Today’s Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours includes the prayer response “fructus resurrectionis tuae, Domine, nobis concede” — Grant us, O Lord, the fruit of your resurrection.
When we consider the fruit of the resurrection, we may think immediately of the new life of glory we will have in our own resurrection, that probably far-off event past the long, winding, and narrow road up our own Calvaries. Then, perhaps, of the powers of our glorified bodies, as close as any of us will come to being superheroes — though every superhero ever conceived would in fact be jealous of us. We might think also of the resurrected life we live now, that sharing in Christ’s resurrection which affords us the Christian moral virtue and spirituality we enjoy as we increasingly “put on the new man” (Eph. 4:24).
What we might not consider is the fruit of the resurrection itself in the most direct sense. By the analogy of food, we’ve so far really only considered what food gives us: nutrients and vitality. But what is the fruit of the resurrection?
What was born from the tomb on Easter Sunday? What came forth in the resurrection?
Jesus Christ Himself is the fruit of the resurrection and it is only by receiving Him that we have any share with Him in His resurrection (John 6:53-58). He is, in fact, “the new man” that we put on, for by receiving Him as the fruit of the tree of life, the tree on which He died to give life to the world, and as the fruit of the resurrection, we join to Him, so that “I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
Let us receive the Eucharist — Christ, the Fruit of the Resurrection Himself — with joy and hope for our own life to come.