St. Joseph of the Lakes

If Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain; you are still in your sins.

Saint Paul captures the heart of the Christian promise in today’s second reading. We proclaim in our Creed that “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” We are not so much bound up in our life here on earth because as Christians we know something else is coming. By virtue of Jesus’ teaching and action we have a positive view of what is coming for us. As much as there have been those among us who want us to live with fear and trembling in this world just as we fear the judgement to come, Jesus has told us that it is the Father’s will that we all should be saved. He actually shifts the burden of judgement on the individual. Either we believe and accept that God has sent His Son as our savior, or we reject this gift and think somehow that we have to “save” ourselves. 

The apostle John in his gospel imagines that what is coming for us is that we become the bride of Christ. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians speaks about how we all share in the one spirit of Christ through our baptism and therefore we are all one body. We see a glimpse of this type of reality in the marriage union. Two individuals come together and through their promises to each other and the two become one. It is further solidified when the two bring new life into the world and we can see parts of each person in the uniqueness of new life.

Something new and wonderful is in store for us. We see some glimmer of it in the gathering of our community, especially as we unite our voices in prayer and in song. As we add ourselves to the rest of community we make a united sound that is louder and stronger than anything we can do individually. Each of us has a part within the whole, and the body is diminished when we choose to not take our part within our community.