Fifth Sunday of Lent, Cycle A
EZEKIEL 37:12-14
Thus says the Lord:
I will open your graves
and have you rise from your graves, my people,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
And when I open your graves
and have you rise from your graves, my people,
you shall know that I am the Lord:
I will put my spirit in you and you shall live;
I will place you in your land
and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it.
Oracle of the Lord.
Ezekiel is a priest, companion of the prophet Jeremiah, who announces to the people the punishment of God for their infidelity. When Jerusalem is conquered and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar (598 BC), Ezekiel is deported to Babylon. He lives in exile in Babylon and prophesies there, announcing to the people their “resurrection,” that is, the return from exile.
We must remember that these images are even more surprising considering that the people of Israel do not yet believe in life after death, and therefore the images of resurrection are extremely expressive to them.
The text also presents the spirit, which is infused into the bodies to make them living. This is a clear parallel with the creation of the human being in the second chapter of Genesis, when God breathes into the man’s nostrils his own breath, and thus the man becomes a living being.
ROMANS 8:8-11
Brothers and sisters: those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.
This is a classic text of Paul, in which the opposition between “the flesh” and “the spirit” is emphasized. The flesh is life without God, the Spirit is what gives true life to the human being, who, without it, is nothing more than flesh, and its end is corruption.
The body is taken as a synonym for the flesh, of the man without spirit. And the resurrection of Jesus is presented as a model for our own resurrection.
God is the one who gives life, the material organic life, but, above it, The Life of the Spirit.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.