Cathal BarryEncounters with the risen Christ characterise the Christian hope of Resurrection, writes Cathal Barry
The Church teaches that God revealed the resurrection of the dead to his people progressively.
The Catechism states that 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,” the key Church document says.
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.
“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.”
Resurrection
The Pharisees and many of the Lord’s contemporaries hoped for the resurrection.
Jesus teaches it firmly, the Catechism states. At the same time, Jesus castigated the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection.
Moreover, Jesus links faith in the resurrection to his own person: “I am the Resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25). The Church teaches 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”.
He raised people from the dead as a sign of his future Resurrection, even though his was of another order.
He also proclaimed the unique event of the “sign of Jonah,” that he would be raised after three days in the tomb (Mt 12:39).
To be a witness to Christ is to be a “witness to his Resurrection,” the Catechism states, to “[have eaten and drunk] with him after he rose from the dead”.
Encounters with the risen Christ characterise the Christian hope of resurrection, the Church teaches. “We shall rise like Christ, with him, and through him.”
From the beginning, the Catechism states, Christian faith in the resurrection has met with “incomprehension and opposition”.
“On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the Resurrection of the body” (St Augustine).
Separation
In death, the Church teaches that following 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,” the Catechism states.
All will rise: “Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:29). This gift comes from Christ who “will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21). “The dead will be raised imperishable… and this mortal nature must put on immortality” (1 Cor 15:35-37).
Although the answers to how this actually happens “exceeds our imagination and understanding” and is accessible only through faith, our sharing in the Eucharist “gives us a foretaste”.
This will happen at “the end of the world” because this Resurrection is associated with Christ’s Second Coming. “The Lord himself will descend from Heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess 4:16).