Easter Sunday (2026) - Fr Mannes Tellis, OP

What does Resurrection mean?

At this moment in our world there is, no doubt, the feeling that death and destruction are more apparent than the focus of the religious festivity we celebrate at Easter.

What does resurrection mean then in the face of war, death, destruction, the cost-of-living crisis, and the spectre of our country possibly running out of fuel?

The response to the historic problem of human suffering and disappointment can take only two paths. The first is that of the Existentialist. The Existentialist paradigm posits that reality is meaningless and the only way to untangle this web is to will one’s way out of it. A recent commentator framed this project, devised by the nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in these words:

Nietzsche’s own solution to meaninglessness is that if even prior to the deformations produced by Christianity man would rather “will nothingness than not will”, ...the will to power in its original disposition is also in some profound way the will to meaning.(Michael Casey, Meaninglessness: The Solutions of Nietzsche, Freud and Rorty, North Melbourne, Freedom Press, 2001, p.23)

To escape the horror and reality of suffering one is faced either with constructing a way out of suffering, a DIY meaning, like that proposed by Nietzsche, or embracing it head on, not denying it, but realising that in fact suffering does have meaning and does indeed allow for a sharing in the very life of God.

Unlike the approach of Nietzsche who, rather optimistically seeks only a human way out of the suffering of this world based on the triumph of the will, it is Our Lord Jesus Christ however who provides an alternative to the dismay of human suffering. This response is found in the gritty reality of suffering in Christ’s own body. It is this Christ who is paradoxically both God and man, simultaneously Life entering death, that engages in this wonderful conflict, the conflict of death wrestling with life, with suffering wrestling with a meaning. The net result of the Christ project being that death is in fact turned inside out, and thus, the last enemies of man, suffering and death, strangely become the gateway to unending life.

This new life of Jesus is qualified by an important distinction however, namely, that the eternal life Christ offers is not an interminable ‘this’ life but an eternal unalloyed joy of the ‘other’. The ‘other’ is God’s own life, God’s own time.

This reality cannot be totally comprehended this side of heaven but suffering and the disillusionment of this world do indeed contribute to the essence of this new existence offered in Christ. Once again, the paradox of Christianity presents itself in that, perhaps, we may only be able to relish more acutely heavenly glory because of the wounds of this world, the war, the death, the cost of living, the tiredness, all the vicissitudes of this life. How can one know the true meaning of victory if one hasn’t experienced the depth of despair found in defeat?

Today is our Victory day. The events of the Passion provide the dramatic and necessary backdrop to the Resurrection. We note that without Christ’s wounds, which persist even in his glorified body, there would be no evidence of Resurrection’s price. Christ’s wounds then act as an eternal reminder that Resurrection is costly, Resurrection demands a striving, Resurrection is not a prize automatically imputed to us but comes at that price, the price of the sadness and difficulty of this life.

Thus, the wounds of Christ in his Resurrected body hold that, despite the previously enumerated woes, there is hope, there is joy, there is peace, but not without those difficulties that are a part of human life. By his wounds then we are healed. Resurrection means there is hope beyond despair.

Fr Mannes Tellis, OP is the Parish Priest of Prospect-North Adelaide, South Australia.