FACILITATING AN ENCOUNTER WITH CHRIST ALEX BAILEY
‘Evolutionary Leap’
W
hether it was in Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, House, Scrubs, St Elsewhere, Doogie Howser, or some other riveting medical series, CPR is something you have definitely seen dramatised. Perhaps you have completed a St John first aid course and practised CPR on a training manikin? No doubt some readers will have also encountered a real person in need and performed CPR. I can only begin to imagine the grief or relief that might accompany this experience. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is something we are generally familiar with but never wish to perform. On the opposite side of things, perhaps you know a relative or friend with a DNR (do not resuscitate) order in place? Whichever way we look at it, a real encounter with someone who requires resuscitation is a serious and grave thing. Praise God for
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the skilled medical staff and technology that increases the likelihood of success if attempted. “Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us,” says Pope Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth, Book II. For even today, it seems more than likely that, right this minute, somewhere in the world someone is being resuscitated. But Jesus’ resurrection is different. Jesus’ resurrection changed the course of the world. For his resurrection, as Benedict continues, “is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an ‘evolutionary leap’ (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood).” At this point, perhaps the
