The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Group will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

In his letter to the Corinthians, St Paul reminds us that if Christ had not been raised from the dead, then our Faith is vain, worthless, without foundation. It is nevertheless common to hear prominent, well credentialed people speaking of the ‘truth’ of the Resurrection rather than its ‘historicity.’ They may not deny that the Resurrection is historical but instead emphasize the faith of the early Christians, or the archetypal significance of the event, or other things that say less than what St Paul insists upon. That way of speaking manipulates distinctions that the Church has made since at least St Augustine to differentiate parts of Sacred Scripture that are true in only an allegorical or poetic way from those that recall historical facts.

The Resurrection as a fact of history underlines the objective goodness of creation. Those who defend the ‘truth’ of the Resurrection while denying that it actually happened deny the inherent goodness of creation and make it conditional on human will. It is good because of what people believe, rather than being good because God proclaimed it so and sent his only Son to redeem it.

Our Holy Father Dominic insisted on the goodness of the created, material world to the Albigensian men and women who denied vehemently that it was. Dominicans follow his example when they defend the Resurrection as a fact of history and not a pious myth. In this, members of the Order of Preachers have the special protection and intercession of the first person to see the empty tomb, the first to tell the apostles it was empty, the first to see the Lord in his risen flesh. St Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles, exemplified contemplative love bursting forth into action that first Easter Sunday. For that she has been venerated as a patroness of the Order almost since its founding. May her intercession and that of St Dominic gain for each of us the grace to proclaim to the world Jesus Christ risen from the dead.