On the eve of his crucifixion Jesus repeatedly tries to prepare his disciples for the dramatic events that were about to unfold that night, but they were not receptive:
Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy (John 16:20).
He then compares what they will experience to childbirth:
When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you (vss. 21,22).
This promise to the disciples that “no one will take your joy away” is activated at the point of Jesus’ resurrection, when he “sees them again”. In the narrative of Lazarus Jesus provides a prophetic indication of this. He had arrived in Bethany four days too late to help his friend who had already succumbed to his illness:
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. …Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die (vss. 21, 23-26).
If not for the resurrection of Christ, these two statements would otherwise negate each other: if you die, you will live, and if you live, you will never die. Human mortality is irrelevant and does not negate the eternal joy that is promised to the believer after Christ’s resurrection:
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord (John 20:19-20).
Forty days later Jesus left them and returned to heaven but the joy of the disciples remained:
As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God (Luke 24:51-53).
In the Book of Acts, St. Luke reports that the newly found Christian Church would be centered around the Eucharist:
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers (Acts 2:42).
According to St. Irenaeus (AD 130-202), the Eucharist manifests the promise of Christ that even in our human existence our joy remains eternal:
For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity (Adversus Haereses 4:18:5).
For St. Paul the life we now live is in full union with the love of God through Christ:
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. …For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35, 37-39).
…rjt
The Five Beasts 