Do you believe in the resurrection?

If the answer is “no,” St. Paul says that “our faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14).

Alright, but sometimes it is hard to know what this “resurrection” is. Could it simply be bringing Jesus back to life so he could go on as before?

No! since Jesus was deeply marked by injuries, humiliation and death, a mere return to life would let these recede into the background. An ordinary life. All better now.

Here is a metaphor to suggest an answer.

Imagine there is a “spiritual soil” from which all life “sprouts.” In his death Jesus plunged deep down into such a soil. He stumbled, fell, and lost the very thing we think is irreplaceable and to be guarded beyond all else: life.

But in this metaphor, life is only a garden plant. It grows from the loam so rich that we hardly see it. That spiritual soil is love.

Vast, quiet love.

Our doubt sets in, like Doubting Thomas’s. He was resentful, probably broken-hearted. He warded off his grief by simple denial. Unless I “put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (Gospel).

And look at the other men. In the gospel of Luke, women, not the men, were the ones who saw the empty tomb first as well as the angels, and they took it seriously. But “ …  their words seemed an idle tale, and [the apostles] did not believe” (Lk 24:11). In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus first came to the women. When the men went to the place where Jesus had said he would meet them, “they worshipped him, but some doubted” (Mt 28:17). In Mark, Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, but when she went to the apostles, you guessed it, they rejected her testimony (Mk 16:9). Nor did they listen to the men who had met Jesus walking to Emmaus (Mk 16:12-13).

Hard to miss the fact that the women usually believed and the men usually did not. Women dared to trust what they saw. Yes, women have been given lower status in culture throughout the ages, but we know that it is a big mistake to ignore their testimony.

Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code was a vehicle for huge doubt. For him, males have systematically repressed the essence of Christianity. The real truth, he claims, guarded through centuries, is that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ secret wife! Moreover, a flesh and blood descendent from Jesus is alive today (a woman, living in secret and in fear for her life). Obviously, as Brown seems to think, if the gospels are just huge cover-ups, then the resurrection would be just one more spin on the glittering wheel of deception.

What is the truth about the resurrection?

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection pointed us toward the source of all life, the source of the universe, of trees, of women and men, of marriage and offspring. Jesus was the river of love that God had poured into the world. He was now flowing back into the ocean of the Trinity and taking us along, whichever of us chooses to believe.

That is the resurrection.

Do you believe in it? If you do, then you believe that love is the foundation of life. Just put your finger into the mark of the nails, and put your hands into his side and you will find it.