The Reality of Resurrection

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, February 16th, 2025:
​Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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1 Corinthians
15:12, 16-20

If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

The resurrection of the dead is probably one of the hardest facts of Christianity to grasp; it goes against all human experience. All of us are acutely aware of our bodily mortality, as we face the consequences of it everyday. An ache here, a pain there… but it is much harder to tangibly grasp the immortality of our soul. We watch every other living thing around us die and perceive it as the end, so why wouldn’t humans be in the same boat?

Paul doesn’t mince words here. If the resurrection of people isn’t possible, then that would mean Christ was never raised from the dead, a.k.a. Christianity is pointless and those who follow it are “to be pitied.” The Corinthians are denying, not the resurrection of Christ, but the resurrection of the body that Christ promised.

Apart from the gift of faith, I think this is a reasonable human response. Sure, Jesus could be raised from the dead because He is God, but we are just human and that seems impossible for us. But Paul makes it clear that Christ’s resurrection has ushered us into a new reality where there is life after death. Jesus died and came back from the dead not only as God, but also as a human, paving the way for us. 

I think about what else is true of our reality but difficult to grasp. For me, it is the vastness of our universe. When I think about how many solar systems there are, or how long it would take us to get to the nearest planet, or even that our planet is the only known one that can support human life, I feel overwhelmed. Like the resurrection of the dead, we can know these facts to be true but struggle to hold on to these realities. And because of that, it can feel as if they do not influence our daily lives.

But if we look for it, we can see signs of these truths. For example, we actually have a daily reminder that we’re living on a floating rock orbiting a ball of burning gas — the transition of day to night. In the same way, the presence of joy and peace in my everyday life can actually remind me that Jesus has conquered death and sin. If Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, then my life would look like the result of my sin. I would be living in darkness. Because of Jesus’s sacrifice, I can access God’s mercy everyday and hope for life after death. 




Ronnie Noonan-Birch

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