Resurrection Encounters

The story of the resurrection is central to Christian faith. It is at the core of the Gospel. Writing to the Corinthian Church, where there were many voices questioning the resurrection, the Apostle Paul writes, ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.’ (1 Corinthians 15:17). Take away the resurrection, and all you have left is a good man called Jesus, who was brutally abused before being crucified. Dead, and buried.

But if the resurrection is true, this Jesus is the Son of God.

In recent post in our series on Mark’s Gospel, we’ve looked at the tomb, the fact that the body of Christ was placed inside, and that in spite of the presence of guards, the tomb was opened during the early hours of Sunday morning. We noticed that the Jewish leaders went to considerable lengths to control the narrative, claiming that the body had been stolen during the night (Matthew 28:12-15), even though this contradicted the witness testimony of the guards. (If the guards story wasn’t correct, why did they abandon their post – which could easily (under Roman law) have led to their own execution).

In this series I’m going to look at the series of reported encounters with the risen Christ. One of the first things we might notice is that there are relatively few of them, which make it all the more important that we understand what each of them tells us about the risen Christ.

Recently, spent some time following the ‘contemplative’ path with St Ignatius of Loyola, In this series of posts, I’ve chosen to follow his pattern of the thirteen appearances, or ‘apparitions’, of Christ as outlined in his guided reflection in Week 4 of his ‘Spiritual Exercises’ ⁽ⁱ⁾ on the ‘Resurrection of Christ the Lord’.  

1. Christ Appears to Mary, Mother of Christ
2. The Women at the Tomb
3. Peter at the Tomb
4. Appearance in the Garden
5. Road to Emmaus
6. Appearance to the Disciples, without Thomas
7. Appearance to Thomas
8. Breakfast On the Beach
9. Mount Tabor – The Ascension
10. 500 witnesses
11. Appearance to St James
12. Appearance to St Joseph of Arimathea
13. Appearance to St Paul (Road to Damascus)

Richard Jackson: Horsham,West Sussex

^{(i) St Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, , p69-72, E-Saint Library Edition (2010)}