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Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
1 Corinthians 15:35–37, 42–49
Some Corinthians asked:
How are the dead raised?
With what kind of body will they come back?
These questions matter.
If resurrection means the return of this same body,
with all its sickness, weakness, decay, and pain,
then resurrection may seem almost undesirable.
But Saint Paul does not say that the body simply returns unchanged.
He gives us an image.
A seed is sown in the earth.
It disappears.
Its outer form breaks down.
And from that hidden process, new life appears.
What comes up is connected with what was sown.
But it is also transformed.
There is continuity.
And there is newness.
This is how Paul speaks about the resurrection body.
The body is sown in corruption.
It is raised in incorruption.
It is sown in dishonor.
It is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness.
It is raised in power.
It is sown a natural body.
It is raised a spiritual body.
This does not mean that the risen body is not real.
Paul is not speaking about a ghost.
He is not saying that only the soul matters.
He is speaking about the whole human person,
body and soul,
transformed by God.
A spiritual body is a body filled, changed, and made alive by the Spirit of God.
Between these two realities stands death.
Death is still painful.
Death still feels like loss.
Death still places the body in the earth.
But death is not the final word.
It becomes the place where God prepares new life.
Then Paul turns to Adam and Christ.
Adam was formed from the dust.
He represents our earthly condition:
fragile,
mortal,
wounded,
marked by death.
We all know this condition.
We carry it in our bodies.
We feel it in sickness, aging, fear, and weakness.
But Christ is the last Adam.
He is from heaven.
He is risen.
He gives life through the Spirit.
In Adam, we bear the image of the earthly man.
In Christ, we shall bear the image of the heavenly man.
This is our hope.
Not escape from the body.
Not escape from creation.
But the fulfillment of creation.
The God who formed Adam from the dust
will not abandon the body to dust forever.
In Christ, God begins a new humanity.
What is sown in weakness will be raised in power.
What is sown in shame will be raised in glory.
What is sown in death will be raised to life.
And those who belong to Christ will one day bear His image fully.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition,
copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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© 2025 Krakus.
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