On this day's festival Christ becomes not the Only-begotten, but, as the Apostle says, «the firstborn from the dead» (Col. 1:18). Yet I see that some may here be moved as to why Christ is named the firstborn from the dead, since it has come to pass—as the sacred course of the heavenly readings has often instructed us—that a second light received back some of the dead, brought to life again even by the intercession of the saints, their bonds of nature loosed. This too the Lord Himself had done wondrously and triumphantly (Matt. 9:24; Luke 7:12; John
11:43), when—after two spirits had first been brought back from hell, and bodies from the tomb—raising Lazarus last of all, by a third command, on the fourth day, He drew back a funeral procession not from the jaws but, as it were, from the belly of death: bound in grave-cloths, corrupted by putrefaction, stinking through time, yet at His command living again. But whoever thus rose for a time, so as to die afterward, these we cannot call the firstfruits of the dead, that is, the firstborn from the dead, which was said of Christ alone. For those, returning from death with the bonds of death, and not yet under remedy but still under the bond, are not free from their condition, but only released for the occasion.
But Christ, rising again, as the Apostle says, «dies now no more; death shall no more have dominion over Him» (Rom. 6:9). Therefore up to now He alone is the one who has risen never to die again; this too He will hereafter bestow upon His own, when He shall raise them up to live forever, freed from death. Wherefore that will now be a second joy, in which the faithful shall rise again. But the first joy of rising is owed by right to the firstborn from the dead.