For those who accept the Resurrection, the
eucatastrophe that makes
of history a divine comedy, morning it will be forever.

The Resurrection of Jesus: Our Eucatastrophe

By James Flint

In the year 1997, an opinion poll in Great Britain asked over 25,000 individuals what book deserved the title “the greatest of the century.” A clear answer was received from the British nation, by far the highest number of votes going to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The reaction to this news was instantaneous—and it was furious. The “chattering classes” of Britain, the professional intellectuals, were utterly outraged, one of them screeching in print: “It just shows the folly of teaching people to read. Close all the libraries. Use the money for something else. It’s [a] black day for British culture.” 1

Being myself a long-time admirer of Tolkien, I was not quite so distressed. In truth, I was delighted, for his trilogy, and its prequel The Hobbit, offers what seems to me, as it did to Tolkien, not only entertainment but also a well-grounded Catholic view of reality. The Third Age of the World, in Tolkien’s telling, possesses more than a few Christian resonances. One of those, one aspect of Tolkien’s thinking that I would like to explore a bit, is the “eucatastrophe”—the prefix being a Greek word for good, such as we find in eulogy, a final good word about a person.

In 1944, in a letter to his son, 2 Tolkien cited an example of “eucatastrophe” from The Hobbit. It is towards the end of the book, at the Battle of the Five Armies, when the day appears lost for the dwarfish, elven, and human forces, about to be overwhelmed by hordes of goblins and wolves. In near-despair, the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, glances to the West, where the sun is setting, along, it would seem, with all hope for the future. Tolkien records what happens next: “Bilbo looked round. He gave a great cry: he had seen a sight that made his heart leap, dark shapes small yet majestic against the distant glow. ‘The Eagles! The Eagles!’ he shouted. ‘The Eagles are coming!’” 3 Coming to help. Everything was going to turn out all right.

For what had taken place here, Tolkien wrote his son, “I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.” Tolkien maintained that the “eucatastrophe” was not a mere literary device, “but a sudden glimpse of the truth, a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe around us.” We are often tempted to think, life’s burdens seem sometimes to compel us to think, that we live in a world of necessity, of cause-and-effect, of constraint—the greatest constraint being death, lesser ones, constraints of superior force, oppressing us, controlling us, in the interval before death arrives. Limited creatures of clay, clay doomed to die, we can come to feel that not much lies before us that is worth looking forward to.

But no, says Tolkien in this explanation of the “eucatastrophe.” In the Great World (that’s Tolkien’s term) for which our nature was made, constraint and death do not have the final word. Things work otherwise there, and the greatest proof of this, Tolkien writes, the greatest of all “eucatastrophes,” was the Resurrection of Jesus. The sudden happy turn in the story that pierces you with a joy that brings tears.

Tolkien expands on his theme thus, “Christian joy produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled.” We mourn at the Crucifixion, at its horror, even though we know Easter Sunday is at hand. But no matter how we mourn, we do not despair, for our faith in the Resurrection lets us peek into a world beyond our own, a world where the final word belongs not to death, but to love. And this, again, is not a world confined to the imagination, or a world reserved for the gods, but the Great World for which our nature was made. The Resurrection is our eucatastrophe, no less than it is Jesus’.

What cannot be emphasized enough, from a Christian point of view, is how the story of Jesus is not just a story about Jesus. Already in the third century, the Church Father Origen observed 4 that it is not enough for us to acknowledge that Christ was crucified; we must join St. Paul in saying, “I am crucified with Christ” (cf. Gal. 2:20). Similarly, our faith tells us more than that “Christ is risen”; again with Paul, the Christian will declare, “We shall also live with him” (cf. Romans 6:8). The theology of the Mystical Body applies here: an intimate relationship exists between the Christian and Christ, who became one with us in the flesh that we might become one with him in God.

One aspect of this intimacy, what seems a sad aspect, was foreshadowed by the prophet Zechariah about five hundred years before Christ: “They will look on the one whom they have pierced; they will mourn for him as for an only son, and weep for him as people weep for a first-born child” (12:10). Of course, we recall St. John’s use (19:37) of that phrase, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced,” at the moment when the soldier thrust his lance into the side of Jesus.

But think now of the whole passage, and of its wider application. What could be a worse nightmare than suddenly to find that you had pierced, had put to death an innocent person in some fit of folly or rage—and then what could be worse than suddenly to recognize that the person killed was as dear to you as would be your own child, the beloved focus of all your hopes and dreams? Imagine how you would feel if you were responsible for the death of the best person you had ever met.

But then suppose that, in some manner altogether incomprehensible, the terrible deed was suddenly put right, that through no power of your own, that on account of no merit of your own, you were given a second chance, that the one you had loved—loved more than you had ever realized before that moment—that one had returned to life, and the friendship could be resumed. But not merely resumed on the same plane, but moved to an infinitely higher one, in a world transformed by a miracle of forgiveness and love, of sorrow now transformed unexpectedly but utterly decisively into joy. Such is the “eucatastrophe” of the Resurrection.

I want to interject here a dogmatic statement, lest the direction of these reflections give the quite erroneous notion that I regard the Resurrection as merely a wonderfully happy ending to a fictional story, a lovely tale meant only to give us a warm and fuzzy sensation of God’s enduring love. Hardly. “On the third day he rose again,” is something I believe as a Christian and as an historian. For I regard the Resurrection of Christ as no less history than his birth or his death.

Indeed, I would encourage everyone to read or reread sections 638-658 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is not at all embarrassed to term the Resurrection an “historical fact.” The tomb was empty, because the body had risen again, in a way that could be, and was, historically verified, by the appearances to the disciples. There are no bones lying in a grave, while some pleasant memories of a nice person “live” in our hearts. That sort of notion of a mere intellectual survival of, shall we say, the “Jesus-idea” is not what our Faith teaches.

But, howsoever much I believe in it, I don’t want to dwell on the historical aspect of the Resurrection, on a defense of its reality, because my sense is that, for most Christians nowadays, the real challenge when thinking about the Resurrection is not a worry that it did not occur. I think, however, that there are many Christians who can identify, all too well, with an individual who once told Ronald Rolheiser: “You know, it is easier for me to believe in God, in a supernatural world beyond our own, in a world of spirit, and even in the physical Resurrection, than it is for me to believe that anything really new will ever happen to me.” 5

Put more simply: Christ is Risen, fine, but, so what? Jesus won his battle over Satan—okay, if you say so. But how does any of this, how does anything of what we say happened on the first Easter Sunday, apply to our individual existences, here and now? How does Jesus rising from the dead matter to me? Can anything really new—especially anything new and good—happen to me? Those of us who have lived a bit longer are perhaps more susceptible to such thoughts, those of us who know that we are past our prime physically, that our bodies, while not necessarily shrinking, are wearing out. The understandable discouragement this creates about our physical condition can easily lead to a spiritual weariness as well. How can anything really new ever happen to me, anything, that is, except annihilation?

The Christian belief in the Resurrection is a statement that something can, that something new can happen to me, if I am linked with Christ. “ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you,” wrote St. Paul, “then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you” (Rom. 8:11).

This is not a mere assertion that more than oblivion awaits us after death—most cultures, most religions, have had some notion of the survival of the human spirit in some form. But that by itself would not necessarily be a cheerful prospect. It could certainly be said that Christopher Reeves’ spirit was intact after his body was shattered, but was that a condition to be envied? Just what good would be a purely spiritual survival, is a question that we might ask too rarely. The very fact that we have so much easier a time depicting the pains of hell than the joys of heaven shows something of the problem. Even religion-friendly comic strips, that show deceased grandparents looking down with affection and interest upon the doings of their loved ones, still give the impression that those in heaven have become mere onlookers of real life, the real life that takes place only among those who still abide here on earth.

The Christian belief in the Resurrection promises something much more than what we see in such portrayals of heaven, portrayals that show a painless existence in white robes upon clouds, sitting around thinking about or talking about those we left behind, those with whom we would really rather still be. What is promised? Well, recall the image used a little while ago for the Crucifixion: imagine if you had just killed, or at least had been responsible for the death of, the best person you had ever met. Now imagine—again, using the same terminology—that this person you thought you had lost had returned to life. The friendship you thought you lost is restored, but on an infinitely higher plane, in a world transformed by miracle, by a miracle of forgiveness and love, of sorrow now transformed unexpectedly but utterly decisively into joy.

Something along those lines is what is meant by resurrection, but with one important nuance: rather than “returned to life,” in the sense of resuming earthly existence, the one raised up bodily in Christ enters into a new and eternal life. What the biochemical or physiological composition of a risen body in this sense might be, I have not the slightest idea. But our belief in the resurrection of the body—that because of the Resurrection of Christ a follower of Christ shall be saved both in body and in soul—does promise more than mere spiritual survival, more than a ghostly existence of floating around on clouds or in attics.

To complete the imagery, imagine having the best person, the best people, you ever knew, by your side bodily for all eternity, with you able to enjoy their company to the full, enjoy the fullness of their beauty in both body and soul. Enjoy them, moreover, without the fear of loss that accompanies all of our relationships here and now. And all this in the company of Christ Jesus, the best person you ever could meet.

Happy rather than sad—that is what the Christian belief in the Resurrection proclaims, that God’s plan for the world, for us, is fundamentally happy, rather than sad. 6 The world and its history are fundamentally and profoundly good, for the world and its history are under the sovereignty of an immensely good God, and therefore, as Julian of Norwich liked to say, “all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.”

There is also a Trinitarian dimension to this. Notwithstanding the repeated assurances of the Book of Genesis that God looked upon what he had made and found it to be good, very good, still, throughout the Old Testament, there was a lurking fear that because creation implies separation from God, therefore creation involves a diminution down the ages as the distance from God increases. Note how the ages of the first humans decrease as we proceed through Genesis. This only reflects, of course, the pessimism so strong in pagan religions, that speak of a Golden Age of the distant past, giving way to a Silver, to a Bronze, down to whatever sad and pathetic state we have sunk to by now.

With the Trinity, we can and we ought to think in very different terms. Here we have a Son eternally begotten from the Father, but this is a begetting without separation. The being of the Son is not a being apart, ever more distant, from the Father. In just the same way, the Christian understanding of creation is that God could and God did make a world different from himself but not ever more distant, ever more separate. Just as the Son who comes from the Father is the Father’s glory, and is so now as much as ever, so creation is the Son’s glory, and is so now as much as ever.

Creation, including human creation, was not an accident, not a mistake—in pagan accounts of creation, that’s often what we are, a mistake of the gods—but a deliberate act of love. The Resurrection is a statement that what began with love, in creation, shall end the same way, for those who do not reject the love offered them. After all, God could, and God did, take the very worst we could do—the Crucifixion—and make of it something beyond the very best we could imagine.

I began with Tolkien, I wish to conclude with thoughts suggested by G.K. Chesterton, 7 another great twentieth-century English Catholic writer. He reflected, in one of his works, upon the meaning of the glorious account of Mary Magdalene in the twentieth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Something had happened, the tomb was empty, the disciples knew not what to think. Mary Magdalene sat and wept, until she saw the One who appeared to be a gardener. When he spoke her name, in a flash, perhaps more than any other person in all of history before her, she understood what was meant by the power of God, she became the first true witness of the eucatastrophe at the heart of history, of the sudden happy turn in the story that pierces one with a joy that brings tears.

It is written in the Book of Genesis that God used to walk in the Garden in the cool of the evening, walk there with Adam his friend. But then, as we know, something happened, the friendship between God and humanity was disrupted, and those seeking God did so amidst the perilous shadows of the night. So it remained down the ages, until the moment recorded in St. John’s Gospel. Then we find God once again walking in the Garden, revealing himself to Mary his friend and sending her forth with a tale such as had never been told before. God had returned to his Garden, but with one difference. Now it was morning. For those who accept the Resurrection, the eucatastrophe that makes of history a divine comedy, morning it will be forever.

NOTES

1 Cited by Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: Man and Myth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 1-2.

2 J.R.R. Tolkien to Christopher Tolkien, November 7-8, 1944, Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 100-101.

3 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again, rev.ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 270.

4 Against Celsus 2:69. The idea is developed in Robert Louis Wilken, “Interpreting the New Testament,” Pro Ecclesia 14:1 (Winter 2005): 23-24.

5 Ronald Rolheiser column, appearing in The Irish Catholic 13 (April 2000): 20.

6 Much in the next three paragraphs was suggested by Peter J. Leithart, “The Christian Novelty: What Homer Could Not See, & Jane Austen Could,” Touchstone 18:2 (March 2005): 34-39.

7 G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York: Image Books, 1955), 216-217.

Reverend James Flint, O.S.B., entered St. Procopius Abbey, Lisle, Illinois, in 1974. After several years of teaching at the monastery’s high school, Benet Academy, and studying theology at the Benedictine College of Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, he was ordained in 1983. He completed a doctorate in Modern European History at the Catholic University of America in 1990. At the present time, he serves as Librarian, Archivist and Historian of the Abbey, and he assists in the Business Office at Benedictine University. His book, Great Britain and the Holy See: The Diplomatic Relations Questions, 1846-1852, was published in 2003. This is his first article for HPR.