In Shakespeare's *Measure for Measure*, Isabella hesitates to plead for her condemned brother until Lucio interrupts her: "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." Father Dominic connects this line to St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, where a community plagued by doubt and fear struggles to believe in the resurrection.
Their problem? Their imagination was too small. They pictured the resurrection as merely a continuation of this life. But Paul reminds them that the resurrection is a new kind of life, as different from our present existence as a stalk of grain is from a seed. Not disembodied, not mere resuscitation, but something beyond anything we can imagine now.
The Gospel promises a new heaven and a new earth, radically renewed and filled with the goodness of God. Believing that takes courage. And that, brothers and sisters, is a word of hope.
⏱️ **Timestamps**
0:00 – Welcome from Rome: Saturday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time
0:13 – Shakespeare's *Measure for Measure*: Claudio, Lucio, and Isabella
0:37 – "Alas, I doubt"
0:42 – "Our doubts are traitors"
0:52 – The Corinthians and their doubts about the resurrection
1:16 – Trapped by a too-small imagination
1:28 – Paul chides the Corinthians
1:43 – Not disembodied, not resuscitation: a new kind of life
1:56 – The seed and the stalk of grain
2:08 – The courage to believe and to hope
2:16 – What the Gospel really promises
2:34 – A new heaven and a new earth
2:47 – "That, my brothers and sisters, is a word of hope"
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📖 Today's Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-49
📍 Recorded in Rome, Italy
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