By Roxane B. Salonen

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” ~John 11:25

This week, we celebrate the Annunciation, recalling how news of the Incarnation came to us: from a heavenly angel, as relayed to a teenager in a humble village over two thousand years ago.

So, an angel from heaven announcing a virgin birth? What here makes sense to the modern mind? 

And yet, it’s true. As the great American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.” 

It seems right to call on Flannery for extrapolation, for the upcoming solemnity falls on what would have been her 101st birthday, making her a fitting messenger for today’s themes of life, death, and resurrection.

Death

In today’s Gospel from John 11, we find another fantastical idea when Jesus, just before raising Lazarus from the dead, proclaims, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn 11:25).

Flannery O’Connor believed it. Being struck with the same deadly disease, lupus, that robbed her of her father when she was only fifteen made her face cold reality. She often expounded on themes of life, death, and resurrection in her letters and stories.

As Flannery scholar Ralph C. Wood noted in an article around this time last year, Flannery once quipped that “Death is the most important place that life offers a Christian,” and that, in death, as Wood relayed, “We return our lives to God with empty hands.”

Death is one of the things humans fear and ruminate over most, and yet, as Flannery intimated, death is a gift, because it puts things in clear perspective. And in doing so, it can help set our earthly lives aright, preparing us for the much more enduring reality of eternal life.

Resurrection

Flannery argued that Christianity represents a suspension of the laws of the flesh and physical by noting that, to her, the virgin birth, Incarnation and Resurrection “are the true laws of the flesh and the physical.”

“Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws,” Flannery said, noting her astonishment at the Church’s emphasis on the body. “It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified.”

Flannery added that she has always found purity “the most mysterious of the virtues,” and that such an idea never would have entered human consciousness “if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature.”

Life, death and resurrection—these themes that Flannery held up to the light should be dear to us as well. The main question to answer is, “Do I believe?” And then, “If so, how will my life change?”

Prayer:

Dear Lord, someday I will come to you with empty hands, but I want them to be hands that hugged, that worked for others, that offered a kind touch on a day in which it was desperately needed. Help me to give back to you a fraction of what you have given me through life itself, the hope of a holy death, and the promise of being resurrected like Lazarus if I but believe.

Call to Action:

Reflect on these words from today’s second reading: “But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10). Then ask God to show you how to enact that living spirit for the benefit of His kingdom today, in whatever way He deems fitting for your season in life, however great or small.

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