Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 448

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.

I have been lately reading The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno, a very popular Spanish philosopher of the early twentieth century. He has much to say about our hope for eternal life, including the following:

"When I contemplate the green serenity of the fields or look into the depths of clear eyes through which shines a fellow-soul, my consciousness dilates, I feel the diastole of the soul and am bathed in the flood of the life that flows about me, and I believe in my future. But instantly the voice whispers to me, "Thou shalt cease to be!" the angel of death touches me with his wing, and a systole of the soul floods the depths of my spirit with the blood of divinity. Like Pascal, I do not understand those who assert that they care not a farthing for these things, and this indifference "in a matter that touches themselves, their eternity, their all, exasperates me rather than moves me to compassion, astonishes and shocks me" and he who feels thus is for me, as for Pascal, whose are the words just quoted, "a monster."

Saint Paul made clear from the beginning our belief in our personal resurrection. 

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.

Unamuno also applies to the great atheist philosopher, Spinoza, that everything conscious strives to remain conscious. We do not readily surrender to death, although we might, for a greater person (as Saint Paul said) or a greater cause, be willing to do so.  
Pursuing this philosophical/theological thread, I hope in the story of Lazarus in John 11. Rather than claiming some God-given right to a life hereafter, which I would deny, I hope the Lord will remember my name as he remembered Lazarus. I hope he will stand over my dust, wherever it might be, whether in a local columbarium or scattered throughout the galaxy, and call my name. "Kenny, come out!" 
In that moment I hope that I will have the perspicacity to recognize the Voice of Jesus and the good sense to cry out, "Here I am, Lord!" as I leap from the obscurity of death.