Readings for Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time
Yesterday evening my wife, her parents, and I spent some time talking about death and heaven in light of my
granfather's passing and funeral today. The discussion ended with ideas of what our bodies will be like in Heaven. We wondered at what age our body would be there.
In today's first reading St. Paul sets things straight concerning this very topic. If we can imagine that ideas that came forth when Paul was preaching the resurrection of the body, we can better understand his words. Surely some of those early hearers of the word had some wild ideas of what a resurrected body would look like. These ideas could have been anything from grotesque to fantastic.
Paul helps us to understand the resurrection of our own bodies with an
analogy. Like Our Lord, Paul chooses to use the basic knowledge of plant growth to illustrate his point and I think it is important for us to hear.
How many of us would say that the seed from an apple is more beautiful than an apple tree? How many of us would say that an acorn is more beautiful than an oak tree? How many of us would rather have a
kernel of corn instead of an ear of corn? Or how many of us would prefer a rose seed to a rose?
Paul is saying to us that our bodies should be thought of more as a seed than the fruit -
"...what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel...". The fruit is to come and we simply can't imagine how beautiful we shall be in Heaven! This is why St. John says, "
what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him..." and St. Paul writes
, "What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him..."In the Gospel Jesus tells us how we will bear fruit, how we can become beautiful. In today's Gospel it is the Word of God that is the seed and we are the dirt, how fitting considering we have come from dirt and shall return there!
In order for us to have that fruitful glorified body in Heaven we must first get to Heaven. In order to get to Heaven we must bear fruit in this life. To bear fruit we must be rich soil in which the word of God, the seed, can grow. We must be open to the tears of life for watering that seed. We must be open to the sufferings in life to fertilize that seed. We must be open to God's pruning hand as He removes from us the unfruitful parts of our life.
If we do well we will bear much fruit in this life. In doing so, at the end of our life we will be planting in the grave a beautiful precious seed ready to burst into eternity when the time is right and what we shall look like only God knows but as John says, "
we will be like him" and that is all that really matters!
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