Can These Bones Live?

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Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time Memorial of Saint Pius X, Pope

Ezekiel 37:1–14

Today, Ezekiel stands in a valley full of dry bones.

This valley is a cemetery.

It symbolizes the death of Israel’s nationhood.

Jerusalem has fallen.

The temple has been destroyed.

The Davidic kingdom has disappeared.

The people are in exile.

And they say:

“Our bones are dried up,

our hope is lost,

we are cut off.”

This is one of the most powerful sentences in the Bible.

It is the language of a people who can no longer imagine a future.

But God asks Ezekiel a question:

“Son of man, can these bones live?”

Ezekiel does not pretend to know.

He answers:

“Lord God, You know.”

And then God commands him to prophesy.

The Word of God enters the cemetery.

The bones come together.

Sinews appear.

Flesh grows.

Skin covers them.

But there is still no breath in them.

So Ezekiel prophesies again.

The breath comes.

The spirit enters them.

And they stand up,

a vast army.

Here, Ezekiel’s imagination reaches its height.

Only faith can see life in a place of death.

Only God can speak hope where every human voice has fallen silent.

This vision first speaks about Israel’s return from exile.

God will open the graves of His people.

He will bring them home.

He will place His Spirit within them.

But Christians have always heard something more in this vision.

We hear the promise of resurrection.

The Father creates and saves through His Word and His Spirit.

At the beginning, God spoke,

and the Spirit moved over the waters.

In Ezekiel’s valley, God speaks again,

and the Spirit gives life to the dead.

And in Jesus Christ, this promise reaches its fullness.

Christ enters death.

Christ breaks the power of sin.

Christ rises from the tomb.

For this reason, Christianity speaks strangely about death.

What the world calls death, we often call sleep.

Because in Christ, death is not the final word.