I. Christ's Resurrection and Ours
The
progressive revelation of the Resurrection
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God revealed the resurrection of the dead to his people progressively. Hope in
the bodily resurrection of the dead established itself as a consequence
intrinsic to faith in God as creator of the whole man, soul and body. the
creator of heaven and earth is also the one who faithfully maintains his
covenant with Abraham and his posterity. It was in this double perspective that
faith in the resurrection came to be expressed. In their trials, the Maccabean
martyrs confessed:
The King of the universe will
raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.538
One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that
God gives of being raised again by him.539
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The Pharisees and many of the Lord's contemporaries hoped for the resurrection.
Jesus teaches it firmly. To the Sadducees who deny it he answers, "Is not
this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of
God?"540 Faith in the resurrection rests on faith in God who
"is not God of the dead, but of the living."541
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But there is more. Jesus links faith in the resurrection to his own person:
"I am the Resurrection and the life."542 It is Jesus himself
who on the last day will raise up those who have believed in him, who have eaten
his body and drunk his blood.543 Already now in this present life he
gives a sign and pledge of this by restoring some of the dead to
life,544 announcing thereby his own Resurrection, though it was to be
of another order. He speaks of this unique event as the "sign of
Jonah,"545 The sign of the temple: he announces that he will be
put to death but rise thereafter on the third day.546
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To be a witness to Christ is to be a "witness to his Resurrection," to
"[have eaten and drunk] with him after he rose from the
dead."547 Encounters with the risen Christ characterize the
Christian hope of resurrection. We shall rise like Christ, with him, and
through him.
996
From the beginning, Christian faith in the resurrection has met with
incomprehension and opposition.548 "On no point does the Christian
faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the
body."549 It is very commonly accepted that the life of the human
person continues in a spiritual fashion after death. But how can we believe
that this body, so clearly mortal, could rise to everlasting life?
How do the
dead rise?
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What is "rising"? In death, the separation of the soul from the body,
the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion
with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant
incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the
power of Jesus' Resurrection.
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Who will rise? All the dead will rise, "those who have done good, to the
resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of
judgment."550
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How? Christ is raised with his own body: "See my hands and my feet, that
it is I myself";551 but he did not return to an earthly life. So,
in him, "all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now
bear," but Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his glorious
body," into a "spiritual body":552
But someone will ask,
"How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You
foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. and what you
sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel ....What is sown is
perishable, what is raised is imperishable.... the dead will be raised
imperishable.... For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and
this mortal nature must put on immortality.553
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This "how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is
accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives
us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies:
Just as bread that comes from
the earth, after God's blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary
bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other
heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible,
but possess the hope of resurrection.554
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When? Definitively "at the last day," "at the end of the
world."555 Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely
associated with Christ's Parousia:
For the Lord himself will
descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with
the sound of the trumpet of God. and the dead in Christ will rise
first.556
Risen with
Christ
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Christ will raise us up "on the last day"; but it is also true that,
in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy
Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and
Resurrection of Christ:
And you were buried with him
in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working
of God, who raised him from the dead .... If then you have been raised with
Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right
hand of God.557
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United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the
heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with
Christ in God."558 The Father has already "raised us up with
him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus."559 Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already
belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we "also will
appear with him in glory."560
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In expectation of that day, the believer's body and soul already participate in
the dignity of belonging to Christ. This dignity entails the demand that he
should treat with respect his own body, but also the body of every other
person, especially the suffering:
The body [is meant] for the
Lord, and the Lord for the body. and God raised the Lord and will also raise us
up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? ....
You are not your own; .... So glorify God in your body.561
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