Why Do You Believe in the Resurrection?

Some people think that Christians are supposed to have “blind faith.”
But that’s not true. As Catholics, we are supposed to have good, solid, rational reasons for what we believe about Jesus and his Gospel—what the Catechism calls, “motives of credibility”. These motives of credibility make it clear that “the assent of faith is ‘by no means a blind impulse of the mind.’” (CCC 156)
The event we celebrate at Easter — the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead — is, of course, at the very center of Christianity. As St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “If Christ was not raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ are the deadest of the dead. If our hopes in Christ are limited to this life only, we are the most pitiable of men.”
So why do you believe in the resurrection? What are your personal motives of credibility? One of them should certainly be the witness of the Apostles, most of whom were martyred for publicly proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth was risen and alive. Obviously these men were convinced that they had personally encountered the Lord after he was placed in the tomb on Good Friday. They were so convinced, in fact, that they were willing to die rather than renounce their belief.
Chuck Colson, the converted Watergate criminal, said it well: “People will give their lives for something they believe to be true. They will never give their lives for something they know to be false.”