Resurrection of the Dead
Friends in Christ, when we pray the Creed each Sunday, we profess our faith in God the Father, in his Son, in the Holy Spirit, in God’s creative and saving work in the world – and then the Creed culminates in the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead.
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The catechism teaches us that just as Christ has risen from the dead, so will we. He leads the way. The Creed literally speaks of the resurrection of the ‘flesh,’ and this means we will really be ‘bodily’ alive, not some kind of ethereal soul. A full, human person, in a glorified body. This is our destiny.
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In the gospel today Our Lord states: “The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, they who have done good shall come forth to resurrection of life, they who have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation.”
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The entire life of Jesus Christ triumphs in his defeat of death by his resurrection. Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian faith from the beginning, but as St. Augustine says, ‘on no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body.’
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Today, it is generally accepted that the life of a person continues in a spiritual way after death. But how can we believe that this body, so clearly mortal, could rise to everlasting life? Yet this is central to our Faith. To end up as a floating soul somewhere, gives us no real hope of heaven, it is not true, human life.
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Lent is racing toward Easter; Easter is the greatest of feasts for the Church, and this is because Our Lord shows us that we will be able to conquer sin and death and rise in glorious, resurrected bodies. As St. Paul says, (1 Cor 15:12) ‘How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless. But as it is, Christ HAS risen. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made to live.
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Our future resurrection is the reason for our hope, when new will be alive with God, and all those we love.