The Zen Garden (adjacent to monastery; 1980 Yearbook)

This Easter message was first published forty-five year ago, in the Portsmouth Bulletin for the summer of 1980.

In the time of Our Lord, among the Jews one of the religious parties that took exception to his teaching was the Sadducees. This particular group was small but very wealthy and included in its number the more important priests. There great divergence from the views of the Pharisees was their insistence that only the written Law of Moses, found in the first five books of what we call the Old Testament, was obligatory upon the Jews.



        One day, we are told in Saint Matthew's Gospel, Sadducees came to Jesus and, in an effort to show that the idea of the resurrection was foolish, even silly, they put to him this question: "Teacher, Moses said: ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.’ Now they were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, to which of the seven will she be wife? For they all had her."

        But Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God (that is, in the book of Exodus, which the Sadducees accepted as binding), ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead but of the living." And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

The idea of the resurrection is hard for modern man to accept. We are, many of us, natural Sadducees. In some ages in the past, men and women were perhaps more likely to tend to that turn of mind and piety which we call phariseeism, but today the rational, skeptical temper tends to make many of us Sadducees. Religion, Christianity, Catholicism has its truth and its uses, we seem to think, but one must also get ahead, have a good life, and not be a fanatic.

The Rhode Island Reception, Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport; Dom Abbot presents Andrew M. Hunt, Chairman of the Board of Consultants, a silver bowl in appreciation of his many years of devoted service to the School. (Summer Bulletin 1980)

        For such a spirit, for such a mind, the resurrection of the dead may be a pleasant hope, but more likely it seems to be an unlikely prospect.

        But Our Lord clearly emphasize is not only that the resurrection will come, but that the reason why the Sadducees cannot accept the drug is that they know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Is it perhaps because we too know neither the holy word of God nor his great and majestic power that we find the Resurrection of the dead at the close at this age a difficult doctrine to swallow?

        One elderly lady of my acquaintance was reported to me as saying: "I am not eager to die; I know what I have here, and I do not know what is beyond." That is a normal enough reaction to the prospective death. It is only a small step, however, which leads us from such a feeling or such a thought to the idea that there is almost certainly nothing beyond death.

        Christianity is centered on the idea that there is beyond death a richer more glorious life, the fullness of life, as Saint Paul says. The power of Christ’s own resurrection is the foretaste and the promise of the life which is to be ours, which indeed is already ours by virtue of the life of Christ we have through the Sacraments. Christ himself has risen in order that we may rise with Him and be with Him where our true happiness is in fact to be found.

        As I have said, we tend to be of a skeptical turn of mind. In a way, the Resurrection is too good to be true. It is this very attitude that makes us become less than persons living in the light of the risen Christ, in the light of glory.

        The boldest remedy I can think of for this attitude is that we should pray against it. We must ask to become people who know the word of God and His power. I say this would be a bold remedy and a bold prayer because if we do become such men and women, knowing God and His power, we will in all likelihood also become discontented with ourselves and the easy, although often oblique and unspoken, rejection of the Gospel’s power by the world around us. In fact, we will become aware of our own frequent rejections of that message and power.

        To end, I put before you an ancient Easter prayer from the liturgy of the Church:


May God grant you all abundant joy and blessings in this Easter Season.

Right Rev. Dom Matthew Stark, O.S.B.

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