The Risen One

Christos Yannaras

 (From Chapter Chapter 8 of Elements of Faith (T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1991)

Christ rose again on the third day after his burial. Both the biblical testimonies and the church’s later iconography and hymnology allude to the resurrection indirectly, one could say, by means of signs like the empty tomb, the angel of God who freed the entrance of the grave, the linen burial clothes “lying by themselves”. A particular moment when the dead body of Christ received life again and began to function biologically again is neither specified nor described as in the case of the dead whom Christ himself raised during the period of his public life. But there is the experience and evidence of his bodily appearances after the resurrection: The risen Christ appears to the myrrh-bearing women and to the travelers on the road to Emmaus and to the gathering of the disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem or on the shores of Lake Tiberias.

For the experience and certainty of the Church, the resurrection of Christ differs from the resurrections of the dead which he himself realized in his earthly life. To the dead body of Lazarus, or of the son of the widow of Nain, or the daughter of Jairus, the sovereign command of Christ restores the dead functions of life, just as in the cases of other miracles he restored certain specific functions, the sight of the blind or the hearing and speech of the man deaf and dumb or walking to the paralytic— but, the bodies of those raised remained corruptible and mortal. All of them died again at some later time because their bodies which had once been raised were subject, as they were before they were raised, to the consequences of the human fall, to the necessity of corruption and death. The raisings of the dead which are described in the Holy Scripture are, to the human eye, astonishing examples of the power of God, that is, of his freedom from every natural limitation. This power can overturn the laws of nature but cannot change the mode of existence of nature. Such a change cannot be imposed from without; it can only be the fruit of personal freedom, an accomplishment of freedom. As we have often emphasized in the previous pages, it is the person who hypostasizes life and existence, and hypostasizes it either as a natural self-sufficiency (subordinating existence to the necessities of the created) or as an event of loving relationship and erotic communion with God (freeing existence from corruption and death). But love and eros are not imposed from without; they are only an achievement of personal freedom.

This achievement of freedom is completed by Christ on the Cross and is manifest existentially in his resurrection. By his obedience to the Father’s will even to the point of death, Christ leads his human nature to the perfect renunciation of every demand for existential self-sufficiency, transposing the existence of nature into the relationship of love and freedom of obedience to God. And this nature which draws its existence from the relationship with God does not die because, even though created, it exists now in the manner of the uncreated, not in the manner of the created. Christ’s raised body is a material body, a created nature. But it differs from the bodies of other raised people because it exists now in the mode of the uncreated, the mode of freedom from every natural necessity’ And so, while it is sensible and tangible, with flesh and bones(Lk 24.30), while it can take nourishment like all other bodies (and the risen Christ eats honey and fish before the eyes of his disciples (Lk 24.42)) and while the marks of the wounds which he received are obvious on him, still this same body enters the upper room “with the doors locked” Un 20. 1) and vanishes at Emmaus after the breaking of the bread (Lk 24.31) and finally is received into heaven (Mk 16.19; Lk 24.51) enthroning the human “clay” in the glory of the divine life.

The transformation in the mode of existence of Christ’s human nature after his resurrectionis shown in the Gospels indirectly again: it is not possible to define and describe it with the objective categories which determine our common everyday experiences. It notes an “otherness”: he is the well-known “son of man”, but “in a different form” (Mk 16.12). Mary Magdalene in the garden with his tomb in it thought him to be a gardener. The two travelers on the road to Emmaus thought him a chance passer-by. The disciples who were fishing in Lake Tiberias heard him asking them for something “good to eat” and did not suspect again that it was he who was waiting for them on the shore. Everyone discovered him suddenly and self-evidently, but after they had been mistaken at the beginning. What is it that made him different in principle and which had to be transcended in order to recognize him?

Certainly something which is not to be said but only experienced. Perhaps if the relationship with him stops at the apparent individual, it will not succeed in recognizing the hypostasis freed from individual self-sufficiency. We do not know and we cannot describe the experience; we can only dare to approach it interpretively from the events which accompany it: The body of the risen Christ is the human nature free from every limitation and ever need. It is a human body with flesh and bones, but which does not draw life from its biological functions, but is hypostasized in a real existence thanks to the personal relationship with God which alone constitutes it and gives it life.

Theanthropic Eternal Life

St. Justin Popovich

Until the coming of the Lord Christ into our terrestrial world, we men really knew only about death and death knew about us. Everything human was penetrated, captured, and conquered by death. Death was closer to us than we [are to] ourselves, and more real than ourselves, and more powerful, incomparably more powerful, than every man individually and all men together. Earth was a dreadful prison of death, and we people were the helpless slaves of death. [1] Only with the God-man Christ “life was manifested”; "eternal life” appeared to us hopeless mortals, the wretched slaves of death. [2] And that "eternal life" we men have "seen with our eyes and handled with our hands," [3] and we Christians "make manifest eternal life" to all. [4] For living in union with the Lord Christ, we live eternal life even here on earth. [5] We know from personal experience that Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. [6] And for this did He come into the world: to show us the true God and eternal life in Him. [7] Genuine and true love for man consists of this, only of this: that God sent His Only-Begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him (1 John 4: 9) and through Him live eternal life. Therefore, he who has the Son of God has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life (1 John 5: 12)—he is completely in death. Life in the one true God and Lord Jesus Christ is really our only true life because it is wholly eternal and completely stronger than death. Can a life which is infected by death and which ends in death really be called life? Just as honey is not honey when it is mixed with a poison, which gradually turns all the honey into poison, so a life which ends in death is not life.

There is no end to the love of the Lord Christ for man: because for us men to acquire the life eternal which is in Him, and to live by Him, nothing is required of us—not learning, nor glory, nor wealth, nor anything else that one of us does not have, but rather only that which each of us can has. And that is Faith in the Lord Christ. For this reason did He, the Only Friend of Man, reveal to the human race this wondrous good tiding: God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. He that believes in the Son has eternal life (John 3: 16-36). As the one true God giving people what no angel or man can give them, the Lord Christ alone in the human race had the boldness and right to declare: verily, verily I say unto you: he that believes in me has eternal life (John 6: 47), and he has already passed from death unto life (John 5: 24).

Faith in the Lord Christ unites man with the eternal Lord Who, according to the measure of man's faith, pours out in his soul eternal life so that he then feels and realizes himself to be eternal. And this he feels to a greater degree inasmuch as he lives according to that faith which gradually sanctifies his soul, heart, conscience, his entire being, by the grace-filled Divine energies. In proportion to the faith of a man the sanctification of his nature increases. And the holier the man is, the stronger and more vivid is his feeling of personal immortality and the consciousness of his own and everybody else's immortality.

Actually, a man's real life begins with his faith in the Lord Christ, which commits all his soul, all his heart, all his strength to the Lord Christ, Who gradually sanctifies, transfigures, deifies them. And through that sanctification, transfiguration, and deification the grace-filled Divine energies, which give him the all-powerful feeling and consciousness of personal immortality and personal eternity, are poured out upon him. In reality, our life is life inasmuch as it is in Christ. And as much as it is in Christ is shown by its holiness: the holier a life, the more immortal and more eternal it is.

Opposed to this process is death. What is death? Death is ripened sin; and ripened sin is separation from God, in Whom alone is life and the source of life. This truth is evangelical and Divine: holiness is life, sinfulness is death; piety is life, atheism is death; faith is life, unbelief is death; God is life, the devil is death. Death is separation from God, and life is returning to God and living in God. Faith is indeed the revival of the soul from lethargy, the resurrection of the soul from the dead: "he was dead, and is alive: (Luke 15: 24). Man experienced this resurrection of the soul from death for the first time with the God-man Christ and constantly experiences it in His holy Church, since all of Him is found in Her. And He gives Himself to all believers through the holy mysteries and the holy virtues. Where He is, there is no longer death: there one has already passed from death to life. With the Resurrection of Christ we celebrate the deadening of death, the beginning of a new, eternal life. [8]

True life on earth indeed begins from the Resurrection of the Savior, for it does not end in death. Without the Resurrection of Christ human life is nothing else but a gradual dying which finally inevitably ends in death. Real true life is that life which does not end in death. And such a life became possible on earth only with the Resurrection of the Lord Christ the God-man. Life is real life only in God, for it is a holy life and by virtue of this an immortal life. Just as in sin is death, so in holiness is immortality. Only with faith in the risen Lord Christ does man experience the most crucial miracle of his existence: the Passover from death to immortality, from transitoriness into eternity, from hell to heaven. Only then does man find himself, his true self, his eternal self: "for he was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15: 24).

“I am the Resurrection, and the Life” by Fr. George Florovsky

The Incarnation of the Word was an absolute manifestation of God. And above all it was a revelation of Life. Christ is the Word of Life, o Logos tis zois (1 John 1:1). The Incarnation itself was, in a sense, the quickening of man, as it were the resurrection of human nature. In the Incarnation human nature was not merely anointed with a superabundant overflowing of Grace, but was assumed into an intimate and "hypostatical" unity with Divinity itself. In that lifting up of human nature into an everlasting communion with the Divine Life, the Fathers of the early Church unanimously saw the very essence of salvation. "That is saved which is united with God," says St. Gregory of Nazianzus. And what was not so united could not be saved at all (Epist. 101, ad Cledonium). This was the fundamental motive in the whole of early theology, in St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Maximus the Confessor. Yet, the climax of the Incarnate Life was the Cross, the death of the Incarnate Lord. Life has been revealed in full through death. This is the paradoxical mystery of the Christian faith: life through death, life from the grave and out of the grave, the Mystery of the life-bearing grave. And Christians are born again to real and everlasting life only through their baptismal death and burial in Christ; they are regenerated with Christ in the baptismal font (cf. Rom. 6:3-5).

Such is the invariable law of true life. "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die" (1 Cor. 15:36). Salvation was completed on Golgotha, not on Tabor, and the Cross of Jesus was spoken of even on Tabor (cf. Luke 9:31). Christ had to die, in order to bestow an abundant life upon the whole of mankind. It was not the necessity of this world. This was, as it were, the necessity of Love Divine, a necessity of a Divine order. And we fail to comprehend the mystery. Why had the true life to be revealed through the death of One, Who was Himself "the Resurrection and the Life"? The only answer is that Salvation had to be a victory over death and man's mortality. The ultimate enemy of man was precisely death. Redemption was not just the forgiveness of sins, nor was it man's reconciliation with God. It was the deliverance from sin and death. "Penitence does not deliver from the state of nature (into which man has relapsed through sin), it only discontinues the sin," says St. Athanasius. For man not only sinned but "fell into corruption." Now, the mercy of God could not permit "that creatures once made rational, and having partaken of the Word, should go to ruin and turn again to non-existence by the way of corruption." Consequently the Word of God descended and became man, assumed our body, "that, whereas man turned towards corruption, He might turn them again towards incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like a straw from the fire." (De incarnatione, 6-8).

Thus, according to St. Athanasius, the Word became flesh in order to abolish "corruption" in human nature. However, death is vanquished, not by the appearance of Life in the mortal body, but rather by the voluntary death of the Incarnate Life. The Word became incarnate on account of death in flesh, St. Athanasius emphasizes. "In order to accept death He had a body" (c. 44). Or, to quote Tertullian, forma moriendi causa nascendi est (De carne Christi, 6). The ultimate reason for Christ's death must be seen in the mortality of Man. Christ suffered death, but passed through it and overcame mortality and corruption. He quickened death itself. "By death He destroyed death." The death of Christ is therefore, as it were, an extension of the Incarnation. The death on the Cross was effective, not as the death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. "We needed an Incarnate God, God put to death, that we might live," to use a bold and startling phrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 45, in S. Pascha, 28; edeithimen Theu sarkomenu ke nekrumenu). It was not a man that died on the Cross. In Christ there is no human hypostasis. His personality was Divine, yet incarnate. "For He who suffered was not common man, but God made man, and fighting the contest of endurance," says St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. 13, 6). It may be properly said that God died on the Cross, but in His own humanity (which was, however, "consubstantial" with ours). This was the voluntary death of One Who was Himself Life Eternal.

A human death indeed, death "according to humanity," and yet death within the hypostasis of the Word, of the Incarnate Word. And thence a resurrecting death. "I have a baptism to be baptized with" (Luke 12:50). It was the death on the Cross, and the shedding of blood, — "the baptism of martyrdom and blood, with which Christ Himself also was baptized," as St. Gregory of Nazianzus suggested (Orat. 37, 17). The death on the Cross as a baptism of blood, this is the very essence of the redeeming mystery of the Cross. Baptism is a cleansing. And the Baptism of the Cross was, as it were, the cleansing of the human nature, which was travelling the path of restoration in the Hypostasis of the Incarnate Word. This was, as it were, a washing of human nature in the outpoured sacrificial blood of the Divine Lamb, and first of all a washing of the body: not only a washing away of sins, but a washing away of human infirmities and of mortality itself. It was the cleansing in preparation for the coming resurrection: a cleansing of all human nature, a cleansing of all humanity in the person of its new and mystical First-born, in the "Last Adam." This was the baptism by blood of the whole Church, and indeed of the whole world. "A purification not for a small part of man's world, not for a short time, but for the whole Universe and through eternity," to quote St. Gregory of Nazianzus once more (Orat. 45, 13). The Lord died on the Cross. This was a true death. Yet not wholly like ours, simply because this was the death of the Incarnate Word, death within the indivisible Hypostasis of the Word made man, the death of the "enhypostatized" humanity. This does not alter the ontological character of death, but changes its meaning. The "Hypostatic Union" was not broken or destroyed by death, and therefore the soul and the body, though separated from each other, remained still united through the Divinity of the Word, from which neither was ever estranged. This was an "incorrupt death," and therefore "corruption" and "mortality" were overcome in it, and in it begins the resurrection.

The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature (St. John of Damascus, De fide orth., 3.27; cf. homil. in Magn. Saиbat., 29). "Today we keep the feast, for our Lord is nailed upon the Cross," in the sharp phrase of St. John Chrysostom (In crucem et latronem, hom. 1). The death on the Cross is a Victory over death not only because it was followed by the Resurrection. It is itself the victory. The Resurrection only reveals and sets forth the victory achieved on the Cross. It is already accomplished in the very falling asleep of the God-man. "Thou diest and quickenest me." As St. Gregory of Nazianzus puts it: "He lays down His life, but He has the power to take it again; and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again. He goes down into Hades, but He brings up the souls" (Orat. 41). This mystery of the resurrecting Cross is commemorated especially on Good Saturday. It is the day of the Descent into-Hell (Hades). And the Descent into Hades is already the Resurrection of the dead. By the very fact of His death Christ joins the company of the departed. It is the new extension of the Incarnation. Hades is just the darkness and shadow of death, rather a place of mortal anguish than a place of penal torments, a dark "sheol," a place of hopeless disembodiment and disincarnation, which was only scantily and dimly fore-illuminated by the slanting rays of the not-yet-risen Sun, by the hope and expectation yet unfulfilled. It was, as it were, a kind of ontological infirmity of the soul, which, in the separation of death, had lost the faculty of being the true entelechia of its own body, the helplessness of fallen and wounded nature. Not a "place" at all, but rather a spiritual state: "the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19).

It was into this prison, into this "Hell," that the Lord and Savior descended. Amid the darkness of pale death shone the unquenchable light of Life, the Life Divine. The "Descent into Hell" is the manifestation of Life amid the hopelessness of mortal dissolution, it is victory over death. "It was not from any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it that the body had died, but in order that in it death might be done away by the power of the Savior," says St. Athanasius (De inc. 26). Good Saturday is more than Easter-Eve. It is the "Blessed Sabbath," "Sanctum Sabbatum," — requies Sabbati magni, in the phrase of St. Ambrose. "This is the Blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, whereon the Only-Begotten Son of God has rested from all His deeds" (Anthem, Vespers of Good Saturday, according to the Eastern rite). "I am the first and the last: I Am He that liveth, and was dead: and behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen. And I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev. 1:17-18).

The Christian "hope of immortality" is rooted in and secured by this victory of Christ, and not by any "natural" endowment. And it means also that this hope is rooted in a historical event, i.e., in a historical self-revelation of God, and not in any static disposition or constitution of human nature.

Άγιε μου Γιώργη (Traditional Song For Saint George)

“Christ is Risen!”

A short story by Pavlos Nirvanas

Once — many years ago— when I happened to celebrate Easter and the Resurrection in a little mountain village of the Peloponnese, I had noticed an old villager who was holding a lit Easter candle with his arm outstretched upwards, towards the stars that adorned the skies of that Resurrection night, and, as though addressing me, I heard him gently murmur:

“The Heavens, my child, were tamed on this night….”

In those few words, that innocent villager had succinctly enclosed the most profound meaning of the Christian miracle. “The Heavens were tamed”.

Without the supreme Christian miracle of the Resurrection, the heavens would have continued (for the cowardly soul of the simple person and for every human soul generally) to be the abode of a dreaded God; a fair judge, but also one without leniency, and a merciless vindicator. Such were the gods of all other religions. They reigned supreme over their creations, instilling fear in them. They were omnipotent tyrants, who remained at a great distance from their peoples; they had never acquainted themselves with their worshippers’ weaknesses, they had never suffered the pain that their believers suffered and had never been tormented by their believers’ torments. They had never mourned like their believers mourned. They were incapable of compassion, of sympathy or forgiveness. How could the heavens that are inhabited by such gods not be perceived as “savage”, in the eyes of awe-struck mortals?

In that calm spring night, as the old villager’s lit candle was lifted to the heavens like a greeting towards the twinkling, resurrected stars, the heavens indeed seemed tamer. They were no longer the abode of a God estranged from His people, seated far, far away “up there” on His terrible throne. There now resided a lovable God; one Who had savored all the sufferings that mankind suffered: He had acquainted Himself with all the injustices of the world, He had undergone every kind of scorn, He had paid for every single kind of ingratitude. He was abused, laughed at, spat on, dragged through the streets in bonds as though He were the worst of criminals, and was crucified. He had hungered, thirsted, and had beheld the horror of death. For a moment, He had even seen Himself as forgotten by God Himself, who was His Father: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” There was no pain that He had not become acquainted with; no heartache that He had not felt; no misery whose poison He had not tasted. He drank every kind of bitter drink that a person could ever drink in this world. And, on a night like tonight, this suffering and tortured person had risen to the heavens and had seated Himself, all-powerful, at God’s Throne, to govern the entire world. How could the Heavens not become “tamed”? An infinite goodness had now engulfed the Firmament.

“Why should any sinner tremble in fear from then on?” the old man must have thought to himself. “He who had forgiven the whore, the robber - and even those who had crucified Him - is now “up there” and He can see the sinner’s tears of repentance and forgive him. Why should any sick person feel desperation? He who had healed the blind and the paralyzed is now “up there” and can heal him also. Why should the poor and the wronged feel resentment? He, who had hungered and thirsted is now “up there” and is fully understanding of his misery too. Why should any mother worry anxiously about her child? Up there, in the Heavens, is a caring Mother who has also endured maternal suffering and who will beseech (on that mother’s behalf) Her Son, who governs the entire world, to bestow His mercy on her. And why should any white-haired elder tremble during his hour of death? For him - as for every soul – there awaits a resurrection…”

The Heavens were indeed tamer on that spring evening. And the old man’s candle had indeed been raised as a greeting – and as a thanksgiving – towards those ‘resurrected’ stars.

—“Christ is risen, grandpa”.

—“He is God; He is the Lord, my child”.

Κάποτε —ἐδῶ καὶ πολλὰ χρόνια— ποὺ μοὔτυχε νὰ κάνω Ἀνάσταση σὲ κάποιο ὀρεινὸ χωριὸ τῆς Ρούμελης, ἕνας γέρος χωριάτης, ὑψώνοντας τὴ λαμπριάτικη λαμπάδα του, σὰ χαιρετισμό, πρὸς τ' ἀναστάσιμα ἄστρα, μοῦ εἶπε σὰ νὰ μιλοῦσε μὲ τὸν ἑαυτό του :

—Ἡμέρεψαν ἀπόψε, παιδί μου, τὰ Οὐράνια.

Στὰ δυὸ αὐτὰ λόγια ὁ ἀθῶος χωριάτης εἶχε κλείσει, ἐπιγραμματικά, τὸ βαθύτερο νόημα τοῦ χριστιανικοῦ θαύματος. «Ἡμέρεψαν τὰ Οὐράνια». Ὁ οὐρανός, χωρὶς τὸ μεγάλο χριστιανικὸ θαῦμα, θὰ ἐξακολουθοῦσε νὰ εἶναι γιὰ τὴν περίφοβη ψυχὴ τοῦ ἁπλοϊκοῦ ἀνθρώπου —γιὰ κάθε ἀνθρώπινη ψυχὴ— τὸ κατοικητήριο ἑνὸς Θεοῦ τρομεροῦ, δικαιοκρίτη χωρὶς ἐπιείκεια καὶ τιμωροῦ χωρὶς ἔλεος. Τέτοιοι στάθηκαν οἱ θεοὶ ὅλων τῶν θρησκειῶν. Κυβερνοῦσαν τὰ πλάσματά τους μὲ τὸν τρόμο. Τύραννοι παντοδύναμοι, μακρυσμένοι ἀπ' τὸ λαό τους, δὲν εἶχαν γνωρίσει ποτὲ τὶς ἀδυναμίες του, δὲν εἶχαν πονέσει ποτὲ τὸν πόνο του, δὲν εἶχαν βασανισθεῖ ποτὲ ἀπ' τὰ βάσανά του, δὲν εἶχαν κλάψει ποτὲ τὰ δάκρυά του. Ἀνίκανοι νὰ συμπονέσουν, νὰ λυπηθοῦν καὶ νὰ συχωρέσουν. Πῶς νὰ μὴν εἶναι «ἄγρια» — ὅπως τάβλεπε τὸ μάτι τοῦ φοβισμένου ἀνθρώπου —τὰ οὐράνια, τὰ κατοικημένα ἀπὸ τέτοιους θεοὺς;

Καὶ μέσα στὴν ἀνοιξιάτικη ἐκείνη νύχτα, ποὺ ἡ λαμπάδα τοῦ γέρου χωριάτη εἶχε ὑψωθῆ σὰ χαιρετισμὸς πρὸς τὰ λαμπρά, ἀναστάσιμα ἄστρα, τὰ οὐράνια εἶχαν ἡμερέψει. Δὲν κατοικοῦσε πιὰ ἐκεῖ ἀπάνω ὑψωμένος στὸν τρομερὸ του θρόνο, ἕνας θεὸς ξένος γιὰ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Κατοικοῦσε ἕνας γλυκύτατος θεός, ποὺ εἶχε πονέσει ὅλους τους πόνους τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ποὺ εἶχε γνωρίσει ὅλες τὶς ἀδικίες τῆς γῆς, ποὺ εἶχε τραβήξει ὅλες τὶς καταφρόνιες, ποὺ εἶχε πληρώσει ὅλες τὶς ἀχαριστίες. Τὸν ἔβρισαν, τὸν ἀναγέλασαν, τὸν ἔφτυσαν, τὸν ἔσυραν δεμένο στοὺς δρόμους, σὰν τὸ τελευταῖο κακοῦργο, τὸν σταύρωσαν. Ἐπείνασε, ἐδίψασε, κουράστηκε, ἀντίκρυσε τὴ φρίκη τοῦ θανάτου. Γιὰ μιὰ στιγμὴ εἶδε τὸν ἑαυτό του λησμονημένο κι' ἀπ' τὸν ἴδιο τὸ Θεό, ποὺ ἦταν πατέρας του. «Θεέ μου, θεέ μου, ἵνα τί μὲ ἐγκατέλιπες;» Δὲ στάθηκε πόνος, ποὺ νὰ μὴν τὸν γνώρισε, καρδιοσωμός, ποὺ νὰ μὴν τὸν ἔννοιωσε, δυστυχία, ποὺ νὰ μὴ γεύθηκε τὸ φαρμάκι της. Ἤπιε ὅλα τὰ φαρμάκια, ποὺ μπορεῖ νὰ πιῆ ἄνθρωπος σ' αὐτὸν τὸν κόσμο. Καί, τὴ νύχτα ἐκείνη, ὁ πονεμένος καὶ βασανισμένος αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπος εἶχε ἀνέβη στοὺς Οὐρανοὺς καὶ εἶχε καθήσει παντοδύναμος στὸ θρόνο τοῦ θεοῦ, νὰ κυβερνήση τὸν κόσμο. Πῶς νὰ μὴν «ἡμερέψουν τὰ Οὐράνια»; Μιὰ ἀπέραντη καλωσύνη εἶχε πλημμυρίσει τὸ στερέωμα.

Γιατὶ νὰ τρέμη πιὰ ὁ ἁμαρτωλός; θὰ συλλογιζότανε ὁ γέρος. Ἐκεῖνος ποὺ συχώρεσε τὴν πόρνη, τὸ ληστὴ κι ἐκείνους ἀκόμα ποὺ τὸν σταύρωσαν, εἶναι τώρα ἐκεῖ ἀπάνω, γιὰ νὰ ἰδῆ τὰ δάκρυα τοῦ μετανοιωμοῦ του καὶ νὰ τὸν συχώρεση. Γιατί ν’ ἀπελπίζεται ὁ ἄρρωστος; Ἐκεῖνος ποὺ γιάτρεψε τὸν τυφλὸ καὶ τὸν παράλυτο, εἶναι τώρα ἐκεῖ ἀπάνω γιὰ νὰ τὸν γιατρέψη. Γιατί νὰ βαρυγκομάη ὁ φτωχὸς καὶ ὁ ἀδικημένος; Ἐκεῖνος, ποὺ πείνασε καὶ δίψασε, εἶναι τώρα ἐκεῖ ἀπάνω καὶ καταλαβαίνει τὴ δυστυχία του. Γιατὶ νὰ λαχταράη ἡ μάννα γιὰ τὸ παιδί της; Ἐκεῖ ἀπάνω στοὺς Οὐρανοὺς εἶναι μιὰ Μαννούλα, ποὺ δοκίμασε τὸν πόνο της, γιὰ νὰ παρακάλεση τὸ παιδί της, ποὺ κυβερνάει τὸν κόσμο, νὰ τὴν ἐλεήσῃ. Καὶ γιατὶ νὰ τρέμη ὁ ἀσπρομάλλης ὁ γέρος τὴν ὥρα τοῦ θανάτου; Εἶναι καὶ γι' αὐτόν, εἶναι γιὰ κάθε ψυχή, μιὰ ἀνάσταση.

Τὰ Οὐράνια εἶχαν ἡμερέψει, ἀλήθεια, ἐκείνη τὴν ἀνοιξιάτικη νύχτα. Καὶ ἡ λαμπάδα τοῦ γέρου εἶχε ὑψωθῆ σὰ χαιρετισμὸς καὶ σὰν εὐχαριστία, πρὸς τὰ ἀναστάσιμα ἄστρα.

—Χριστὸς ἀνέστη, παπποῦ.
—Ὁ Θεός, ὁ Κύριος, παιδί μου.