Vigils Reading

IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE

By St John Henry Newman4

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Jesus Christ says, “As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given also

to the Son to have life in Himself;” and afterwards He says, “Because I live, you

also shall live.” It would seem then, that as Adam is the author of death to the

whole human race, so is Christ the origin of immortality. When Adam ate the

forbidden fruit, it was as a poison spreading through his whole nature, soul and

body, and from there through every one of his descendants. We are told

expressly “in Adam all die.” We are born heirs to that infection of nature which

followed upon his fall.

But we are also told, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be

made alive;” and the same law of God’s providence is maintained in both cases.

Adam spreads poison; Christ diffuses life eternal. Christ communicates life to

us, one by one, by means of that holy and incorrupt nature which He assumed

for our redemption. Therefore St. Paul says that “the last Adam was made” not

merely “a living soul,” but “a quickening” or life-giving “Spirit”, as being “the

Lord from heaven.” Let us not doubt, though we do not sensibly approach Him,

that He can still give us the virtue of His purity and incorruption, as He has

promised, and in a more heavenly and spiritual manner than “in the days of His

flesh;” in a way which does not remove merely the ailments of the body, but

sows the seed of eternal life in body and soul.

Let us not deny Him the glory of His life-giving holiness, that quickening

grace which is the renovation of our whole race, a spirit quick and powerful and

piercing, so as to leaven the whole mass of human corruption and make it live.

He is the first-fruits of the Resurrection: we follow Him each in our own order,

as we are hallowed by His inward presence. And in this sense, among others,

Christ, in the Scripture phrase, is “formed in us;” that is, communication is

made to us of His new nature, which sanctifies the soul, and makes the body

immortal.

Such then is our risen Savior in Himself and towards us: — conceived by

the Holy Spirit; holy from the womb; dying, but abhorring corruption; rising

again the third day by His own inherent life; exalted as the Son of God and Son

of man, to raise us after Him; and filling us incomprehensibly with His

immortal nature, till we become like Him; filling us with a spiritual life which

may expel the poison of the tree of knowledge and restore us to God. How

wonderful a work of grace! Strange it was that Adam should be our death, but

stranger still and very gracious, that God Himself should be our life, by means

of that human tabernacle which He has taken on Himself.

4 Parochial and Plain Sermons. John Henry Newman. Ignatius Press. San Francisco. 1987. p.316.8