For many people today, the question of resurrection recedes into the background, giving way to thoughts about postmortem existence, the immortality of the soul, rewards and punishments after death, heaven and hell. Meanwhile, the Bible says very little about all this, if it says anything at all. Evidently the biblical authors were concerned not with what often concerns us today, but with something completely different: what they called resurrection from the dead.

At first glance it can appear that the difference is not essential: in the end, the subject is still life after death, and the details are not so important. In reality, the difference between the immortality of the soul and resurrection is very great. What is the immortality of the soul in general? What kind of life, what kind of postmortem existence, could be meant in that case?

From the biblical point of view, the postmortem existence awaiting a person is rather bleak: it is not full life, but its pitiful likeness, which can hardly satisfy anyone. There is no question of a person's complete disappearance after death, but what awaits him after death can be called life only with great reservation. All that remains of a person is a shadow; he loses feelings and thoughts, almost loses the memory of his own life and of the world of the living: a shadow in which only a remnant of consciousness barely flickers. It is no accident that when the apostles saw the risen Jesus, they thought they had before them the shadow of their Teacher coming out of the tomb: none of them expected any other postmortem existence, and a meeting with a shadow, even the shadow of a loved one, could bring the living nothing good. The Bible tells us nothing about a blessed postmortem existence or about postmortem recompense like that mentioned in Egyptian or Greek myths.

But it does speak about resurrection, and the image of the risen Jesus shows us quite clearly the difference between postmortem existence and resurrection. Resurrection is not the preservation of pitiful remnants of life after the death of the body, but a return to life in all its fullness, requiring the transformation of human nature itself. Such is the transfigured humanity of the risen Jesus: on the one hand, He can pass through a locked door, which is no longer an obstacle for Him; on the other, He is able to eat the same ordinary earthly food that any of us eats. He is not a shadow; He deliberately lets the disciples touch Him so that they can be convinced of this. He is a man of flesh and blood, although this flesh and this blood live according to different laws from those by which we live.

And He gives the apostles the chance to understand that He has not simply returned to life, but has conquered, has overcome death, which no longer has power over Him. In the same way, it has no power over the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world and offers to each of us.

An interesting question: why do the apostles walking on the road to Emmaus not recognize their Teacher? Of course, they were not expecting the Resurrection; it seemed to them that everything was over, and to the One they took for a stranger they bitterly told everything "that had happened in these days in Jerusalem." But how can one fail to recognize the One with whom one has spent several years, speaking with Him every day? A changed humanity, not easily perceived by the eyes and senses of fallen man? Perhaps yes, for the Kingdom reveals itself with difficulty, and only in part, to untransfigured sight. But at the moment of the breaking of the bread they see Him with complete clarity. What happened?

A theologian could perhaps build an entire sacramentology on this one fact. But the matter here may be both simpler and more complex: the disciples simply partook of the Kingdom, entered it, and found themselves right at its center, where He, their Teacher, is. And from within the Kingdom the Kingdom can be seen well, so the apostles, of course, immediately made out Jesus without difficulty. But how and why it turns out that the Kingdom now opens to the disciples, then closes again to them, remains something one can only wonder about.

One thing is clear: now it is truly near, so near that one can cross its boundary without even noticing it. Yet, on the other hand, it turns out that one can cross the boundary of the Kingdom without noticing not only the boundary, but even the Kingdom itself. One can pass through it without seeing or sensing anything, without noticing even the One whom, while He still belonged in His human nature to the untransfigured part of creation, it had been impossible not to notice. Apparently what is needed is a relationship actualized here and now, a bond like the one uniting those gathered around the broken bread, in order to experience the reality of the Kingdom. And it turns out to be infinitely great: as soon as the apostles recognized Jesus and found themselves in the same spiritual dimension with Him, He immediately disappeared from sight, dissolving into the infinite distance, for He is at the center of His Kingdom, and the apostles, it appears, are still very far from the center...

And yet the meeting took place. That is the main thing. The rest will follow, for ahead lies an entire life, a life to be lived in the Kingdom.

The Gospel of Luke ends with a brief description, or rather a brief mention, of the Ascension. The evangelist's logic is understandable: he wanted to describe in full the entire forty-day period of the risen Jesus' stay with His disciples, right up to the completion of that period.

But this is, so to speak, a purely factual, event-based logic. There is another logic in the Gospel as well, one connected with the spiritual meaning of the events taking place. It is no accident that, speaking about meetings with the Risen One, the evangelist describes in such detail what happened on the road to Emmaus, when the apostles, walking along the road and talking with the Teacher, did not recognize Him, and later, during the breaking of bread, having recognized Jesus, immediately lost sight of Him. On the day of the Ascension He also disappears from the sight of His disciples. Clearly, with the Ascension a new stage begins in the establishment on earth of the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world.

That this Kingdom includes the whole world, together with its physical nature, had become clear even earlier, when Jesus allowed His disciples to make sure that He was not a ghost, not a shadow that had come out of the tomb, but a real living Man. Of course, His human nature changed after the Resurrection; otherwise appearances like the ones the apostles had to observe on the road to Emmaus would scarcely have been possible. But in a certain sense it still remained nature, though transformed: if it were otherwise, He could hardly have tasted earthly food after the Resurrection. After the Resurrection Jesus does not turn into an angel, into a bodiless spirit that has lost every connection with the natural world. He remains a Man, but His human nature changes in quality.

The same thing must finally happen to the world and to each of us, if we follow the path into the Kingdom to the end. Being transformed, the world loses nothing except the evil whose captive it has become. And we, being transformed, lose nothing except the sin that keeps us from living the fullness of the life of the Kingdom.

But in order for the Kingdom to enter the world, its King must be in His own place. Not at the boundary that separates the Kingdom from the fallen world, where even a person who has not yet come into contact with the Kingdom can see Him, but in the very depth of the Kingdom, at its center, on the throne where Christians with good spiritual sight saw Him. To those who are unable to look into the depth of the Kingdom, it may appear that the King has gone away, disappeared, dissolved into that radiant cloud of God's presence that usually accompanies a theophany. In fact, He has simply gone to the place where the King must be when events decisive for His Kingdom are beginning. And that means the events will begin. Very soon.