How to understand ressurection

[Giggly_Giraffe]

And behold, the veil of the sanctuary
was torn in two from top to bottom.
The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened,
and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection,
they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

. Sundays Gosspel. usccb.org/bible/readings/041314.cfm

I know I must have heard this Gosspel before … But I never knew the “bodies of many saints … Were raised …” Were these resurrected bodies glorified? Were they all good? How long did they hang out in the city? What has happened to their bodies since???

I guess, I must confess … I do not understand what “ressurection” is … Where can start to understand this promise our Lord offers us?

 

[seagal]

It doesn’t say those bodies were resurrected, as on the last day. As I understand it, they were brought back to life like Lazarus so were not glorified. I imagine they went on to live out a normal life and then died again.

The general resurrection of the dead, which happens at the end of time, will be different because then we will have glorified bodies and will never die again. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

How do the dead rise?

997 What is “rising”? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.

998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”[552]

999 How? Christ is raised with his own body: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself”;[553] but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, “all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear,” but Christ “will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body,” into a “spiritual body”:[554]

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel. . . . What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. . . . The dead will be raised imperishable. . . . For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.[555]

1000 This “how” exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ’s transfiguration of our bodies:

Just as bread that comes from the earth, after God’s blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection.[556]

1001 When? Definitively “at the last day,” “at the end of the world.”[557] Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ’s Parousia:

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.[558]

 

[otjm]

. Sundays Gosspel. usccb.org/bible/readings/041314.cfm

I guess, I must confess … I do not understand what “resurrection” is … Where can start to understand this promise our Lord offers us?

That is the ten dollar question in the ten cent conversation! Probably the best place to look is the Gospels and Acts, as they relate the interaction between Christ and the Apostles.

Christ was the same, and yet different (the Apostles did not at first recognize Him when He was on shore at a campfire; nor did the two disciples on the way to Emmaus). He could enter into a room without entering by way of a door; He could disappear from their midst. There are not a lot of answers which are specific; He could eat, and his wounds were capable of having your hand inserted into them, but no longer causing pain or harm to Him.

It is something to contemplate; as opposed to something to which a specific answer can be given. The Apostles didn’t offer an explanation, but rather offered their experience of the risen Lord. Their experience, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost set them on fire for the Lord, something that continued until their death (mostly by martyrdom).