Vigils Reading – Easter Friday

From a sermon by

ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

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Now let us contemplate the means which God’s Divine Wisdom actually

adopted with a view to making Christ’s resurrection subservient to the

propagation of His Gospel. He showed Himself openly, not to all the people, but

to witnesses chosen before of God. It is, indeed, a general characteristic of the

course of God’s providence to make the few the channels of His blessings to the

many; but in the instance we are considering, a few were selected because only a

few could be made instruments…

To be witnesses of His resurrection it was necessary to have known our

Lord intimately before His death. This was the case with the Apostles; but it was

not enough. It was necessary that they should be certain it was He himself, the

very same whom they had known before. You recollect how He urged them to

handle Him, and be sure that they could testify to His rising again… But people

are not easily prevailed upon to be faithful advocates of any cause. Not only is

the multitude fickle; but the best, unless urged, tutored, disciplined to their

work, give way; untrained nature has no principles.

It would seem, then, that our Lord gave His attention to a few because, if

the few are gained, the many will follow. To these few He showed Himself again

and again. These He restored, comforted, warned, inspired. He formed them to

Himself, that they might show forth His praise. That period of preparatory

prayer, meditation and instruction which the Apostles passed through under

our Lord’s visible presence for forty days, was to them something that could not

have been had they been following Him from place to place in public and mixing

in the busy crowds of the world.

So much then in answer to the question: Why did Christ not show Himself

to the whole Jewish people after His resurrection? – I ask in reply: what would

have been the purpose of it? – a mere passing triumph over sinners whose

judgment is reserved for the next world. On the other hand, such a procedure

would have interfered with, even defeated, the real object of His rising again,

namely, the propagation of His Gospel through the world by means of His own

intimate friends and followers.

We, too, though we are not witnesses of Christ’s actual resurrection, are so

spiritually. By a heart awake from the dead, and by affections set on heaven, we

can as truly and without figure witness that Christ lives, as they did. Whoever

believes in the Son of God has the witness in themselves. Truth bears witness by

itself to its Divine Author. Whoever obeys God conscientiously, and lives holily,

forces all about them to believe and tremble before the unseen power of Christ.

To the world at large the believer does not witness; for few can see them

near enough to be moved by their manner of living. But to one’s neighbors one

manifests the Truth in proportion to their knowledge of the person; and some of

them, through God’s blessing, catch the holy flame, cherish it, and in their turn

transmit it. And thus in a dark world Truth still makes way in spite of the

darkness, passing from hand to hand.