A reflection on Luke 21:12–19 for Wednesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time.
Catholics don’t dismiss the importance of the physical body. We place martyrs’ relics beneath altars and gather there to celebrate Mass. Non-Catholics and Catholics alike can ask why. Reading Jesus’ promise that not a hair of his followers’ heads will perish, I find myself thinking about those remains.
The person whose body was killed is still one of us. We ask for their prayers. Their death has not reduced them to a useful example of courage, though they may be that too. They have a name, and we believe they are alive in God. At the altar, the Church behaves as though the authorities who disposed of their body have failed to settle the matter.
Jesus tells his disciples quite plainly that some will be killed. He also speaks of their lives being secured through perseverance. I hear those words differently when I remember that we profess the resurrection of the body. God’s promise reaches further than anything I could verify by looking at their remains.
I would still prefer that their prison door had been opened. So, presumably, would the prisoner. Jesus promises wisdom to speak in their defence, so the trial is not to be dismissed. They are allowed to answer the charges. They can hope to come home. Belief in resurrection does not mean they want to be executed.
I have sometimes heard eternal life spoken of as though it made the circumstances of dying fairly unimportant. But we tend a dying person’s body with great care. When someone we love dies, we want their body treated gently. Those concerns belong within our faith. Jesus’ oddly precise promise about a hair gives me reason to think that God’s attention is at least as particular as ours.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, protect those whose faith puts them in danger. Help us work for their safety and remember them by name. Receive those who have been killed into the fullness of life you promise. Amen.
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