We don’t like to think about death. It’s uncomfortable. In a certain sense, death is unnatural: it was not part of God’s original intention for us. Rather, “by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are in his possession experience it” (Wisdom 2:24). God had warned our first parents that eating from the forbidden tree would result in death (see Genesis 2:17). Despite this warning, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Genesis 3:6). While they didn’t immediately die physically, they did experience a spiritual death, and physical death loomed near.
The first physical death recorded in the Bible is not even a death by natural causes, if we can even call death natural. No, the first death recorded in human history is Cain’s murder of his own brother, Abel, in Genesis 4:8. Following this tragic event, page after biblical page introduces us to more and more people, some righteous, some vicious, and all of them imperfect, who ultimately succumb to death.
Yet, the Old Testament gives us glimpses of the truth that death will not have the final word. The Patriarch Enoch doesn’t appear to have died: “Then Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The Prophet Elijah raises the Widow of Zeraphath’s son from the dead in 1 Kings 17:17-24. The Prophet Ezekiel witnesses a valley full of dry bones come back to life with flesh, sinews, and breath in Ezekiel 37:1-14. During this event, the Lord explicitly declares, “Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people!” (Ezekiel 37:13). Job hints at a bodily resurrection when he declares that his Redeemer lives, “whom I myself shall see; my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him, and from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26-27). In the final centuries before Jesus’ birth, the Maccabean Martyrs openly mocked the prospect of death because “the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever” (2 Maccabees 7:9).
During the life of Jesus, the specter of death was ever-present, particularly in the form of Roman crucifixions along major roadways into major cities. This was a deterrent to bad behavior as the crucified had their crime listed above their tortured bodies. Amid this culture of death, Jesus raised the dead three times. The first two times, it was the synagogue official Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter in Matthew 9:18-26 and the widow’s son at Nain in Luke 7:11-17. The third time, it was Jesus’ own dear friend Lazarus in John 11:1-44. As a result of this resurrection, Jesus’ enemies started plotting to kill Lazarus too (see John 12:9-11) but ultimately settled on killing Jesus. Thus, even Jesus, the God-Man himself, succumbed to death via Roman crucifixion and “breathed his last” (Luke 23:46). But the author of life, the one who said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25) and promised eternal life and resurrection to those who eat his flesh (see John 6:54) cannot remain dead. He also wouldn’t keep that resurrection power to himself, and the Gospels record that on Easter Sunday, “tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matthew 28:52).
Jesus overcame death. He declares, “I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld” (Revelation 1:17-18). His followers participate mystically in his death and resurrection through Baptism. As St. Paul says, “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Because Jesus has overcome death, and because Christians have already died and risen mystically through Baptism, death has no real power anymore. St. Paul sings a victory song: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). Put more simply, he says, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Toward the end of his own earthly life, St. Francis of Assisi added a few lines to his Canticle of the Creatures. In these lines, he praised the Lord through Sister Death. Because of a life lived in relationship with the One who conquered death, Christians are able to move on from the fear of death to a familial relationship with her. We need not fear death, because Jesus Christ is Lord over death and brings resurrected life.
