The general resurrection: sermon on Low Sunday

By a Dominican Friar   |   23 April 2025

“If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.”

Since last Sunday, we have been celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. On Low Sunday, we can think about another resurrection — one that’s still to come, and of which Christ’s Resurrection is the guarantee — I mean, our own. This is the eleventh of the twelve articles of the Apostles’ creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh”. Sometimes we say, “the resurrection of the body”, but it means the same. We believe that at the end of time, our Lord will raise up these bodies of ours, even if they shall have decayed into dust and ashes, and clothe them with immortality. Just before Jesus raised up her brother Lazarus, St Martha said, “I know that he will rise again on the last day.” And whenever we go to a funeral, or visit a grave, or even see a hearse passing us in the street, we can say the same: he, or she, will rise again on the last day. We believe this because God has promised to do it, and “the testimony of God is greater”, that is, His promises are more reliable than the promises of even the most virtuous of men.

But why has God promised to do this? Why not just leave souls as they are, whether in heaven or in hell? Remember that death was not part of the original plan. As the Book of Wisdom says, “God did not make death.” Adam brought death into the world by his sin. If human souls remained forever separated from their bodies, creation would remain imperfect. The soul and the body are like a married couple: they belong together. What God has once joined together, he will not allow to be forever parted. That is one reason for the resurrection on the last day.

There’s another reason. When we do good, it is not usually our souls alone that do good; we usually do it through our bodies. If we sin, it is not usually our souls alone that sin; the body also has its share in it. That’s why our body also will have a share in the reward, or the punishment, of the soul. So, our Lord says in the gospel: 

“The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

I’ll mention one more reason. The whole point of the Christian life is to become more like Christ. As St Paul says, “All you who were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.” But He is in heaven not with a human soul only, but also with a human body, though glorious. And our Lady is also in heaven, body and soul. So, we shan’t be made perfectly like to Christ until we too have risen again, and are glorified in our whole person. Only then will the journey that begins with baptism be complete.

I sometimes wonder what it must have felt like, when Adam saw the sun go down at the end of his first day on earth, or when he saw the flowers die off at the approach of his first winter. Did he feel as if the darkness had conquered, and he would never see the light again; never again see the beauty of the spring? Or did he remember the omnipotence of God, and take heart? So too, if we are ever troubled by the thought of death, either our own or that of a loved one, we do well to remember God’s almighty power: He can raise up a living man from the dust far more easily than we can wake a friend from sleep. As Job put it, many centuries before the incarnation:

“I know that my redeemer lives, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God.”