Arise!

September 16, 2008

Memorial of Saint Cornelius, pope and martyr, and Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr

Now you are Christ's body, and individually parts of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27

He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.” Luke 7:14-16

Piety

Surprise us, O God, for we expect so little.

Come to us in ways we cannot predict and come to us in familiar people, experiences and words.

Keep us from living as if life is repetitious – but instead fire us with expectation, knowing that You move toward us; with life far in excess, far more abundant than we dare to hope or dream.

In Christ’s name for the sake of the world. Amen. (by Doris Donnelly as reprinted in The Fire of Peace)

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/091608.shtml

Six lines. That is all the space that St. Luke devotes to the resurrection story in Nain. If such an incident happened today, the tabloids, bloggers, and talking heads would not be able to stop obsessing about such an incident. So what are we to make of this incident where Jesus brings the man back from the dead and returns a son to his Mother?

This story is another stepping stone along the path to the ultimate resurrection…the resurrection of Jesus to save the world from sin. Yet, if we did not have some evidence that our God had power over death, the true resurrection story may have been treated as some kind of supernatural anomaly, rather than the culmination of biblical history.

The incident gives us another preview of what is going to happen to Jesus, but it is only a partial preview. In his sermon on “The Threefold Benefits of Christ’s Resurrection,” Rev. Steven R. Key explains how Christ’s resurrection is entirely different from the various other resurrection stories in the Hebrew Bible and those of the son of Nain, Lazarus or Jarius’ daughter that are told in the New Testament.

Those were wonders, of course, that cannot be explained by any natural causes or effects. But those people were not raised out of death in the same sense that Christ was raised. Even when they were called back into this life, you know, they remained subject to death. They simply resumed their mortal death existence. They had to die again! But Christ arose victorious. He did not return from the realm of the dead. He went through the grave!

According to a paper on The Resurrection Pattern, Jesus’ resurrection builds upon a pattern of the resurrection stories in the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels. Considering these examples, Jesus’ resurrection makes him the seventh person in Sacred Scriptures to experience resurrection.

In keeping with seven being the number of completeness and perfection in the Bible, the seventh is frequently blessed and/or holy. God blessed and sanctified the seventh day (Gen 2:3). The Mosaic Law requires Hebrew slaves to be freed from bondage in the seventh year of their servitude (Exod 21:2). The seventh year was to be a year of rest and regeneration for the land (Exod 23:10-11). Enoch, the seventh man in the line of descent from Adam, is memorialized as having walked with God and having been spared natural death (Gen 5:24; Heb 11:5; Jude 14). David, who is described as the youngest of eight sons of Jesse in 1 Sam 16:10-11, is nevertheless given the place of the seventh son in 1 Chron 2:13-15. Solomon, beloved by God at the time of his birth, is presented as David’s seventh son (2 Sam 5:14; 12:15b-19; 24-25; 1Chron 3:1-5).

The Gospels, along with the rest of the New Testament, claim that Jesus was raised to a new mode of life that unites natural and supernatural properties. His resurrection, uniquely, was to the glory of immortality and in that sense it stands as the first—and so far, the only—triumph over death (1 Cor 15:20, 23, 42-45; Col 1:18; Rev 1:5). A homely but telling detail is that the sixth man to be resurrected, Lazarus of Bethany, had to be freed of his grave clothes by onlookers, while the wrappings that held the seventh man were laid aside without human assistance (John 11:44; cf. Luke 24:12; John 20:5-7). http://gospelmysteries.com/GM_chapters/Resurrection_Pattern.pdf

Six lines. One line for each of the pre-Easter resurrection stories.

So, as amazing as this story is, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Action

Jesus commands us to arise and speak out as well.

As we watch the devastation of south Texas due to the storms, we also need to remember the people of Haiti. The poorest nation in this hemisphere, Haiti has been hit by four storms – two hurricanes and two tropical storms. Some cities have flooded multiple times within a week and people have lost everything. Haiti was hit by Tropical Storm Fay on Aug. 18, and then came Hurricane Gustav, Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike.

Catholic Relief Services first started working in Haiti in 1954 after Hurricane Hazel. Today, it is one of the largest international relief and development organizations working in the country. It is providing food to people to help them make it through this season.

According to a story on National Public Radio, “Haiti is already heavily dependent on food imports — more than half of Haiti's food comes from abroad. Rising global food prices earlier this year sparked riots in the country and led to the prime minister's ouster. With the crop losses from these most recent storms, Haiti will have little choice but to remain heavily dependent on food imports for at least another year.”

Help the people of Haiti “arise” from the devastation of these natural disasters. Please consider a gift through CRS for their work in this nation.