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TERESA COLLEGE
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COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

Christ Is Risen and Will Come Again (Part 2)

Introduction
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the primordial Christian proclamation. The
early Christian kerygma stands or falls with the resurrection and exaltation of the
crucified Jesus as LORD (cf. CCC 638). Even today, when we read the Gospel
accounts of Christ raised from the dead, we experience the incredible joy and
excitement of that unique, worldshaking event. “The Lord has been raised! It is true!
He has appeared to Simon” (Lk 24:34).
This chapter presents the Resurrection and Ascension, the climax of our Lord’s
Paschal Mystery, together with the creedal truth of Christ’s Second Coming at the
Parousia.

Student Learning Objectives (SLO)

Content

If Christ was not raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. . .
If our hopes in Christ are limited to this life only, we are the most pitiable
people.
(1 Cor 15:17,19)

II. NEW TESTAMENT WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION

633. The New Testament gives witness to Christ’s Resurrection in three basic ways.
First, the Kerygma or early preaching of the Gospel, proclaimed the central
importance of Christ’s Resurrection. This was true for both the commission and
authority of the apostles, and for grounding the Christian Faith itself. Second, Jesus’
Presence, both in the Risen Christ’s appearances, and then through the teaching,
moral exhortation, and worship of the Apostolic Church, witnesses to his

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Resurrection. The appearances of the Risen Christ illumine how he relates to us
through his witnesses, and the essential need for faith.

634. And finally, the Resurrection is proclaimed as the Christians’ future. It indicates
how God saves, and illustrates this by the empty tomb. The empty tomb provides
invaluable insight into our future by showing how God actually saves us bodily in
Christ. We shall briefly investigate each of these three ways of witnessing to Christ’s
Resurrection.

A. The Resurrection as Kerygma

635. The early preaching contrasts Jesus’ death for sin with his Resurrection by God,
and connects them with his appearances to his disciples and fulfilling Scripture.
“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; . . . he was buried; . . . he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures; . . . he appeared to
Cephas, then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:3b-5). And again: “We believe in the one who
raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, Jesus who was handed over to death for our
transgressions and was raised for our justification” (Rom 4:24-25).

636. In key texts, Jesus’ Resurrection is linked with the apostolic commission: “Paul,
an apostle not from human beings nor through a human being, but through Jesus
Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead” (Gal 1:1). Matthew has the
Risen Christ commissioning his disciples for their apostolic mission. “Full authority
has been given to me both in heaven and on earth; go, therefore, and make disciples
of all the nations” (Mt 28:18-l9). These texts show how Jesus’ Resurrection directly
affected the first apostolic mission, creating the daily life and practice of the first
Christian communities.

637. But the Resurrection kerygma is perhaps most important for grounding the
Christian Faith. For the Risen Christ not only crowns God’s Self-revelation in history.
He also illumines all of creation as its cosmic Lord, in whom “everything in heaven
and on earth was created . . . all were created through him and for him” (Col 1:16).
This is the basis for the genuine universality of Christian Faith. Through Christ’s
Resurrection, a real transformation of creation was effected by God.

638. We see some indication of this in Christian moral praxis and spirituality. Both rest
firmly on the Risen Christ’s actual presence in the world. Without the Resurrection,
Christians might simply relate to the historical Jesus as one religious leader among
many. Or they might relate to the Risen Lord like the transcendent God, leaving
behind the historical “Jesus story.” But the mystery of the Risen Christ unites
inseparably the exalted Lord with the crucified “Man-for-others” in a way that makes
the earthly life of Jesus eternally valid and operative in our history today.

639. One particular phrase in the Easter kerygma is specially significant: “on the third
day” (1 Cor 15:4; Acts 10:40). Throughout the Old Testament the “third day” signified
a special point in salvation history, not merely numerical time. Moses told the people:

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“be ready on the third day; for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount
Sinai” (Ex 19:11). Hosea prophesied: “He will revive us after two days; on the third
day he will raise us up, to live in his presence” (Hos 6:2). In the New Testament,
Jesus used the phrase in predictions of his Passion, in invoking the sign of Jonah (cf.
Mt 12:40), and in offering the Jews a sign of his authority to cleanse the temple:
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19).

B. The Resurrection as Jesus’ Presence

640. In his discourse to Cornelius’ household, Peter describes the appearances of the
Risen Christ (cf. CCC 641-43). “They killed Jesus, hanging him on a tree, only to have
God raise him up on the third day and grant that he be seen, not by all, but only by
such witnesses as had been chosen beforehand by God __ by us who ate and drank
with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:40-41). Unlike the Old Testament
prophets’ experience of hearing God’s word, the disciples’ encounter with the Risen
Christ is constantly described in terms of seeing, sometimes even with “touching.”
The women “embraced” the feet of Jesus (cf. Mt 28:9). To his disciples who thought
he was a ghost, the Risen Christ said: “Look at my hands and my feet; it is really I.
Touch me and see that a ghost does not have flesh and bones as I do” (Lk 24:39). To
the doubting Thomas Jesus said: “Take your finger and examine my hands. Put your
hand into my side” (Jn 20:27).

641. These appearances of the Risen Christ have three significant characteristics.
First, they were different from visions totally within history since the Risen Christ
showed himself as transcending the ordinary limits of time and space. Second, except
for Paul, the Risen Christ appeared only to those who could identify him with the
earthly, historical Jesus. These thus became the once-and-for-all original witnesses
founding the Church. The Apostolic Age closed with their passing; from then on,
Christians are those “who have not seen and have believed” (Jn 20:29).

642. Third, and most importantly, the appearances did not remove all doubts nor the
need for faith (cf. CCC 644). Some doubted that the one who appeared was really
Jesus of Nazareth, others that he was the Christ. A real change of heart, a
conversion, was needed to “see” the Risen Christ as the apostle Thomas and the
Emmaus disciples clearly show (cf. Jn 20:27; Lk 24:13-35). Matthew describes how
“those who had entertained doubts fell down in homage” (Mt 28:17). This confirms the
fact that faith is truly a gift. “No one can say: ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except in the Holy Spirit”
(1 Cor 12: 3). St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “the apostles saw the living Christ
after his Resurrection with the eyes of faith” (ST, III: 55, 2 ad 1m).

643. But the presence of the Risen Jesus was not confined to his appearances.
Rather, Christ’s active presence was intensely felt by the early community, and linked
with life in the Spirit. “We ourselves, although we have the Spirit as firstfruits, groan
inwardly while we await the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). Jesus’ presence
was especially felt in three areas, corresponding to our present “Doctrine,” “Morals,”
and “Worship.” First, as source of the teaching and authority of the Christian

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community’s leaders. Second, in the moral exhortations of the Pauline epistles. And
third, in the community worship, especially Baptism and the Eucharist.

Teaching

644. The Risen Christ commissioned his disciples: You are to “teach them to carry out
everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). Jesus and the Father abide in anyone
who is “true to my word. . . . We will come to him and make our dwelling place with
him” (Jn 14:23). This abiding presence is effected through the Holy Spirit who “will
instruct you in everything, and remind you of all that I told you” (Jn 14:26). For the
Spirit “bears witness” to the Risen Christ (cf. Jn 15:26). He “will guide you to all truth. .
. announce to you the things that are to come. In doing this he will give glory to me
because he will have received from me what he will announce to you” (Jn 16:13-14).

Pauline Moral Exhortation

645. The Risen Christ’s Paschal pattern of new life through death determines the
shape of all Christian life in the Spirit. Christ’s Resurrection makes spiritually present
He to whom every Christian belongs. So Paul writes: “Continually we carry about in
our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be
revealed” (2 Cor 4:10). He exhorts his Corinthian converts: “Christ, our Paschal Lamb,
has been sacrificed. Let us celebrate the feast not with the old yeast of corruption and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:7-8).

Liturgical Worship

646. The Risen Christ’s presence was experienced perhaps most clearly in the
sacramental worship of the Christian community. First, “in baptism you were not only
buried with him but also raised to new life with him because you believed in the power
of God who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:12). The Eucharist, for Paul, makes
present Christ’s Paschal Mystery: “Every time, then, you eat this bread and drink this
cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). John stresses
the notion of abiding presence through the Eucharist: “Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:56).

C. The Resurrection and the Empty Tomb

647. By itself, the tradition of the “empty tomb” does not prove anything. But when
linked to the Risen Christ’s appearances, it is confirmatory of the Resurrection (cf.
CCC 640). More important, perhaps, is what the empty tomb indicates about the
nature of our salvation. For the corpse of Jesus was a symbol of the ultimate human
sin, and God took that corpse and made of it the beginning of the new creation.
Redemption in the Catholic sense, then, is not escaping from this sinful world, but
transforming it with all its evil and suffering. Moreover, respect for material creation,
against all forms of spiritualism, is once again affirmed. As He had done in creation

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and at the Incarnation, God once again enhances matter by raising Christ from the
dead. PCP II strongly supports this respect for material creation in its appeal for “a
passionate care of our earth and our environment” to preserve the “integrity of God’s
creation” (PCP II 79, 321-24).

III. CHRIST’S ASCENSION

648. But the “raising” of Christ did not stop with his Resurrection from the dead. An
integral part of Christ’s Paschal Mystery is his Ascension. The Risen Jesus told Mary
Magdalene: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”
(Jn 20:17; cf. CCC 659-60). John’s Gospel neatly unifies all dimensions of Christ’s
Paschal Mystery (Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension) by Jesus’ assertion of
being “lifted up” (cf. Jn 3:14; 8:28; 12:32-33). These correspond to the predictions of
the Passion, Death and Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels (e.g., Mk 8:31; 9:31;
10:33-34). The predictions of both the Passion and “being lifted up” have two things in
common. They speak of 1) the “Son of Man,” and 2) the divine imperative. “So must
the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jn 3:143). And “The Son of Man had to suffer much. . .
be put to death, and rise three days later” (Mk 8:31).

649. The primary meaning of being raised or “lifted up” is Christ’s exaltation,
sovereign authority and power over creation and all history (cf. CCC 668-70). This
recalls a “Suffering Servant” prophecy of Isaiah: “See, my Servant shall prosper, he
shall be raised high and greatly exalted” (Is 52:13). It also appears in two of Peter’s
discourses in Acts expressing both Resurrection and Ascension. “The God of our
fathers has raised up Jesus whom you put to death, hanging him on a tree. He whom
God has exalted at His right hand as Ruler and Savior to bring repentance to Israel
and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:30-31). Referring “lifted up” also to Christ’s Ascension
to the Father, then, helps explain: “When you lift up the Son of Man, you will come to
realize that I AM” (Jn 8:28). “I AM” was the name God revealed to Moses in Ex 3:14,
which John’s Gospel uses to bring out the divinity of Jesus.

650. But the Ascension is also a saving event for us. Christ’s return to the Father was
necessary for sending the Spirit: “It is much better for you that I go. . . . If I go, I will
send the Paraclete to you” (Jn 16:7). Jesus’ Ascension to his Father did not separate
him from the world. Rather, it made him even more present to his disciples. The Lord
Jesus was taken up into heaven and took his seat at God’s right hand. The Eleven
went forth and preached everywhere. The Lord continued to work with them
throughout, and to confirm the message through the signs which accompanied them”
(Mk 16:19-20). Paul also stresses this same active presence of “Christ Jesus who
died or rather was raised up, who is at the right hand of God and who intercedes for
us” (Rom 8:34).

651. Christ’s Ascension, then, brings out a number of basic truths of our Christian
Faith. First, the Ascension marks Jesus’ exaltation into the heavenly realm of his
Father. Second, it does not separate Christ from us because as he promised, from
heaven he “draws everyone to himself” (Jn 12:32). Third, since “he lives forever to

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make intercession,” Christ continues to exercise his priesthood since he entered
“heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf” (Heb 7:25; 9:24).
Finally, the ascended Christ as Head of the Church gives us, members of his Body,
the hope of one day entering into glory with him (cf. CCC 661-67).

652. The Preface of the Ascension summarizes these truths neatly as it proclaims:
Christ, the Mediator between God and man, Judge of the world and Lord of all, has
passed beyond our sight, not to abandon us but to be our hope. Christ is the
beginning, the head of the Church; where he has gone, we hope to follow.

IV. CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN

653. We are aware of the living presence of the Risen Christ among us in the Holy
Spirit sent among us. But we also know from the Creed that he “will come again to
judge the living and the dead” (cf. CCC 687-82). In the first eucharistic acclamation
we proclaim: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!” “Parousia,”
meaning “coming” or “presence,” is the traditional term for Christ’s Second Coming as
divine Judge (cf. Mt 24:3, 27, 37, 39; 1 Cor 15:23; etc.). “The Son of Man will come
with his Father’s glory accompanied by his angels. When he does, he will repay each
man according to his conduct” (Mt 16:27-28).

654. In the early days Christians prayed for this coming of Christ their Savior: “O Lord,
come! Marana tha!” (1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:20). But gradually this longing for their
forgiving Savior gave way to gnawing consciousness of individual sinfulness and
infidelity. The attitude of longing for the Lord was replaced by something akin to the
Old Testament prophetic warnings. The “Day of the Lord” was pictured as a “Day of
Judgment,” a Dies Irae (Day of God’s Wrath). In recent times there has been a
renewal of the New Testament stress on Christ’s “saving presence,” and his Second
Coming as introducing the final completion not just of the individuals but of the whole
world. The final destiny of the human race is ultimately in God’s hands.

655. But confusion often arises today, partly due to the exaggerated interpretations of
the final day by some fundamentalist sects. They overemphasize and interpret in
literal fashion the poetic, apocalyptic descriptions of the end of the world given in the
Bible, especially in Daniel and the book of Revelation. Biblical literature of this type
has to be read in terms of its typical characteristics. First, while seemingly a revelation
of the future, apocalyptic texts actually are usually a commentary on their own times.
Second, the revelation is generally presented in a vision or dream, in which allegorical
language and complicated symbolism are used. Third, the texts attempt by such
means to portray the final end of world history and the fearful destruction of all the evil
forces in the world.

656. Given such qualities of biblical apocalyptic literature, it is more important for us,
Filipino Catholics, to focus on the basic truths of the Parousia. The first is that the
Risen Christ as the Son of Man will “come to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim
4:1). “The Lord himself will come down from heaven at the word of command, at the

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sound of the archangel’s voice and God’s trumphet; and those who have died in
Christ will rise first” (1 Thes 4:16). Second, Christ’s Second Coming will be
unmistakable since it will be accompanied by unprecedented signs in the heavens
and on the earth. “As the lightning from the East flashes to the West, so will the
coming of the Son of Man be” (Mt 24:27).

657. Third, regarding when the Parousia will take place, the Gospel is very clear. “As
for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son,
but the Father only” (Mt 24:36). Therefore, fourth, because it will come unexpectedly,
“like a thief in the night” (1 Thes 5:2), we must “be constantly on the watch! Stay
awake! You do not know when the appointed time will come” (Mk 13:33).

658. Lastly, because Christ is already in his glory, and has sent his Spirit among us,
the “time” of salvation has already come. Now is the time when our salvation is being
worked out in our daily acts with our neighbors. “When the Son of Man comes in his
glory,” he will judge our acts according to one norm: “As often as you did it for one of
my least brothers, you did it for me” (Mt 25:31, 40).

Assessment and Evaluation

Activity 3: Attending Sunday Mass

Objectives:
1. To offer our praise and thanksgiving for our redemption
2. To strengthen us to love and serve the Lord and one another
3. To be filled with Jesus Christ

I hope that attending Sunday mass is your habit. God must come first in our lives.
Missing Mass is a mortal sin.

For three consecutive Sundays (May 2, 9, and 16) your activity will be writing the
word/phrase/sentence from the gospel that struck you most and quoting the striking
word/phrase/sentence from the sermon. Write your reflection on how or why those
words/phrases/sentences mean to you. Take a picture of yourself while attending the
mass. Submit in a word document via Gdrive on May 18.

References

Catechism for Filipino Catholics (CFC)

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Prepared: Checked: Approved:

Dr. AUDREE D. ALDAY Dr. JANET T. COMETA Dr. RANDYM. BAJA

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