Tag: stjustinontheresurrectionofthedead

One Minute Reflection – 6 June – Wednesday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, Year B – Today’s Gospel Mark 12:18-27 and The Memorial of St Norbert (c 1080-1134) and St Marcellin Champagnat (1789-1840)

“As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, (the) God of Isaac and (the) God of Jacob’?  He is not God of the dead but of the living.  You are greatly misled.” …Mark 12:26-27

REFLECTION – “How blind are the eyes of the intellect on its own!   For they have not noticed that “the blind see, the lame walk” (Mt 11:5) on earth at the Saviour’s word… so that we might believe that the flesh in its entirety will rise again at the resurrection.   If He cured diseases of the flesh on this earth and restored wholeness to the body, how much more, will He do so at the moment of resurrection, so that the flesh might rise again wholly and without blemish… It seems to me that such people fail to look, at the divine action in its totality, at the beginning of creation, in the forming of man.   They don’t attend to the reason why earthly things were made.
The Word said:  “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gn 1:26)…  Obviously man, formed in the image of God, was flesh.   Therefore how absurd it is to claim that flesh formed by God in his own image is despicable and worthless!   Clearly flesh must be precious in God’s eyes since it is His creation.   And since the culmination of His plan for all the rest of creation is to be found in it, this is what has the greatest worth in the eyes of the Creator.”…St Justin (c 100-160), Martyr, Apologist, Philosopher, Father of the Church (Treatise on the resurrection, 2.4.7-9)

PRAYER – Holy Father, You made us, we belong to You.   Grant that by the prayers of all your holy saints, we may attain eternal life with You to praise and worship You for all eternity.   May the prayers of St Norbert and St Marcellin, assist us our earthly pilgrimage.   We make our prayer through our Lord, Jesus, with You and in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever, amen.