A couple months ago, I looked at my calendar and realized that Easter Sunday and April Fools’ Day fall on the same day this year.

How appropriate, I thought. God is trying to show us something!

It’s possible, of course, that this is a coincidence. But I don’t think so, and for good reason: Scripture specifically says that the death and resurrection of Jesus (signs of divine wisdom) are foolishness to the secular world.

“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” Saint Paul writes, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).

“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,” he goes on to say. “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no flesh might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 1:27-29).

Make no mistake: believing in the resurrection of the body is quite foolish by worldly standards.

There’s no evidence, after all, of such a thing occurring in our world.

While there’s much anecdotal evidence of life beyond death (including near-death experiences, sightings of ghosts, experiences suggestive of reincarnation, and the mystical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist), there’s no such evidence of bodily resurrections – at least not that I know of.

Those of us who believe in this, then, must found our faith on something that we’ve never seen – nor even heard of secondhand. If Jesus truly returned from the dead in a physical body, anyone who witnessed this is long since dead.

Nevertheless, I believe that the resurrection of the body is a real thing, as foolish as this may sound. I believe in the resurrection because Jesus teaches it – and since Jesus has proven Himself faithful on many other matters, I trust Him on this one1.

If that makes me a fool, so be it. For I would rather be a fool in love (with the God that Jesus and the saints reveal to me), than be wise by worldly standards.

And perhaps what this world (where such things as war, famine, disease and bigotry have come to seem reasonable) needs right now is a little bit of (holy) foolishness!

Notes:

It’s worth mentioning that the world Jesus uses for resurrection is the Greek anastasis, which literally means “to stand again.” This word always conveys a sense of physical rising – which makes the resurrection of the body quite different from experiences of ghosts and angels (which, as far as we know, don’t have physical bodies).