What is the Good News??

The daily mass readings are taking us through the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians for the past few weeks. In today's (Thurs, 9/16) reading from the 15th chapter, Paul defines what the good news of the gospel is. We hear the term good news all the time but have we ever stopped to think what it means. The good news of the gospel is not everything contained in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Paul is very specific about what the good news is. He calls it the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The four gospels contain the life and teaching of Jesus by four different witnesses. John does not contain the Eucharist and while distinct, all four highlight a different aspect of Jesus. What all four gospel's do contain are the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus...the good news. The good news is about what Jesus has done for us...not His teaching. The good news is about Jesus' saving act.

Paul focuses on the resurrection as that is the highlight of the good news. That first Good Friday and Holy Saturday left all the disciples of Christ dejected. It was not until the good news of the resurrection surfaced however, that the Church would take form. All the teachings of Jesus would have been for nought without the resurrection. Would anyone have cared about Jesus and His message had he not been raised from the dead? Perhaps the most zealous, but the disciple's would have returned fishing. The resurrection inspired and transformed the disciple's into the incredible professes of the life of Jesus because the hope of something better came when Jesus overcame the grave.

We the Church find our hope in the resurrection. It inspires us to become followers of Jesus and livers of His message and everything He stood for. When Jesus conquered death however, it gave the Apostle's and all of us a reason to profess the message contained in the whole of the Bible. With joy, we share the news that as humans, we do not have to live for the moment only, but for something better than what we experience on earth. The resurrection tells us we do not have to live in despair at the death of our most cherished relationships. That is the good news. Jesus Himself is the good news and that he died for us, was buried, and rose from the dead.