Resurrection Love Triumphing

If the cross is the ultimate demonstration of love, Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate triumph of love. While not reducing or diminishing any of the suffering Jesus underwent, the resurrection shows that the love of God is not merely sacrificial, but redemptive. Jesus conquers death and restores in His resurrected body what humanity is meant to be. The resurrection does not undo the work of the Cross, with Jesus being restored to how He was. It completes the work of the cross, keeping Jesus’ wounded hands and feet and side, but on a body which is like ours, yet also somehow different.

It is this resurrected body we are promised. Our “afterlife” will not be spent as disembodied spirits strumming harps, but as the embodied beings God always intended us to be. Perhaps because we think so little about Christ’s return and what we have traditionally called “the end of the world”, we no longer remember why His Second Coming is a good thing. (Meanwhile, we do think about meteor strikes, global warming, nuclear war, or any of the other fears we have about how our planet might be destroyed.) As happy as they are, the saints in heaven still await the resurrection of their bodies. While Jesus teaches, and the Church affirms, that we will not know the day of His coming, we should eagerly await that day when all creation will come to the fullness of redemption. I promise, it will be more exciting than the season finale that you can’t wait to see.
 
Challenge: Are we too distracted by the joys and pleasures of this life to desire those to come? Without denigrating the gifts we have now, do we realize what gift really matters?