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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF WEDNESDAY, 27 JANUARY
The following is the text of the Holy Father's address during the
general audience on 27 January.
1. During the preceding audiences we reflected on Christ's words about
the other world, which will emerge together with the resurrection of
bodies. Those words had an extraordinarily intense resonance in the
teaching of St. Paul. Between the answer given to the Sadducees,
transmitted by the synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:35-36),
and Paul's apostolate there took place first of all the fact of the
resurrection of Christ himself and a series of meetings with the risen
Christ. Among these must be included, as the last link, the event that
occurred in the neighborhood of Damascus. Saul or Paul of Tarsus who, on
his conversion, became the Apostle of the Gentiles, also had his own
post-paschal experience, similar to that of the other apostles. At the
basis of his faith in the resurrection, which he expresses above all in
the First Letter to the Corinthians (ch. 15), there is certainly that
meeting with the risen Christ, which became the beginning and foundation
of his apostolate.
God is not dead
2. It is difficult to sum up here and comment adequately on the
stupendous and ample argumentation of the fifteenth chapter of the First
Letter to the Corinthians in all its details. It is significant that,
while Christ replied to the Sadducees, who "say that there is no
resurrection" (Lk 20:27), with the words reported by the synoptic Gospels,
Paul, on his part, replied or rather engaged in polemics (in conformity
with his temperament) with those who contested it.(1) In his (pre-paschal)
answer, Christ did not refer to his own resurrection, but appealed to the
fundamental reality of the Old Testament covenant, to the reality of the
living God. The conviction of the possibility of the resurrection is based
on this: the living God "is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mk
12:27). Paul's post-paschal argumentation on the future resurrection
referred above all to the reality and the truth of the resurrection of
Christ. In fact, he defends this truth even as the foundation of the faith
in its integrity: "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in
vain and your faith is in vain.... But, in fact, Christ has been raised
from the dead" (1 Cor 15:14, 20).
God of the living
3. Here we are on the same line as revelation. The resurrection of
Christ is the last and the fullest word of the self-revelation of the
living God as "not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mk 12:27). It is
the last and fullest confirmation of the truth about God which is
expressed right from the beginning through this revelation. Furthermore,
the resurrection is the reply of the God of life to the historical
inevitability of death, to which man was subjected from the moment of
breaking the first covenant and which, together with sin, entered his
history. This answer about the victory won over death is illustrated by
the First Letter to the Corinthians (ch. 15) with extraordinary
perspicacity. It presents the resurrection of Christ as the beginning of
that eschatological fulfillment, in which, through him and in him,
everything will return to the Father, everything will be subjected to him,
that is, handed back definitively, "that God may be everything to
everyone" (1 Cor 15:28). And thenin
this definitive victory over sin, over what opposed the creature to the
Creatordeath
also will be vanquished: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor
15:26).
Imperishable soul
4. The words that can be considered the synthesis of Pauline
anthropology concerning the resurrection take their place in this context.
It will be opportune to dwell longer here on these words. We read in the
First Letter to the Corinthians 15:42-46 about the resurrection of the
dead: "What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is
sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is
raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual
body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it
is written, 'The first man Adam became a living being'; the last Adam
became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first
but the physical, and then the spiritual."
Historical experience
5. Between this Pauline anthropology of the resurrection and the one
that emerges from the text of the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk
20:35-36), there exists an essential consistency, only the text of First
Letter to the Corinthians is more developed. Paul studies in depth what
Christ had proclaimed. At the same time, he penetrates the various aspects
of that truth which had been expressed concisely and substantially in the
words written in the synoptic Gospels. It is also significant for the
Pauline text that man's eschatological perspective, based on faith in the
resurrection of the dead, is united with reference to the beginning as
well as with deep awareness of man's historical situation. The man whom
Paul addressed in the First Letter to the Corinthians and who (like the
Sadducees) is contrary to the possibility of the resurrection, has also
his (historical) experience of the body. From this experience it emerges
quite clearly that the body is perishable, weak, physical, in dishonor.
Mystery of creation
6. Paul confronts such a man, to whom his words are addressedeither
in the community of Corinth or also, I would say, in all timeswith the
risen Christ, the last Adam. Doing so, Paul invites him, in a way, to
follow in the footsteps of his own post-paschal experience. At the same
time he recalls to him the first Adam. That is, he induces him to turn to
the beginning, to that first truth about man and the world which is at the
basis of the revelation of the mystery of the living God. In this way,
Paul reproduces in his synthesis all that Christ had announced when he had
referred, at three different moments, to the beginning in the conversation
with the Pharisees (cf. Mt 19:3-8; Mk 10:2-9); to the human heart, as the
place of struggle with lusts within man, during the Sermon on the Mount
(Cf. Mt 5:27); and to the resurrection as the reality of the "other
world," in the conversation with the Sadducees (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk
20:35-36).
Enlivening of matter
7. It belongs to the style of Paul's synthesis that it plunges its
roots into the revealed mystery of creation and redemption as a whole,
from which it is developed and in the light of which alone it can be
explained. According to the biblical narrative, the creation of man is an
enlivening of matter by means of the spirit, thanks to which "the first
man Adam became a living being" (1 Cor 15:45). The Pauline text repeats
here the words of Genesis (2:7), that is, of the second narrative of the
creation of man (the so-called Yahwist narrative). From the same source it
is known that this original "animation of the body" underwent corruption
because of sin.
At this point of the First Letter to the Corinthians the author does
not speak directly of original sin. Yet the series of definitions which he
attributes to the body of historical man, writing that it is
"perishable...weak...physical...in dishonor..." indicates sufficiently
what the consequence of sin is, according to revelation. Paul himself will
call it elsewhere "bondage to decay" (Rom 8:21). The whole of creation is
subjected indirectly to this "bondage to decay" owing to the sin of man,
who was placed by the Creator in the midst of the visible world in order
to subdue it (cf. Gn 1:28). So man's sin has a dimension that is not only
interior, but also cosmic. According to this dimension, the bodywhich
Paul (in conformity with his experience) characterizes as
"perishable...weak...physical...in dishonor..."expresses in itself the
state of creation after sin. This creation "has been groaning in travail
together until now" (Rom 8:22).
However, just as labor pains are united with the desire for birth, with
the hope of a new child, so, too, the whole of creation "waits with eager
longing for the revealing of the sons of God..." and cherishes the hope to
"be set free from its bondage to decay, and obtain the glorious liberty of
the children of God" (Rom 8:19-21).
Try to understand
8. Through this cosmic context of the affirmation contained in the
Letter to the Romansin
a way, through the "body of all creatures"let
us try to understand completely the Pauline interpretation of the
resurrection. According to Paul, this image of the body of historical man,
so deeply realistic and adapted to the universal experience of men,
conceals within itself not only the "bondage of decay," but also hope,
like the hope that accompanies labor pains. That happens because the
Apostle grasps in this image also the presence of the mystery of
redemption. Awareness of that mystery comes precisely from all man's
experiences which can be defined as the "bondage of decay." It comes
because redemption operates in man's soul by means of the gifts of the
Spirit: "We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan
inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies"
(Rom 8:23). Redemption is the way to the resurrection. The resurrection
constitutes the definitive accomplishment of the redemption of the body.
We will come back to the analysis of the Pauline text in the First
Letter to the Corinthians in our further reflections.
NOTE
1. Among the Corinthians there were probably movements of thought
marked by Platonic dualism and neo-Pythagoreanism of a religious shade,
Stoicism and Epicureanism. All Greek philosophies, moreover, denied the
resurrection of the body. Paul had already experienced in Athens the
reaction of the Greeks to the doctrine of the resurrection, during his
address at the Areopagus (cf. Acts 17:32).
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