I Am the Resurrection and the Life
“For the Souls in Purgatory – Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord”
John 11:25-26
Jesus told her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
Grace Prayed For
Lord Jesus, be for us today what you told Martha you are: the resurrection and the life. Let that truth meet us wherever death has made its home in our hearts.
Reflection
He asked Martha a question before he asked anything of the stone.
Do you believe this? Four words. They land in the middle of her grief, her mild reproach (‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died’), her hedged hope (‘even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you’). And Jesus, rather than reassuring or explaining, turns the conversation toward the most important thing: what does she actually believe about him?
Martha’s answer is one of the great confessions of the Gospel: ‘Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.’ She doesn’t answer his specific question about resurrection. She answers with her whole faith in him as a person. This, Jesus suggests, is the answer.
To believe in the resurrection is not primarily to hold an opinion about the afterlife. It is to believe in a Person — the one who is himself the resurrection, in whom death has met something stronger than itself.
For those of us who have stood, as Martha stood, before the sealed places in our lives — the relationships that seem finished, the hopes that appear buried, the parts of ourselves we have given up on — this encounter is personal. Jesus asks us too: Do you believe this? Not as a theological exam, but as an existential anchor: Do you believe I am present here, in this grief, in this finality, in this tomb, and that I am not finished?
Weeping will come. Jesus himself will weep, just verses later. Faith does not bypass grief. But it places grief inside a larger story, one where the last word has not yet been spoken.
Do you believe this?
When Time Allows Reflect on the Posts in Library and Musings
Sharing
Jesus last words on Earth were to his disciples, can be found in Matthew Chap 28 when Jesus told his disciples, “Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Jesus calls all of us to share in his redemptive mission here on Earth. I would ask you to share this Scripture reflection with your family, your friends and your acquaintances, and then share it with a couple of individuals that you may may not be comfortable sharing with, keeping in mind always the words of Jesus, And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age
Author was assisted by AI in the drafting of this Post