Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, leaving behind his boundless love and many mysteries yet to be understood. Unlike his resurrection, which happened with no witnesses, his ascension took place before the eyes of his stunned disciples. He defied gravity, and then a cloud took him from their sight—so much so that two angels had to help them turn their gaze away.
One thing is clear: Jesus vanished from the disciples’ sight in the same body they had known—a body still marked by the scourging, the blows, the bruises, the scrapes, the falls, the patibulum, the nails and the spear, as recounted by the evangelist Luke. He tells how two disciples, walking to Emmaus—about 11 kilometers from Jerusalem—encountered Jesus on the road. After recognizing him, they immediately returned to Jerusalem to share the details of their extraordinary encounter with the apostles. Then suddenly, Jesus was standing among them. Terrified, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he showed them his hands and feet and said, “Touch me and see; a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” And as they stood there stunned, he asked for a piece of grilled fish and ate it in front of them.
While some theologians refer to a “glorified body,” the Gospels point instead to a body of flesh and bone—one that vanished before his followers’ eyes. Where it went—since bodies take up space—remains a mystery.
The Gospels recount many moments when Jesus defied the laws of the physical world. One of the most beautiful—at least for those who appreciate a good story—is when he appeared on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after a long, fruitless night of fishing by his disciples. Weary and wondering what had become of him, they decided to return to their fishing. This scene, of course, takes place after the resurrection. From the shore, Jesus calls out, “Children! Have you caught any fish?” But Peter and his companions' nets are empty. Then Jesus tells them to cast the net on the right side of the boat—and this time, the catch is overwhelming. With this sign, John recognizes him, “It is the Lord.”
Once ashore, Jesus says, “Come and have breakfast.” There is already a charcoal fire burning, with bread and fish laid out. But where did they come from, since the disciples had just pulled in the boat and the nets? Once again, mystery surrounds him—a reminder that in the risen Christ, the divine enters the ordinary, unsettling the logic of the world with the quiet authority of grace.
Another story full of quiet wonder is the feeding of the five thousand. Followed by a crowd for three days, Jesus refuses to send them away, fearing the families—children included—might collapse on their way home. Then, suddenly, he offers a solution: he will multiply the loaves and fish at hand. He has the crowd sit down, blesses the few loaves and fish available, and begins handing them to the disciples—from what appears to be an inexhaustible supply. Thousands are fed.
But where did the loaves and fish come from, if—as science tells us—nothing is lost and nothing is created from nothing? What kind of blazing-fast 3D printer was at work? A mystery. Yet, it’s a question as worthy of attention as the one physicists ask about the origins of matter itself.
Resurrection, Not Resuscitation
In his two-volume work Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict XVI offers a personal interpretation of the message and life of Jesus, speaking privately as a theologian. In the second volume, which concludes with the resurrection, he quotes St. Paul, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:3-8).
By repeating “according to the Scriptures” twice, Paul emphasizes that this death was not a historical accident, it fulfilled God’s foreknowledge. After the Passover, during which they observed the strict Sabbath rest, some of the women who had witnessed Jesus' crucifixion hurried early in the morning to anoint his body.
The women discover that the tomb where Jesus' body was laid is empty. While this signifies “the reality of absence,” Benedict XVI acknowledges that the empty tomb, by itself, cannot serve as proof of the resurrection. The subsequent sightings of Jesus will testify to his reality.
Jesus' resurrection was a true event, not merely a case of resuscitation, Joseph Ratzinger affirms in his work. Jesus ushers in “a life no longer bound by the law of death and time, but one that exists beyond it.” This is nothing less than “a new dimension of human existence,” a “decisive transformation,” a “qualitative leap” from one realm of reality to another.
It all started modestly, with an empty tomb and a few sightings that the Jewish and Roman authorities of the time chose to overlook. But at its core, it is the eternal story of the grain of wheat that becomes the ear. A body was sown, and another was reaped. A mystery. The beginnings of new things are small, almost invisible, easily ignored. “The resurrection, from the perspective of world history, is hardly noticeable; it is the smallest seed in history,” Benedict XVI emphasizes, but what will follow will certainly be “a giant leap for humanity,” echoing, this time appropriately, the words of astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the moon.
Upon returning to the Father, Christ left the world with precious relics: his words and the sacraments, of course, but also, as an additional gift, his shroud—an extraordinary, unrepeatable photographic icon imprinted on linen by the “Uncreated Light” and the Holy Fire of Jerusalem, the city of peace. Yet, it is to heaven that he took the relics of his wounds. Nailed to the cross, he was nothing but wounds. “Look at what love has done!” he once told the Spanish mystic Josefa Menendez, pointing to the wound in his side.
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