The Resurrection

That there is a future life is one of the basic truths of our faith. In fact, the Letter to the Hebrews teaches that "he who comes to God must believe that God exists and is a rewarder to those who seek him" (Heb.11,6). A rewarder, not during this present life, when too often the wicked prosper while the just suffer, but in a future life.

Faith in these two truths — the existence of God, and the existence of a future retribution — is so basic that anyone who believes them and lives according to them, even if he does not know anything else, will be saved; while for the one who denies them, no salvation or religion is possible.

Faith in a future life is so necessary, that one who rejects it cannot be saved even if he believes in the existence of God, as some do who admit that there is a God but that he does not care for us. In such a case, religion is impossible. Why should I care for God, if he does not care for me?

However, to prove the existence of such a life by reason alone is not easy. It is clearly impossible to prove the resurrection of the body this way, and so, when Saint Paul began to speak about it at Athens, his hearers laughed at him and the more polite among them said, "we will hear you some other time on this matter" (Acts 17,32).

As for the immortality of the soul, even great theologians did not admit the possibility of a true demonstration. And of course, there is no experience of this future life. Hence the remark people make when they voice some doubt about it: "Nobody ever came back to tell us."

Leaving aside all kinds of stories about ghosts or apparitions of the dead, we must answer with assurance: "Yes, somebody did come back; Jesus came back."

That he did come back, after having been really dead and buried, that he was not a ghost or a shadow, but a real living man, is forcefully attested throughout the New Testament. He was plainly seen, not by everybody, "but by the witnesses designated beforehand by God" (Acts 10,41); not by one only — "he appeared to Cephas, and after that to The Eleven. Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at one time... After that he was seen by James, then by all the Apostles. And last of all he was seen also by me" (I Cor.15,5-8).

And there were other apparitions: "To them also (the Apostles) he showed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, during forty days appearing to them and speaking of the Kingdom of God" (Acts 1,3). We know some of these proofs: "Touch and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Heb. 24,39). The same with Thomas who doubted (Jo.20,27). To convince them, because even then the Apostles could not bring themselves to believe, he said, "Have you anything here to eat? And they offered him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb. And when he had eaten in their presence, he took what remained and gave it to them" (Lk.24,41-43).

He even prepared breakfast for the Apostles, when he appeared to them by the lake (Jo.21,19-13). Is it necessary to be a university professor and to use a microscope and test tubes to be sure, without the danger of error, that a man who speaks to me, who eats with me, and whom I see and touch is alive and real?

If the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus cannot be rejected as the fruit of a collective illusion, they cannot be explained away as the fruit of deception, of a well-planned and deliberate lie.

How could a whole group of simple and sincere people agree to lie, when to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus could not be of any profit to them, but on the contrary drew upon them all kinds of persecutions and even death? And yet preach the Resurrection they did; it was the very core of their witness and nobody was able to uncover the lie.

If anyone rejects the witness of the Apostles, he must also reject the rest of the Gospel, because if they were mistaken or if they lied on a fact they so strenuously affirmed how could they be believed for the rest?

Jesus himself gave his Resurrection as the supreme proof of his mission: "No sign shall be given to this generation but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For even as Jonas was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Mt.12,39-40). If Jesus was mistaken on this crucial point, why believe him on the rest?

Saint Paul put it very clearly: "If Christ has not risen, vain then is our preaching, vain too is your faith" (I Cor 15,14). But he adds right away: "As it is, Christ has risen from the dead" (I Cor.15,20).

By so doing, Jesus proved he had told the truth when he announced he would die but rise again on the third day (Mt.16,21; 17,21-22; 20,12-19). We must conclude he also told the truth when he promised, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting and I will raise him up on the last day" (Jo. 6,55), and when he proclaimed, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live" (Jo.11,25). And even more generally: "The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they who have done good shall come forth unto resurrection of life; but they who have done evil unto resurrection of judgment" (Jo.5,28-29).

The Resurrection of Jesus is thus at the same time the proof that all does not end with death, that there is a future life, and also the guarantee of our own future life.

Not only does it assure us of the existence of "the life of the world to come;" it reveals also something of its nature. It is not just the soul, that will live forever, but as Saint Paul says, "the dead shall rise incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible body must put on incorruption, and this mortal body must put on immortality" (I Cor.15, 52-53).

This resurrection of the body, which seemed so ridiculous and so impossible to the hearers of Saint Paul at Athens, and which in fact is more difficult to admit, as Tertullian remarked, than the existence of God, for which solid philosophical proofs can be given, is rejected today by all materialists, be they communist or capitalist, just as it was rejected at the time of Jesus by the Sadducees, for whom there was no resurrection, nor angels or spirits (Lk. 20,23, Acts 23,8). It is rejected by many modern philosophers as it was in the first ages of the Church by the great opponents of Christianity, Celsius and Porphyry. Sad to say, it is rejected by some who pretend to be Catholic theologians. They do keep the word, but they give it an altogether different meaning. One of them, for instance, evidently inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, accepts its basic notion, that what we call matter and spirit are not two separate realities, but only two aspects of one and the same thing. For him death is not "a violent interruption of the unity of body and soul" but "a transformation to a new level of existence". Therefore resurrection is not the "final unity of body and soul", but "the breaking forth of the individual spirit of man into a new level of personal existence and experience." This is why another writes that death and resurrection for Jesus took place at the same time, since the Resurrection did not mean taking up again his body, but only the permanent value of his life!

In all its professions of faith, beginning with the Symbol of the Apostles in its oldest form known to us, the Church teaches us to say: "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh," meaning that this body of ours will be given back to us, the same one, just as Jesus rose and appeared to the Apostles with the same body he had before, since the tomb was found empty.

True, this body was changed, Jesus could appear all of a sudden in a room when all the doors were closed (Jo. 20,19), and could vanish from sight as suddenly (Lk.24,31); he could appear in Jerusalem and on the road to Emmaus. He was no longer bound by the laws of time and space.

There will also be a change in our body as Saint Paul teaches the Corinthians: "What is sown in corruption rises in incorruption; what is sown in dishonor rises in glory; what is sown in weakness rises in power; what is sown a natural body rises a spiritual body" (I Cor.15,43-44).

The manner of the Resurrection remains a mystery — especially how the same body can be given back to us. Theologians have tried to explain it, but their explanations do not shed much light on the mystery. Do we need it, if we really believe that nothing is impossible to God (Lk. 1,37)? Besides, as Saint Gregory the Great noted: "It is much less to remake that which once was, than to create that which never was. Is it surprising he raises man from dust, he who created everything out of nothing?"

Let the Resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate, confirm our faith in our future resurrection and in the life of the world to come, for as Saint Paul writes to the Romans: "He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also bring to life your mortal bodies because of his Spirit, who dwells in you" (Rom.8, 11).