From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts–
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.
2nd reading for this Sunday, Romans 8:8-11
In today’s Gospel, Jesus raises Lazarus back to life after he’s been four days in the grave to demonstrate that he, Jesus, is stronger than death. Note, this is a resuscitation, not a Resurrection. Lazarus, at some point, will die again. As a preliminary victory over death, it serves as a powerful sign, an analogy, to our ultimate victory through Christ.
Paul is explaining some of this in our second reading, a passage from his letter to the Christians in Rome. He races on in a telegraphic style full of condensed meanings and with early, slightly unsettled terminology. We will take it verse-by-verse to slow things down and clarify what he is getting at.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. “In the flesh” means human beings considered as persons alienated from God—humanity as damaged persons, inevitably stumbling morally, and subject to death. “The flesh” includes both the visible, material aspect of human beings (our body) and our invisible, immaterial, spiritual aspect (our soul).
9 But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. “You” Christians in Rome are not now “in the flesh” rather you are “in the spirit” because “the Spirit of God dwells in you.” By this Paul refers to the Holy Spirit these Christians received at their Baptism. Both of these phrases used by Paul—the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ—are ways of saying “the Holy Spirit,” 3rd Person of the Trinity. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit within us that makes a human being “belong” to Christ, to be united to him.
10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. So, if baptized, a person has Christ living within him. But this only a partial victory—our human body, our material self, remains subject to aging, sickness, decay, and death. Christians can expect to die like all men and women. Our inner spirit, our invisible spiritual aspect, our soul, is no longer subject to death in the same final way, because God, staying faithful to his side of the covenant he has with every baptized person, keeps his divine life pulsing into our “heart” our inner being or inmost self. This is God’s “righteousness,” his keeping faith with us, his faithfulness. That never changes unless we slam the door against it through serious sinfulness.
11 If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you. Those united to Christ by the invisible Spirit, will receive a new body after the death of their original one. A body that is recognizably theirs, but no longer subject to aging, decay, sickness, or death. A body that lasts forever, a body Paul calls “a spiritual body” in 1st Corinthians 15:44.
Some may ask—if God can renovate our inner, invisible aspect, our souls, now, when we come to trust and follow him, why doesn’t he immediately renovate or renew our bodies, too, since he is pledged to that eventually anyway in the afterlife? God highly prizes freely given love from us, costly love like his Son Jesus offered for us and thereby set as a model for us to follow in our own daily lives. Not many are asked to die as martyrs to prove our love, but if accepting Christ meant the healing of our bodies to perfection immediately, there would be no choice left. Everybody in the world would become a Christian the first time they had a toothache!
For further reflection:
Christians are people of their time and place. We dress like the people around us, speak the same language, eat the normal foods of our area or culture, study the same histories, build the kinds of houses and buildings familiar to all our neighbors. And yet, as Abraham was in the olden days, we are also people on a journey into the unknown, guided by “the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead”. We are on the way to the Promised Land, the place of everlasting life. Compared to “everlasting life,” the present journey is of very brief duration, but we are quite young in the Spirit, and what is actually a brief time can seem to us a long and slow time–much as our children find weeks and months long and slow, while the same periods of time whiz by for us adults. Now, with an adult’s perspective, we must make the best use of this little time we actually have to grow more and more ready for the life to come. Don’t delay! Everlasting life is a long time to rejoice in, but it would be a lot longer spent in regret.