
Christ rose again in His own human body.
His body
still bore the scars of His Passion.
He could have removed these scars, if He
had wished. But He chose to retain them. In this way He
could prove to men that it was really Himself Who had risen. Besides, He was to ascend into heaven
to plead with His Father for the salvation of men.
In heaven His scars
would be a perpetual reminder to the Father
of His suffering
for men. In Heaven,
too, the marks of His wounds
would be an everlasting trophy of His triumph
over the world, the devil
and sin. But though He
still bore the marks of His wounds, His
risen body was glorified.
It was immortal.
He could never die
again. The glory of His
soul, united to God
in the beatific
vision, flowed over into His
body and made it
shine with a Divine light. His body
was completely under the control of His soul.
After His resurrection He appeared to His Mother,
His Apostles and to His disciples. He walked with them, talked with them, ate and
drank with them. In this way He gave
them convincing signs of the reality of His Resurrection.
Through their testimony the truth of His Resurrection has been given to the world.
Those who believe in Him and in His resurrection can hope
to rise again also.
The resurrection of Christ is
the cause of the resurrection of all men. Only God
has the power to make men
rise again. But Christ is God. And God
intends to make the Resurrection of Christ
the efficient cause of the resurrection
of all men. At the end of time it will be
the risen Christ Who will make all men rise again. His
risen human nature will be the instrument by which His
Divine power will reunite the souls
of all men to their
bodies.
The resurrection of Christ is
also the model or pattern according to which the souls of the Just
shall rise on the last day. Christ will make
sinners rise, but to
their condemnation. Because they have no faith
in Him nor love
for Him, they
can have no part in His glory. But the Just will rise in the likeness of Christ. His
Body is now glorious
and immortal. The bodies
of those who had faith in Him, who loved Him
and kept His commandments, will be glorious and immortal,
too. The Resurrection of Christ is
both the pledge of the future resurrection
of men, and the model of the resurrection of the Just
who die in the grace of Christ.
 Forty days after His
Resurrection Christ ascended into Heaven.
He went to Heaven
to receive the glory which was due to Him. There He
pleads with His Father always for the souls of men.
In Heaven He sits at the right hand
of God. As God
He is equal to the Father
and to the Holy Spirit. As man, as the perfect
man, possessing the absolute
fullness of God's grace, and as the
glorious Head of the whole human race and of the angels,
He sits at the right hand
of His Father, that is, He has been given the power
to judge all men and Angels.
At the General Judgment it will be Christ Who
makes the final truth known --- the true character and the true
meaning of the actions of men and angels. At this judgment it is Christ Who will give the final decision. At His Word the damned
will go into Hell forever to satisfy the justice of God, and the good will enter forever into the bliss of Heaven to manifest the mercy of God.
The human race today needs a Savior. Men
are seeking salvation in ideas,
in fascism, in nazism,
in communism. Men
are seeking salvation in science,
in electronics, in atomic fission, in dreams
of flights to the moon or Mars. Men look for
the promise of strength in dictators or military geniuses
or financial wizards. But there is no salvation for man
except in Christ the Savior.
It is Christ Who has re-established order in
the world. Man introduced chaos into the world by disobedience
to God. Christ
has reintroduced the principle of obedience
to God. By His
obedience He has opened the floodgates of Heaven
to the world of men. Because He died
on the Cross out of love
and obedience, the living
waters of God's grace are ready to quicken the parched souls
of men. Because He
was humble, even unto death,
men can be raised up to the dignity of sons of God. Because He
loved both God and man, it is possible for men
to love God and one another.
But Christ saves no one against his will. He
can give salvation only to those who believe in Him,
hope in Him
and love Him. He
has merited grace
for all men. But men must freely accept this grace and use it
for their salvation.
We are all saved in Christ,
our Head and our Savior.
But only on condition that we freely unite our minds
and hearts with His.
Christ is not a dictator. He
does not bend men to His will with
guns and secret
police and concentration camps
and slave labor. He
is a loving Savior. He
compels no one to march with Him or for Him.
The Crucifixion - by GRÜNEWALD, Matthias - from
Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar
He hangs on a Cross between earth and sky, between men and God.
He has nothing to recommend Him but humility
and a great love. Yet His outstretched arms are big
enough to hold the world. The road to happiness lies
through His Cross. If any man will save
his life, he
must first lose it. He must deny himself and follow Christ.
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