Friday of the 24th Week of Ordinary Time
Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith also is in vain. Yes, we are also found witnesses of God, because we testified about God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn't raise up if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead aren't raised, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable. But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruit of those who are asleep.
Hear, Lord, my righteous plea. Give ear to my prayer that doesn't go out of deceitful lips. I have called on you, for you will answer me, God. Turn your ear to me. Hear my speech. Show your marvelous loving kindness, You who save those who take refuge by your right hand from their enemies. Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings, As for me, I shall see your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with seeing your form.
Soon afterwards, he went about through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of God's Kingdom. With him were the twelve, And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out; And Joanna, the wife of Chuzas, Herod's steward; Susanna; and many others who served them from their possessions.
There's a kind of courage buried in Paul's argument to the Corinthians that we can miss if we read too quickly. He doesn't soften the stakes. He says it plainly: if Christ wasn't raised, then everything — our faith, our hope, our grief over those we've lost — amounts to nothing. It's a remarkable thing to write to a community you're trying to encourage. But Paul knows that a faith built on comfortable half-truths eventually collapses. So he lays the foundation bare and says: *this* is what we're actually standing on.
And then that single line turns everything: *But now Christ has been raised.* The whole argument pivots on those four words.
Notice how Luke quietly confirms the same reality from a different angle. The women traveling with Jesus — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna — aren't background figures. In a first-century Jewish context, women traveling publicly with a rabbi and funding his ministry would have been genuinely countercultural, even scandalous to some observers. Luke names them anyway. What emerges is a community shaped not by social convention but by encounter with someone who had actually changed their lives. They weren't following an idea. They were following a person who had healed them.
This is where the two readings meet us in ordinary life. The resurrection isn't an abstract doctrine we defend in arguments — it's the claim that the person at the center of our lives is actually alive. That changes how we move through a Friday afternoon, how we treat a difficult coworker, how we sit with grief that hasn't resolved.
The psalmist says it simply: *I shall be satisfied when I awake, with seeing your form.* That's the destination. The question is whether we let it shape the journey.
What would change in how we live this week if the resurrection felt less like a belief and more like a present reality? Who in our lives might be a "Joanna" or "Susanna" — someone whose quiet faithfulness we've overlooked? And where are we still living as though the stone hasn't been rolled away?