When the Church speaks about our (unlike Christ’s) resurrection, the semantic emphasis is not on nature (which has already resurrected, healed), but on the hypostasis, which grows to catholic, integral knowledge of all being. To resurrect – is to be in communion with God and the saints in one Body (Church).
Resurrection as resuscitation in ‘leather robes’ – is a return to II f. existence from III f. But Resurrection (in the specific Christian understanding) – is a transition from state to state: from the hellish, godless state to the Paradisal, Divine in the Holy Spirit. Resurrection does not concern forms of existence (I, II, III), but destroys hell, spiritualizes being. It does not return only to the Paradisal state (the original state from which we fell, fell away), but gives creation the fullness of deification! Therefore, after the Resurrection of Christ ‘leather robes’ already exist in the Paradisal state of deification, unlike the hellish, godless state, in which humanity existed before the Incarnation.
‘Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death’ and ‘no one in the tomb anymore,’ ‘hell is destroyed’ and already the Holy Spirit reveals our uniqueness, uniqueness and universality of our hypostasis, our ‘I.’ Not about victory over biological death (as we talked in the previous chapter – it does not need to be overcome – it is a blessing for creation and will cease on its own when there will be a new Heaven and Earth) the Church sings on Easter night (and every Sunday all year), but over death as a consequence of godlessness, over hell and existence beyond God! Thus, all (by being) have resurrected, but so far not all have come to the consciousness of their own resurrection (healing) in Christ!
Resurrection – is not resuscitation, not a return to this form of existence, – it is an entry into Divine life. Christ began to resurrect (as water does not boil immediately, but gradually: 10, 20, ..90, 100 degrees) from conception (Annunciation) (more precisely to say – there was a gradual manifestation of resurrection in the created world, which was accomplished in the Incarnation). That is, the process of resurrection occurred with an increase in each form of existence (I, II,…). Christ was human nature, God in every form of existence, that is, human nature existed by the Divine (in the Hypostasis of the Word) mode of being. To resurrect – is to be like God.
The Resurrection of Christ was completed on Good Friday on the Cross, when the Lord, having experienced the last form of alienation from God (god-forsakenness: ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken me’), exclaimed: ‘It is finished.’ And the manifestation of the Resurrection to people occurred three days later (more precisely, on the third day). Resurrection was accomplished (‘the water boiled’) on Friday (more precisely at the Annunciation = Incarnation), manifested on Sunday,
‘Resurrection,’ and was given on Pentecost (These three milestones – are stages of spiritual life: the first for all has already passed Christ – the Resurrection is accomplished for all, the second – is meeting the Risen Christ, which is the beginning of Christianity, the third – is the acquisition of the Grace of the Holy Spirit).
There are men who say that Christ Resurrected us in the Incarnation (at the Annunciation, when ‘the Word became Flesh (= Body – V.A.)’ – humanity, which already existed in Christ by the Divine mode of being, – resurrected; hence the possibility of the Forerunner being filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother), and everything subsequent: birth, baptism, transfiguration, suffering, cross, descent into hell – was a Theophany (to think so – solid food, therefore we only mentioned that there is such; more detailed – individually, so as not to tire those who do not need it). But you can reason both this way (as in this paragraph), and as we reasoned above – we are still interested in the result (in this case). It does not matter when and how the Bread and Water of Life were brought to the starving.
The feast is already ready, all are invited! Hungry?! – Take and eat! Thirsty?! – Take and drink! And instead of going the Way, – we discuss (even to mortal hatred and malice): when and how They (this Path) paved it!?”
Some readers of Part I have begun to accuse me of inconsistency because I said that the Most Holy Theotokos resurrected on Pentecost, that is, before her Dormition; they argue their position based on various kinds of catechisms, which state that resurrection happens after death. We have already refuted the baselessness of these catechetical claims above.
But let’s repeat. When the Church asserts that on Pentecost (the same Divine Grace of the Holy Spirit for the Theotokos was deifying, a completion, whereas for the apostles it was sanctifying, that is, the beginning of deification, the leaven that was to leaven the whole lump) the Most Holy Theotokos resurrected (and this, as the Church testifies, occurred while the Theotokos was still in the second phase of existence), there is no contradiction here. (If your theory cannot accommodate the fact, then it is not the Church’s fault. In Orthodox teaching, all facts are organically connected and harmonized). She was already hypostatically living the fullness of the Divine life (by grace), although she still had to undergo the last metamorphosis by shedding the “leather robes”! And that one can be God (or a god by grace, if we are not talking about Jesus Christ – the Hypostasis of the Logos, the Son of God) in any form of existence, we see in the Incarnation. In the womb of the Most Holy Theotokos, was Jesus Christ God? Yes, and His uterine form of existence was no obstacle. And when we say He was God, we emphasize the human nature, clothed in “leather robes.” That is, by human nature in every form of existence, the Lord was God, Divinely hypostasizing human being. (That’s why we say it’s not important “what,” but the main thing is “how, by what means”; Adam in Paradise defined spiritual nature into death, a perishable form of existence, giving it a godless existence. And Christ gave the perishable, mortal, “godless” nature a way of Divine life; Christ Loved with “sinful,” “maimed” nature, while Adam sinned with pure, spiritual.) Yes, Jesus suffered, hungered, wept…, but never ceased to be God, living the fullness of being (hungering, suffering, tortured, and even “dead” being) and was Happy.