Easter Quote

"Make no mistake; if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours...
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door...
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convienience, our own sense of beauty,
lest,awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

-John Updike, "Seven Stanzas at Easter"