Tag Archives: Resurrection of Jesus

Where do we learn about life after death?

1 Reply

I mentioned in a previous blog on the Resurrection of Jesus (Feb 20, 2013) that books about life after death are popular today. The blog for Publishers Weekly lists among recent best sellers: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife Eben Alexander, Author. Does the book tell us we would rather learn about life after death from scientists rather than from people of faith? How much can science tell us anyway?

I was thinking of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in the gospel. The rich man wants someone to come back from the dead to warn his brothers who, like him, aren’t paying any attention to the poor. No one will be sent, says Abraham from the world beyond.

‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’

He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’  Luke 16,19ff.

We have to listen to people of faith. In that same blog there was the encouraging news that sales of  Benedict’s books on Jesus of Nazareth are up since his resignation.

Resurrection Thinking

Leave a reply

I spoke today, the final day of  our mission at Immaculate Conception Church, Melbourne Beach, Florida, about the mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus, a crucial mystery of our faith. Each of the gospels presents it in its own way. Here’s a summary from a previous blog of mine.

A recent presentation on the Resurrection by Bishop Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, to the Catholic bishops of Italy, is particularly interesting. I put it on my blog last month.

I began my presentation talking about Harold Camping’s prediction from last spring that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t, of course. But Harold’s thinking probably reflects the widespread gloom in our western world, in particular, about where the world is heading.

Our belief in the Risen Christ affects the way we see our church, ourselves and our world. We learn from this mystery to trust in the Risen Christ who King of all creation, our Way, our Truth and our Life. We need Resurrection Thinking.

Here’s a visual meditation on the Passion of Jesus from Rembrandt:

The Resurrection Story

Leave a reply

On Wednesday night of our mission at St.Charles Borromeo, in Port Charlotte, Florida, I preached on the Resurrection of Jesus. It’s a mystery that predicts our future.

Recent scriptural studies have made us aware that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were originally meant for particular churches and situations, and so when we read them it’s good to keep in mind the world and circumstances behind each one. Each gospel offers its own unique insight into mysteries of Jesus, and to gain that insight we have to resist our tendency to harmonize one gospel with  the others.

Luke’s account of the resurrection of Jesus centers around the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like the other gospels, Luke begins with the women at the tomb that Easter morning, but the Risen Jesus does not stay at the tomb. The Lord engages the world at large and shares his risen life with his disciples and all creation.

In his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, Luke shows God’s plan of salvation being realized in the person and life of Jesus and then extended to all humanity in his church as its spreads from Jerusalem to Rome, which was then considered the center of the world.

He offers the journey of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus as a way to understand the church’s journey through time.  Just as he did with the two disciples, the Risen Lord walks with his church on its mission through the ages.

It’s not an easy journey. Like that of the two disciples, it’s not a triumphant march. It’s marked by disillusionment, by questions and gradual enlightenment, as their journey was. If the Risen Lord were not with them as they left Jerusalem at the end of the Passover feast, they would have ended up hopeless. The church would fall into hopelessness too, if he were not with her.

Like the two disciples we find the Risen Christ slowly in the scriptures and in the breaking of the bread. Like them, he makes our hearts burn within.

Luke’s resurrection account offers us a way to look at the church today. It’s a good corrective to a triumphalistic view that expects the church to be perfect. It isn’t. It’s also a good corrective to a perfectionistic view of ourselves.

Like the two disciples, we have our questions and suffer our disappointments, but the Risen Christ walks with us. He engages our questions and helps us to understand. He is present in the breaking of the bread, the Holy Eucharist. We don’t see him; he has vanished from our sight, but he is with us. We can rejoice in the Risen Lord with us and guiding us to his kingdom.

 

Philip and James

Leave a reply

We celebrate a feast of the apostles each month because they’re the foundation stones of our church. “Every family wants to find out how it began. We go back to the apostles because they were at the beginning of our church,” the early Christian writer Tertullian says. Today we have two together, Philip and James.

We celebrate the two together because their relics were placed side by side in the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Rome, which was built in the 6th century. Philip was called by Jesus to follow him the day after he called Andrew and Peter, St. John’s gospel says. James, who is also called James the Less to distinguish him from James, the brother of John, was a cousin of Jesus who later became head of the church in Jerusalem and was martyred there in the year 62.

“Don’t forget where you come from!” That’s a good thing for us to remember and that’s why the church remembers those who first heard and believed, and then went out to tell the whole world about Jesus risen from the dead. They handed the faith on to us and we now have their message and their task.

We’re meant to tag our names onto the list St. Paul sent to the church at Corinth long ago.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received:
that Christ died for our sins ?in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he was buried;?that
he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
After that, he appeared to more
than five hundred brothers and sisters at once,
most of whom are still living,
though some have fallen asleep.
After that he appeared to James,
then to all the Apostles.
Last of all, as to one born abnormally,
he appeared to me.

The Finger of God

Leave a reply

Lk 11:14-23

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute,

and when the demon had gone out,

the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.
Some of them said, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons,
he drives out demons.”
Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
But he knew their thoughts and said to them,
“Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste
and house will fall against house.
And if Satan is divided against himself,
how will his kingdom stand?
For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons.
If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul,
by whom do your own people drive them out?
Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons,
then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.
When a strong man fully armed guards his palace,
his possessions are safe.
But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him,
he takes away the armor on which he relied
and distributes the spoils.
Whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

(thursday, 3rd week of lent)

Talk of devils and demons and the miracles of God, so common in the bible, sounds strange to people today, especially in the western world. We prefer seeing other forces at work when something remarkable happens, as it did to the man who couldn’t speak. Some natural cause was at work–maybe the power of suggestion; whatever it was, we’ll discover it. We find it hard to see “the finger of God” causing miracles today.

Miracles of healing were among the signs that established the identity of Jesus among his early hearers, but they were not the only signs.

‘Listen to what I have to say to you about Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonder and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know,” Peter says to the crowds in Jerusalem after Pentecost. But the apostle goes on from these signs of Jesus’ ministry to the culminating sign of his death and resurrection.

“You crucified and killed him by the hands of those outside the law, but God raised him up…”(Acts 2.22-23)

No human power can explain this mystery, surpassing all others. Bearing  all human sorrows– the sorrow of the mute, the deaf, the paralyzed, the possessed, the dead, the sinner far from God– Jesus gave himself into the hands of his heavenly Father on the altar of the cross. And he was raised up, to give his life-giving Spirit to the world.

Some deny this sign too. but it’s great sign that we celebrate this holy season.

Easter Readings

Leave a reply

In the weeks following Easter, the Catholic church in its readings focuses on the witness of Peter the Apostle, leader of Jesus’ disciples and a key eyewitness to his resurrection. He speaks in the first readings at Mass from the Acts of the Apostles, which report what he said to the people in Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection.

In the office of readings Peter’s 1st Letter is read. Peter speaks from Rome to the gentile churches along the Black Sea, according to Raymond Brown in his interesting commentary in “An Introduction to the New Testament.” The churches the apostles writes to were founded from Jerusalem, from the pilgrims Peter spoke to immediately after Jesus’ resurrection.

Now, years later, Peter reaches out to these churches whose founders had asked for baptism in Jerusalem; he reminds them what that sign meant–they received “ a new birth, unto hope which draws its life from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.”

The churches are suffering “many trials” and the apostle tells them they are being tested like gold in the fire.

Brown thinks the trials may come from a lack of acceptance these believers are experiencing from their neighbors who misinterpret their beliefs and ostracize  them because they seem so out of step with the culture and thinking of the times.

Peter reminds them of the dignity they have as God’s people; like the Jews journeying out of Egypt they should not forget their destiny.

Maybe we’re not too far from the situation of those Christians from Pontus and Cappadocia today. We need reminding about who we are.

I wish there were a better way to bring the wealth of our liturgical readings to ordinary people.