The Resurrection and the Sacraments
In Acts 1:3 we’re told that Jesus spent forty days with the apostles after His resurrection, “speaking [to them] about the Kingdom of God.” Although we’re never told exactly what Jesus said during this time, I believe the rest of Acts bears witness to the overall content of the Lord’s teaching.
Consider how, prior to the Resurrection, there’s only one recorded instance where the apostles baptized anyone (Jn 4:1-2). However, after their forty day lesson about the Kingdom, they started baptizing people like crazy, even baptizing three thousand believers in a single day (Acts 2:41)! And this wasn’t the only sacred rite the apostles began doing. After Jesus’ post-Resurrection teaching, the apostles heard confessions (Acts 19:18), gave canonical rulings (Acts 15:22-29), and began performing a ritual laying on of hands that is not directly spoken about in any of the four Gospels, and this ritual itself took two forms. One was an ordination to the church’s hierarchy (Acts 6:1-6, 13:2-3 cf. 1:20-26, 1 Tim 4:14, 2 Tim 1:6), and the other was a rite of initiation alongside baptism (Acts 8:17-19, 9:17, 19:5-6 cf. Heb 6:2). It’s also in this post-Resurrection era when, for the first time, the apostles celebrated the Lord’s Supper themselves (cf. Acts 2:42), even making sure to do this regularly “on the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7).
Despite it not being explicitly stated, I think it’s rather obvious what Jesus taught His apostles during those forty days after His Resurrection. He taught them about the sacraments! Jesus taught the apostles how to properly baptize, confirm, absolve, appoint successors, ordain, hold councils, and celebrate the Eucharist (even telling them when to do this, on Sunday). This is why the apostles started doing all of this immediately after the Ascension. Indeed, I believe the fact that much of Jesus’ post-Resurrection teaching centered around the Liturgy and the sacraments is also attested to in the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, which all seem to have strong sacramental overtones.
In Matthew 28:19-20 and Mark 16:15-16, for example, the risen Lord explicitly instructs His disciples on baptism, making sure they understand the purpose of this sacrament; and the former text even contains the only biblical mention of the baptismal formula, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). This tips us off to the fact that the proper administration of the sacraments was one of Jesus’ chief concerns after rising from the dead. Luke’s Resurrection account has a similar sacramental emphasis because in it Jesus actually sets the pattern for all Christian liturgies. The risen Lord appeared to two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus, interpreted the Scriptures for them, and then was made “known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Lk 24:32-35). This is the Liturgy of the Word being followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist. After His Resurrection, the Lord wanted us to know that the sacred words we read during the Liturgy, which all bear witness to Him (Lk 24:44), can only be understood when we partake of the Sacrament of Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist.
When it comes to John’s account of the Resurrection, I could spend an entirely separate article just talking about its sacramental themes. John’s Gospel makes it clear that St. Peter is the new covenant’s high priest, and it also portrays the Lord’s tomb as the holy of holies, which makes the fact that St. John “outran Peter and reached the tomb first… but he did not go in” (Jn 20:4-5) very sacramentally significant. Peter represents the new covenant’s ministerial priesthood, and John represents the new covenant people writ large. As such, John waiting for Peter to enter the holy of holies before entering himself on Easter morning reveals that the laity do indeed depend on the clergy for the sacraments. When we Christians sacramentally gather around the Lord’s tomb on the first day of the week, we also need a Petrine successor to go before us in order to participate in the Resurrection.
John’s Resurrection account also has other, even more explicit references to the sacraments. While Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 foretold that the apostles would receive the authority to absolve sins, it’s only John 20:22-23 that actually tells us about them receiving this sacramental authority after the Lord’s Resurrection. John 21:15-18 further shows St. Peter being reinstated as the new covenant’s high priest by the risen Lord, and being given the pastoral command to “feed my sheep” with the sacraments. Like the Synoptics, John is emphatic that Jesus taught His apostles about the sacraments during His forty days on earth after the Resurrection.
Typologically, Jesus’ forty day liturgical lesson corresponds to Moses spending forty days on Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the Law (Ex 34:27-28), and Israel spending forty years in the wilderness to imbibe the liturgical schematics laid out in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Just as Israel required this forty year lesson before conquering the promised land, so did the apostles require a forty day lesson before setting out to conquer the world via Word and Sacrament.
As Seraphim Hamilton argues, this forty day lesson could also be the origin of the apostles’ “unwritten traditions” that the Fathers often spoke about, especially since many of these traditions (e.g. the sign of the cross, icon veneration, invocation of Saints, prayers for the dead, etc.) are primarily liturgical. For example, consider the refrain that is ubiquitous across both eastern and western Christian liturgies: “peace/the Lord be with you… and with you spirit.” This seems to be taken from Jesus’ words to the apostles after His Resurrection, “Peace be with you!” (Lk 24:35; Jn 20:21, 26), making it plausible that this was one of the liturgical traditions that Jesus taught His disciples before ascending into Heaven. As such, Acts 2:42 stating that the members of the new covenant devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching” and “the prayers,” could very well have these unwritten liturgical traditions in mind.
All of this to say, after His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, our sweetest Lord Jesus Christ wanted to ensure that we had access to the saving benefits of this great redemption through the sacraments. Truly, who is so great a God as our God?