I had a family funeral the other week and it was my mother’s cousin. She never had any children. She really raised her nephews. She treated them to every opportunity in life. One of the nephew’s name is Tom Markusic, that’s my mother’s side. Tom remembers telling me, ‘Father I grew up dirt poor in West Virginia. No one in my family ever went to college and never had higher education. My aunt wanted to provide all of that for me.’
So early on in his life, she was trying to find something that he was interested in. She remembered that he liked watching space launches and landings. So, she took him to Cape Canaveral for a launch as a little child. He’ll never forget that moment of getting to watch in person that space launch. After that he decided to go on to study it. He not only went to college, but he got his PhD, and he began working up that corporate ladder. He worked for NASA, he worked for Blue Origin, he worked for SpaceX. He worked for all these companies over the years until he finally founded his own company. It’s called Firefly Aerospace. Look it up it’s fascinating.
So, as he was talking to me about the funeral, he said, ‘Father I don’t know if you realize this but on March 2nd, coming up in a couple days, he said this company that I founded is going to land something on the moon. NASA hasn’t landed anyone or anything on the moon in fifty years.’ And he said, ‘if you look up in the sky right now, you won’t see it. But it’s in orbit right now. It’s circling the Earth and it’s making its way to the moon.’
And he was speaking about this with such excitement and such passion. And then he said to me, ‘Father, but that’s nothing compared to Eternal life. He said I’ve often in my time been paralyzed by the fear of uncertainty, of what happens after this life. When we die, is there nothing? Have you ever yourself struggled with this? Like, wrestled with what happens after we die and wondering if it’s all for naught?’ So, he said he would struggle with this often.
And then one night while after my aunt had died and he was waiting for the funeral, he said he woke up in the middle of the night and had a dream. He didn’t tell me what the dream was, but he said the dream brought him to such peace and such a conviction. And he looked at me and he said, “Father, there is something out there, there is something beyond this world, more so than I believe in the moon. There is everlasting life, and I know that I can continue to still experience my aunt.”
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Flat Earthers. Have you ever heard that phrase? So Flat Earthers are the people that believe we haven’t gone to the moon. Now, honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t put that much research or thought into it, but if someone to say, would you die for your belief that we’ve been to the moon? I don’t think I would. I would just be like, I don’t know. It’s like, if you want to believe that that’s fine.
But what if somebody said, would you die for your belief in the resurrection? I would hope that I would, because I believe this so strongly. And just as there are people that don’t believe in the moon landing, there’s also people that don’t believe in eternal life; there’s people that don’t believe in the resurrection.
Saint Paul says this in the second reading: “If Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection? If the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised.” Now here’s a couple of things. “If Christ hasn’t been raised,” he says, “your faith is in vain. You’re still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in the Lord have perished.”
So, I think about that, like what if we found, what if scientists found the bones of Jesus today? What would that mean for our faith? What it would mean is that all of this is worthless. There’s no meaning to any of this without the resurrection. That if Jesus wasn’t who he said he was and didn’t raise from the dead, all this goes away. We have not been raised from the dead. Our whole faith is in vain. Our whole lives are in vain really. If he’s not been raised from the dead. We haven’t been forgiven of our sins or freed from our sins. If he’s not been raised from the dead, then those that we love that have gone before us, they no longer exist. They’re dead.
But we do know that he has been raised from the dead. We’re actually a science based faith. We do know that historically there was a real Jesus that lived in this world. We know that the tomb, that when the women went there early in the morning the next day and the stone had been rolled away, there was no body. We know that after that he began to appear to the disciples, some individually, then to the 12, and he appeared to 500 at one time. Then he appeared to 5000. The people experienced the resurrection. And then after that, when they began to be persecuted, the apostles were willing to lay down their lives for this belief.
Looking back over the last 2000 years of Church history, saint after saint, martyr after martyr has given their life for this belief in the resurrection. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then none of this has any meaning. None of our lives has any purpose. And when Jesus speaks to the disciples in the Gospels today, we know the Sermon on the Mount where he goes up to the mount, to the Beatitudes. This is called the Sermon on the Plain. Jesus actually comes down from the Mount. He spent the whole night in prayer, and this is how he begins his ministry.
The disciples gather around him, and he says these very striking words: “Blessed are you poor for the Kingdom of God is yours.” If there is not a heaven, then there’s no goodness to poverty. Why before on this earth that there’s not going to be heaven? He says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied.” If there’s no heaven, why bother being hungry so that others may have food? “Blessed are you who are now weeping for you will laugh.” If there’s no heaven, we only weep during this life, and there will be no laughter. Finally, “Blessed are you who are persecuted for the sake of my name, for your reward will be great in heaven.” If there is no resurrection, there’s no reason for us to be persecuted.
But we do believe that there is. One of my favorite things of priesthood is counseling people, so being there for people either in confession or they’ll come to my office. They may be grieving the loss of a loved one and their heart is just torn open before me. Maybe they’ve lost their spouse or lost their child, and they just don’t know how they’re going to make it through it. Or maybe they have experienced poverty, or they’ve lost their job and lost their house, and they lost their income. And I watch the person in front of me, and I see how broken they are. Often, it’s somebody with an addiction and their lives have been completely destroyed and they’re looking for a new meaning. What I love about it is as the persons talking, I can see what God is doing in their life, and I can actually help them to see. Hopefully just a little glimpse that they are on their way to goodness. That though they are grieving, they will laugh again one day. Though they are experiencing poverty, they will have the resources, though they’re experiencing their own brokenness, there will be healing. Oftentimes I could see that happening right in front of my eyes, and I think if I can just open their eyes a little bit to what God is doing their life. By the end of the appointment, they’re filled with more joy and more peace.
Jesus says rejoice and leap for joy on this day. So, would you die for the resurrection? Do you believe in the resurrection? Do you believe that if we do suffer in this life that God is going to bless us in eternal life?
Now we may not die for the moon landing, but hopefully we would for the resurrection. If the resurrection never happened, all of the loved ones that have gone before you are no more. They’re just dust. And what’s interesting in this Gospel and the Gospel of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus, Jesus is a little bit more general. He says blessed are they. Well, in this one, he’s saying, blessed are you. But he’s also not admitting that there’s four curses and this is the harder part of God. What he’s saying is, ‘Cursed are you. Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are filled now, woe to you who laugh now. Woe to you when all speak well of you. Their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.’
If we don’t believe in heaven, then there’s no reason to sacrifice on this earth. If we don’t believe in heaven, then there’s no reason to love the poor and to give to the poor. If we don’t believe in heaven, then on this earth, we want to grab everything for ourselves. But we do believe in eternal life. And in this moment when we receive the Eucharist, we receive the resurrected body of Jesus into us. And so, if you are going through something difficult in your life, if you find yourself broken down in some way and struggling in some way, I can truly say Blessed are you. Because things are going to get better. Blessed are you because you will experience eternal life. Blessed are you who suffer now because one day you will Rejoice. We come here to celebrate our Faith. We come here to profess our Faith that we do believe in the promises that Jesus desires to give us.
