Nevertheless, although we commemorate Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection on their separate days in chronological order, the two form together a single swiftly moving action.  The Crucifixion reached its climax in the Resurrection, the visible outcome and proof of Christ’s superiority and victory over moral and spiritual evil, when God decisively and finally reversed what devil and human beings had done.

The Apostles realised that from the beginning.  So we find St Peter in his first public speech at Pentecost declaring, “Jesus of Nazareth…you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (NRSV, Acts 2:22,23,24, our emphasis).

On Good Friday he had endured the full fury of all that evil could do, and in the end evil had failed to drag him down to its own level.  The Prince of this world had come and had found that he had no power over Christ (King James Bible, John 14:30).  The Apostles had seen with their own eyes that his resistance to evil was total and invincible, and that death itself could destroy neither him nor his power.  For not only did they speak and eat with him after his Resurrection but they saw the same power at work in themselves that they had seen in him when he faced the full impact of wickedness and emerged victorious.