Originally published at The Catholic Thing
Long before the ancient and much-needed credal formulas, defining the parameters of our basic beliefs, like the great Councils of Ephesus and of Nicaea, the 1700th anniversary of which we will celebrate in 2025, the very first creed was uttered during the drama of the Easter days.
When the two disciples who encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the others of their astounding experience, they heard the words: “Yes, it is true, Jesus has risen from the dead.” That is the very foundation of our faith. If, as one inane clergyman said many years ago, the Resurrection was merely a “conjuring trick with bones,” then we should all eat, drink, and be merry and, perhaps, become Hare Krishna devotees. Yes, it is true: Christ is risen, and all has changed.
Before that fact, we pause and ponder the cosmos-changing, precursory fact, the very reason we celebrate Christmas, without which the Resurrection itself would not have the foundation it required.
We are in the “in-between time” from Christ’s first coming at Christmas, to His Second and Final Coming on the Last Day. That phrase comes from the Anglican poet and clergyman, Malcolm
