Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

So also is the resurrection of the dead.
It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible.
It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious.
It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.

It’s odd to me that the resurrection of the just is so very important in our Christian tradition and of secondary importance to the Jewish tradition. At the time of Jesus the Pharisees believed in a personal afterlife for the just; Herodians and Sadducees rejected the new doctrine.

The Pharisees, despite their reputation in the Christian gospels, were the most faithful of the various Jewish sects at the time. They were neither wealthy nor influential but they were more adaptable and progressive when Judaism needed to adapt to the changing times. The controversy of Jesus and his disciples with the Pharisees, which grew more heated as the gospel spread throughout the Roman empire, was exaggerated precisely because Pharisaism represented the best alternative for those who sincerely sought the Truth. When Jerusalem was crushed by Roman armies in 70 A.D and the entire Jewish world reacted with consternation and grief, the Pharisees had the wherewithal to respond to the new situation.

To this day many faithful Jews show little interest in the resurrection of the just. They are content to know that God is good and that God in his infinite mercy has chosen them as his people.

But the doctrine, as Saint Paul insisted, is essential for us:

If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then neither has Christ been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching;
empty, too, your faith.

We believe in and rightfully expect an eternity of bliss with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We look forward to singing God’s praises with all the saints and angels, to an ongoing revelation of astonishing mysteries, to a growing sense of wonder within hearts that are ever-expanding with gratitude for pure goodness.

But it is, when we sit back and think about it, hard to imagine. Where will all those people go? Where will they all come from? The Catholic Church no longer believes that only those who were fortunate to hear the name of Jesus Christ will be saved; we suppose that God’s grace reaches to “anonymous Christians” who lived as Jesus lived wherever they might have been. If they were basically decent human beings, seeking goodness and truth and beauty and avoiding egregious sin then God will surely show mercy to them.

The apocalyptic traditions of our religion would divide the human race into good and evil, sheep and goats. That’s a worthy metaphor because it reminds us that salvation, which didn’t come easily for Jesus or Mary, will not come easily for anyone else. But that either/or paradigm may be too simplistic to describe the mercy of God.

Returning to the question of imagination, it’s clear that some of Saint Paul’s contemporaries were trying to imagine how the dead might appear when they are raised. If they could not imagine it, they supposed, then it’s nonsense.

Saint Paul, in his usual inimitable fashion, scolded them, “You fools!” He might have said, “If you can’t imagine it, does that mean God cannot?” Then he pointed to the inexhaustible creativity of nature, which can imagine an oak tree out of an acorn, and a butterfly out of a caterpillar. “Did you see that coming? Did you expect the crucified Lord to rise from the dead? Of course not!

“Have you ever successfully predicted the future?”

No one can see the future. No one can imagine the limits of God’s merciful creativity because there are none! How God will pull this off we do not know. We can have fun with it, imagining family reunions and streets of gold and so forth. Personally I am hoping for a good set of eyes, good hearing, and a slim 36-inch waistline.

But it will be wonderful, in any case, because God is good and nothing is impossible with God.