Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
--1 Peter 1:3
There are two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners, and the sinners who think they are righteous. The hope offered in the gospel is a living one because it comes not from a memory or an idea but from a Person who is alive. The resurrection is the hinge on which everything turns. If Christ is dead, our hope is dead. If Christ is alive, then hope is not a wish -- it is a birth. We have been *born again* into it. It is not something we work up in ourselves but something we are brought into by an act of God. And because God is the one who acted, the hope holds.
--Blaise Pascal, *Pensées*
The resurrection does not simply mean that Jesus has gone to a place where we may one day join him. It means that a new creation has been born, that a new world has been inaugurated, and that we are called to live within it *now*. The "living hope" of 1 Peter is not a vague optimism about the afterlife. It is the concrete certainty that the powers of death have been broken, that the future has invaded the present, and that every act of faithfulness, love, and justice is invested in a world that will not be lost. Hope is not a feeling. It is a mode of being in a world that has been turned right-side-up by the empty tomb.
--N.T. Wright, *Surprised by Hope*
Justin Martyr, *First Apology*, circa 155 AD. Written to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius to defend Christianity against persecution -- the earliest surviving account of Christian worship outside the New Testament.
"We do not receive these things as common bread or common drink. For just as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise we have been taught that the food over which thanks have been given by the prayer of the word that comes from Him -- the food from which our blood and flesh are nourished by transformation -- is both the flesh and blood of that same Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs which they composed, which are called Gospels, have thus handed down what was commanded to them: that Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and said, 'This do in remembrance of Me; this is My body.' And likewise He took the cup, gave thanks, and said, 'This is My blood.' And He gave these to them alone."
Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the Christian life. It is the sermon that asks nothing, the absolution that costs nothing, the blessing we claim without the cross we refuse. The disciple who wants the hope of resurrection must first die with Christ -- and death, unlike a sentiment, is something you feel.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, *The Cost of Discipleship*
If the resurrection is really the beginning of a new creation, what am I doing today that would be meaningless if it were not?
I love the nature of the sage. I can teach it to myself. As long as I am not forced to face anything that disturbs me, I seem tranquil. But when a difficulty arises, the scars of old wounds are revealed. It takes true character to overcome these things, and the person who is truly educated will prevail.
--Musonius Rufus, 1st century AD
St Clair, Michigan -- Partly sunny, widespread frost early, high 63°F / low 48°F