After the Resurrection of Christ, we witness Him appearing eleven times to his disciples. His purpose is only one: to assist them in their belief and to convince them about the fact of the Resurrection. It is important to understand what Christ aimed for by appearing to his disciples, because it confirms the fact that belief in the Resurrection of the dead does not constitute a matter of intellectual acceptance. The Resurrection cannot be understood by reason alone, but is revealed in the Holy Spirit to those who sincerely seek Christ.
It is not a matter of coincidence that people nowadays accept that Christ’s teaching is of value and importance, but they find it extremely difficult to believe that He was resurrected from the dead. If it was so difficult for His disciples—i.e. the persons who have lived with Him, heard his divine teaching and experienced His miracles (see Lk. 24:11; Mt. 28:17)—to believe in the Resurrection, imagine how difficult it is for all of us, the modern believers; for our faith is not strong and solid but weak. Faith, however, is not just a human question. Above all, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a revelation of God to humankind.
Two hundred years have passed since the beginning of Greek Revolution of 1821, the first successful revolution, after numerous failed attempts throughout five centuries, against the Ottoman conqueror and tyrant. It is an event of universal significance that not only signifies the resuscitation of Hellenism from the lethal bonds imposed by the Fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 but also affirms its ceaseless continuity from the depths of antiquity up to today. Though there exist several ways of celebrating such a milestone, only one is suitable par excellence: the tropos of participation, that is, of the communion with recent events two centuries old that abrogates spatiotemporal restrictions and renders to the celebrated not only what is proper to it but also its living perpetual imprint.
In the opening of the Platonic dialogue of The Timaeus, there is a passage where Plato narrates the achievements of the city of Athens against a great and powerful enemy from the west attempting to oppress all European cities. Plato describes how Athens “once upon a time suspended a power that moved by insult (hubris) towards the entire of Europe and Asia” (Timaeus, 24e). Albeit mythical, this Platonic narrative on the Atlantis, spelled out by Critias, contains elements pervading Greek identity and the diachronic universal service of Hellenism as defender of liberty and democracy. In this sense, already since Plato’s times we ascertain a self-consciousness of the Greek nation with respect to history, humanity, and its civilization.
The first rising of the sun in the East shoots rose light across the dim landscape; it is a time the early monks knew well, for a prayer service was starting, when the bell-ringer could just begin to see the lines in his hand. The Evangelist Mark leaves us in the Garden by the Tomb of Christ, at what may be the most extraordinary moment in history. For it was when those vivid shards of dawn light shot through the darkness from the East that Mary Magdalene and the other women came bearing myrrh to properly finish the burial preparations for their dear Lord, Jesus. As they approached, the Evangelist says they were anxious about how they would gain access to the tomb, for the stone was heavy.
Then, something profoundly miraculous happened. The Myrrhbearing women experienced something life-changing. All four Gospels describe the moment. Although each tells it a little differently, the message is so profound, and so utterly seminal to our life as Christians, that the details fall away and something utterly transcendent has happened and is revealed. And we too experience it personally and transcendently at Pascha. It is so luminously divine that it can only be described as something like a flashing white angelic figure—like lightning, really—a vision so powerful that the stone is moved and the empty tomb is visible; and in some dazzling way, the women suddenly know to depth of their hearts—He is not dead. Surely, this is the first truly apophatic apprehension of the Resurrection. He is not here! He is not dead! Christ is alive! And the radiant angel cried out to the Myrrhbearers: “Why do you women mingle myrrh with your tears? Look at the tomb and understand: the Savior has risen from the dead!” (Tone 2; Stichera of the Myrrh-bearers, Pentecostarion, for Myrrhbearers Sunday)
In Orthodox icons of Jesus’s empty tomb and resurrection, it is common to see Mary the mother of Jesus depicted as one of the myrrhbearing women. A related theme, although perhaps depicted less frequently in icons, is that the Virgin Mary saw the risen Jesus outside the tomb. Indeed, some Orthodox Christians today insist that Mary the mother of Jesus not only saw the risen Jesus outside the tomb, but that she was the first to see him there. Where did these traditions about Mary at the empty tomb originate, and are they corroborated by evidence from the four canonical gospels?
It is probable that these traditions about Mary the mother of Jesus at the tomb originated from the Diatessaron (attributed to Tatian c. 160-180), a harmony of the four gospels widely used by churches in Syria until the 5th century. Because the four gospels contain differences as well as contradictions that are difficult to reconcile, the Diatessaron selectively combines material from the four gospels to create a single, cohesive gospel. In the Diatessaron, the identities of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus seem to have been fused intentionally so that Mary the mother of Jesus—rather than Mary Magdalene as in John 20:1-18—can be understood as going to the tomb alone, where she saw the risen Jesus. One possible motivation for this fusion of Mary Magdalene with Mary the mother of Jesus may have stemmed from a desire to counter certain Gnostic groups that emphasized a special love Jesus had for Mary Magdalene. Nevertheless, the presence of Jesus’s mother at the tomb and her encounter with the risen Jesus also became elements in some apocryphal and Gnostic writings from the 2nd-4th centuries.