Exsultet - The Easter Proclamation

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

As we celebrate the glorious Third-Day Resurrection, and the ineffable Ascension, of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, there is but only one important thing to say, one incontrovertible fact of human history to assert, and that is that God the Father has raised Jesus Christ from death. Our Lord, who was dead on Good Friday afternoon, was alive again on Easter Sunday morning. He was not alive in some metaphorical, symbolic, merely spiritual, emotional or psychological manner - he was alive in a true and physical Body, a transformed immortal Body.

Our Lord’s glorified Body, a Body animated and vivified by the Holy Ghost, a Body radiant with the splendour of the Spirit, is a Body that can eat, a Body that can be touched, a Body recognisably identified with the Body that was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and crucified on the Cross of Calvary, but which is a new kind of Body, a Body with a new mode of existence in a new dimension: a Body that can appear and disappear at will; a Body that can transport itself through walls — and transcend even the walls of a tomb. It is a Body that can make itself present as desired, the Body that appeared in the upper room on the first Easter, the Body we now eat for the forgiveness of sins in the Holy Eucharist, objectively and substantially present under the form of bread.

The radical physicality of Jesus Christ after His Resurrection shocked and frightened His disciples, so he ate a piece of broiled fish and then some honey in front of them to show that He was not an apparition or hallucination. And then Our Lord asked the disciples, ‘Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’

The Resurrection of the flesh is not something we just believe exclusively happened to Jesus Christ, although He is the first to receive the mystery. ‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.’ If we are baptised into the Body of Jesus Christ, our Father in Heaven will raise us from death too.

We shall be resurrected in bodies at the Last Day to enter into the Beatific Vision, to enjoy the Blessed Trinity at His heavenly banquet for eternity. Because we have been planted into the risen Body of Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, we possess God's guarantee that what was given to Jesus Christ is exactly what will be given to us. Our Lord was born, we are born. Our Lord lived, we live. Our Lord died, and had He not risen, we too would surely die. But Christ is alive. Jesus lives. And because He lives, we shall live with Him and in Him.

Jesus Christ rose from His tomb in a transformed Body, and because of this, we shall rise from our graves in transformed bodies. Our Lord ascended into Heaven to be with his Father forever - we shall ascend into Heaven to be with God forever. As Saint Paul tells us on Easter morning, ‘When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.’ We shall have our own Easter, and our own Ascension.

The ultimate Gospel of the Easter proclamation is that because Jesus Christ rose from the dead in His Body, and we shall certainly rise from the dead in our bodies, then in the end, the eschaton, the completion and fulfillment of all things, everything is going to be alright. Everything. God shall be all in all. ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.’

In the end, all will be Amen and Alleluia.