The Most Reverend Cardinal

Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy

"The resurrection of Christ"

"Why are you seeking one who is alive, here among the dead? He is not here, He has risen again" (Luke 24,5-6). This was the announcement of the event that radically transformed the history of mankind and of the cosmos. The first day after the Saturday, two men in dazzling apparel spoke thus to the devout women, indicating that the sepulchre was empty and manifesting the truth about Christ crucified: He is He who lives, really the I am, the Son of God, co-eternal with the father and with the Holy Spirit.

This historical and transcendent event marks Christ’s humanity’s passage from death to divine Trinitarian life. "As the scriptures had foretold he rose again on the third day" (1 Cor 15,4), as Saint Paul was to say in his first letter to the Corinthians. The Greek verb he uses, egégertai, is a perfect passive tense that indicates an event of the past that will also last in the present: He has Risen! The body of the Risen Christ is forever qualified to live the glorious and immortal life of the Trinity, it is "a spiritual body" (1 Cor 15,44) entirely pervaded by the vital breath of God’s creator Spirit, which transforms it from corruptible into incorruptible, from weak to strong, from mortal to immortal.

"The Resurrection of Christ": this is the subject of this eighteenth international theological video-conference, a subject discussed in a dual perspective, Christological and Trinitarian, which we have just referred to, a perspective that introduces us to the soteriological dimension of the Resurrection itself.

The culmination of the revelation of the Trinitarian God’s love, the Resurrection is in fact the supreme fulfilment of the divine redeeming plan, with its objective of transmitting a new life to all human beings, freeing them from the slavery of sin and rendering them victorious over death. It is the event of the definite recomposition of God’s friendship with all mankind: eternal life flows as a firstling in He who has Risen and through Him in all men, called upon to rise again with Him and in Him. Christ Risen is the éschaton, the final and definite reality, which renews the cosmic order of the creation, recapitulating in Himself all things, "all that is on earth, all that is in heaven" (Eph 1,10); it is the fulfilment of the hopes of all men, hope for immortality and the fullness of glory also in His corporeity.

On this subject, it is suggestive to observe that in the Byzantine iconographic tradition the Resurrection is represented by the victory of the strongest: Christ who, sustained by the splendour of His wounded love, holds out His hand and speaks to Adam, who is still numbed and a prisoner of the underworld, so as to redeem him from the solitude of the ade (see Eph 4,9) and lead him out in the freedom of the Father’s eternal glory. "I am your God who for you became your Son. Awaken you who sleep! In fact I did not create you that you should remain a prisoner of hell. Rise from the dead. I am the life of the dead"(PG 43, 440A.452C; see Eph 5,14). These are the words of an ancient Easter Night homily attributed to Epiphanius who imagines the new Adam, Christ, unhinging the doors of the kingdom of death and allowing the light of Truth to penetrate.

All this, in its many aspects, will be commented on in this international session by the Theologians who have been invited and to all I wish to express my heartfelt thanks. Let us remember that these speeches are broadcast live from ten countries in the five continents. Speeches will be given from Rome, from the head Offices of the Congregation for the Clergy, by Professor Georges Cottier, theologian for the Papal House, by Professor Jean Galot, by Professor Rino Fisichella and Professor Bruno Forte. There will also be interventions from New York by Professor Michael Hull, from Manila by Professor José Vidamor Yu; from Taiwan by Professor Louis Aldrich, from Johannesburg by Professor Stuart Bate OMI, from Bogotá by Professor Silvio Cajiao, from Regensburg H.E. Professor Gerhard Ludwig Müller, from Sydney Professor Gary Dewery, from Madrid by Professor Carrasco Rouco, and from Moscow by Professor Ivan Kowalewsky. I hope you all enjoy the conference.

From the Holy See, April 29^th 2003.