Letter 43

From: Ambrose, Bishop of Milan To: The Church at Milan Date: ~378 AD Context: The second part of Ambrose's funeral discourse for his brother Satyrus, shifting from personal grief to a theological defense of the resurrection of the dead. Ambrose, continuing his discourse on the death of his brother Satyrus. I have wept for my brother, and I do not regret it. But now I owe you — and myself — something more than tears. I owe you the reason for our hope. The pagans mock us: "You say you believe in life after death, yet you weep at funerals like everyone else." They think this proves our faith is pretense. It proves nothing of the sort. We weep because we love, and love does not pretend that separation is painless. But we do not weep as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13), because we know that separation is temporary. The resurrection of the body is not a metaphor. It is not a comforting fiction. It is the promise of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and if that God cannot be trusted, then nothing in heaven or earth can be trusted. Consider nature itself. The seed falls into the ground and dies. From that death springs new life — not the same life, but a transformed life, more glorious than the original (1 Corinthians 15:36-44). If God can do this with wheat, can he not do it with the bodies of his children? The philosophers say the body is the prison of the soul, and death is liberation. I say the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and its destruction is an outrage that God will reverse. The body matters. It was created by God, inhabited by God in the Incarnation, and will be raised by God at the end of all things. My brother Satyrus is not in the ground. His body is in the ground, waiting. He himself is with the Lord, and on the last day, body and soul will be reunited in a form more glorious than anything we have known. This is not wishful thinking. This is the faith for which the martyrs died. And if they died for it, I can certainly live by it — even on the worst day of my life, which this is. May the God of resurrection comfort all who mourn.

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