He who raised Jesus will raise us also

2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C
First Reading: Gn 15:5-12, 17-18
Second Reading: Phil 3:17–4:1
Gospel Reading: Lk 9:28b-36

In this Sunday’s readings, Jesus is transfigured, and St. Paul tells us that Christ will “transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.”

The Church confirms it in the Preface: God filled “with the greatest splendour” the bodily form Jesus shares with us, to show us how what first “shone forth” in the Church’s Head “is to be fulfilled” in his Mystical Body, the Church.

Almost universally, non-Christians oppose Christian faith in the resurrection of the body, St. Augustine noted. Many believe vaguely that the soul survives death, but Christians believe that at the end of the world, Christ will raise even our bodies.

To the Sadducees, who denied it, Jesus said unambiguously, “You are badly misled, because you fail to understand the Scriptures or the power of God.” To Martha, he said, “Your brother will rise again.” When she replied, “I know he will rise again, in the resurrection on the last day,” Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

When the risen Jesus first appeared to his apostles, “they thought they were seeing a ghost,” and they panicked, but Jesus showed them the holes left by the nails that had held him to the cross and said, “Look at my hands and feet: it is really I. Touch me, and see that a ghost does not have flesh and bones as I do.” Since the apostles were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder, he asked, “Have you anything here to eat?” and they gave him a piece of fish, which he took and ate in front of them.

Clearly, therefore, Jesus’ risen body was recognizably his own. However, he did not return to his previous earthly life. For example, he was, occasionally, hard to recognize, and could appear and disappear, even through locked doors.

That is what we can “look forward” to. We say we believe it in the Creed every Sunday. However, we still wonder how the dead will be raised and what kind of body they will have.

St. Paul explains: “The seed you sow does not germinate unless it dies…. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown in the earth is subject to decay; what rises is incorruptible. What is sown is ignoble; what rises is glorious. Weakness is sown, strength rises up. A natural body is put down and a spiritual body comes up.”

If “spiritual body” suggests something more like a gas than a solid body of “flesh and bones,” read C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, in which the “spiritual” bodies are solid and, in comparison, earthly bodies merely ghosts. Christ’s glorified body could pass through a locked door because the door was so insubstantial compared to his body – not the other way about.

However we try to picture them, the resurrection and glorification of our bodies exceed our understanding and imagination; we can only trust Christ’s promise.

The Eucharist can help us, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Just as at Mass, corruptible bread and wine become the incorruptible Body and Blood of Christ, so “our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but incorruptible.”

In fact, since Christ gives us his own life at baptism, Christian life is already, on earth, a participation in his Resurrection, the Catechism says. Baptized, confirmed, and nourished with the Eucharist, we are already, mystically, members of his risen body, but our new life remains “hidden” with him in God until we rise on the last day.

In the meantime, let us remember that the body “is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body,” as St. Paul says. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead” dwells in us, he will give life to our mortal bodies also.