IS IT TRUE THAT DEATH IS FINALLY HEALED?

The light and overwhelming wave
of the resurrection
runs in those lines.
It spreads,
overflows its conquered anguish
and its reconsecrated power.

M. Luzi

The stone that seemed to seal Christ’s tomb forever has been overturned forever. We are in the Easter of Resurrection. By now the tortured Christ of Grünewald, the alienated Christ of Ensor, the ignored one of Bruegel or the melancholic one of Rouault, the oppressed Christ of Goya or the cadaverous one of Holbein are behind us. Here then is the solemn, majestic, and enigmatic Christ of Pietro della Francesca, that is, the Resurrection of Borgo San Sepolcro. His Kyriale gesture – the foot placed on the tomb – indicates the definitive victory over death. Now the body of the Risen One stands erect in the light. His figure is at once solid and full, rough and earthy, immersed in eternity and still among us. Yes, everything is immersed in eternity, in an auroral luminosity and yet a small sign still ties Christ to the earth, to our time: his bleeding side. Yves Bonnefoy wondered: “Is it true that death, the invention of death, is truly healed here?” We have said it, the open wound puts time back on stage. Peter had tried to conquer death by expelling it from the enchanted circle of the timeless, but the still-bleeding Christ – and he is the Risen One – indicates the death from which he comes and its very real signs. Massimo Cacciari writes: «To be a true Resurrection, the Risen One must show in every fibre of his being the truth of his dying and of his own death». The body of the Risen One therefore guards death. And it guards it as a testimony of a love that has reached its extreme. It is along these lines that his gesture of showing his hands and side to the disciples should be interpreted (cf. John 20:20). Hence the joy of his followers. Joy belongs to those who abide in love, to those who are united to the Lord like the branch to the vine. After the sadness, the dance has returned: the new man is born. Joy comes from a love that has challenged Sheol; it is a fire that the great waters cannot extinguish (cf. Song of Songs 8:6). Joy is born from forgiveness. Further, the Risen One who appears to his followers on Easter evening, giving them peace, is the one who offers one of the many anticipations of the eschaton – of new heavens and the new earth. This is also the first manifestation of the archè, of the new creation inaugurated in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey