Christ is risen! Hallelujah, he is risen indeed!

As the God-man, Jesus died on the sixth day of his final week. His lifeless and spiritless body rested in the tomb throughout the seventh day and his human spirit rejoiced in heavenly glory during that abnormal in-between condition of being disembodied. But raised from the dead at the first light of the third day, Christ arose into eternal life on the first day of the week. Or, better, on the eighth day, a day that will never end.

We celebrate the resurrection of Christ on the first day of every week. But every first day of the week is also the eighth day, a reminder of eternal life life beyond the grave, and not simply for our disembodied spirits. It is a reminder that this present life will come to an end. We, too, will rise on our eighth day that never ends. In due season, we will rise:  he is the firstfruits, and we will follow our living head. All of us will experience our sixth day of death, and the seventh day of resting in the grace. But Christ's eighth day is the pledge of our resurrection and eternal life.