Each one of us faces the prospects of dying as our body suffers death. And each of us knows bodily death to be the fate not only of every human being, but by observation and reflection, of every living being: whatever lives in a body must die. This is the one certainty in existence.
How our animal friends deal with death, I do not know, but many of us have observed dogs or horses grieving the loss of a companion, and elephants seem to practice some kind of ritual at the site where one of their members died. Our primitive human ancestors buried their dead, and archaic cave drawings suggest early beliefs about life beyond death.
The ways of dealing with death and the possibility of existence beyond bodily death that show up in recorded human history are highly varied, all pointing to the desire of every human being to endure in some form beyond death, even if only in the memories of loved ones. Living on in the memories of others, “in history,” is the weakest form of immortality, but the only form known to imaginations bound to space-time, to secular souls. Another pale or weak form of existence beyond death was held by ancient Israelites, who speculated little on life beyond death, other than conceiving of death in “Sheol,” a kind of shadowy underworld, about which nothing could be known. A far more elaborate set of beliefs is embodied in what is called metempsychosis, or the “transmigration of the soul” from one form of existence to another. We may be familiar with this belief in the form of “reincarnation,” as taught, for example, within Hinduism. The soul of the being, its interior life, may return in some other bodily existence.
I know of two other speculative beliefs about “after life” which have had millions of adherents. One is the “resurrection of the body,” as believed in ancient Zoroastrianism and then in Pharisaic Judaism and early Christianity. We hear this belief in the ancient creeds of the Church: “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” Given his experience of Christ as “Resurrected” beyond death, the Apostle Paul accepted resurrection, but not in a physical form, but as a “spiritual body” (I Corinthians 15). The Apostle strains to make a vital distinction. The second major speculation on a form of life beyond death was held by the ancient Greeks in the teaching of the “immortality of the soul.” What this meant, and which parts of the soul might endure beyond death, received attention even by the best Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. The general agreement in Greek teaching was that at least the divine intellect in human being endured beyond death.
As recorded in our Gospels, Jesus offered no speculation on life beyond death: he did not teach the “resurrection of the body” or the “immortality of the soul,” and surely not “reincarnation.” Hence, he broke from Pharisaic Judaism and from Greek culture. But he did not share the secularist view that after death—nothing. What we find in the Gospels is far more simple and profound: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; to God all are alive.”That is Jesus’ definitive statement on life beyond death, and perhaps all that can be said. He does not restrict his claim to “all human beings,” but says, “to God all are alive.” In a similar teaching in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live.” Period. Again, that is all, devoid of speculation on how, when, and so on. All he adds, in refuting his clever questioners, is what we read in Luke 20, read at Mass today: that one cannot die again, so there is no need for marriage. Christ’s simple assertion is crystal clear: “To God all are alive.”In that phrase I place my hope in Life, life eternal. “The rest is silence.”
