Here Phillips Brooks rightly connects our belief in Christ’s resurrection to the transformation of our lives. Eternal life is not merely an idea that we celebrate but a reality that shapes our earthly pilgrimage.

Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in His resurrection. Let him say not merely, “Christ has risen,” but “I shall rise. Not merely He underneath all death and change was unchangeable, but in me there is something that no stain of earth can tarnish and no stroke of the world can bruise. I too am part of God and have God’s immortality in me.” Then nobility must come. Until men’s souls shall be full not merely of the knowledge, but of the genius and spirit of immortality, we shall be the ignoble things we are.

—The Spiritual Man and Other Sermons (1891) Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

— Scott Gunn

_{Photo: Pilgrims light candles near the Armenian shrine of the holy women, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, by Scott Gunn}