You would sit down with them around a fire at night and talk. Mostly they would ask about where you came from and "what's it like?"  This some years ago in a primitive land just emerging on the world scene, and you are back in the bush remote from everything.¹

And you would explain: "Oh, yes. We have sewing machine to sew with. Very fast. Very efficient." And they would be much impressed and then would ask you: "Why don't you make us one?" The request would amuse you and you would explain: "That is something I could never do. Why, I cannot even make a needle or a thread. Or something as simple as a pencil, or paper; even a pin or a paper clip. Not in this context."

And you would go to bed with an awareness you never had before of how infinitely dependent we are on one another. We never think of it. I dare say most of us, all of us, would be totally helpless on our own. Like a canary released from its cage, unable to survive. We are all of us bound together by a network so complex that no computer could handle it.

But these primitives would carry the matter a step further. For later on, they would suggest that you pray for the gift of being able to do something that would help them have at least a few of the things that are so much a part of our life. "God is in it all, so pray!" And you'd retort, "Oh, no. God has nothing to do with it. It is all human work. People make sewing machines. Not God." But then you catch yourself. They are right, of course. Everything we have is from God. Ultimately. And when we deny the direct influence of God on things, they would simply reject that as impossible. And knowing that you would not lie to them, they conclude that you hide it. And will not tell them the secret. For if spirit makes the taro grow, and if spirit makes the house turn out well, and if spirit makes the hunt successful, and if spirit makes the baby thrive, it is clear, that spirit also makes the Honda and the Yamaha and the Singer. And so cargo cult is born: the spirit way to abundance. Simplistic, to be sure.

And valid. Everything we have, we have together. And only together. And it is all of God and is the glory of God.

And so the resurrection. I used to think of the resurrection as a personal affair between God and me. He will raise me on the last day. I have every confidence that that is so. But that is a simplistic way of looking at it, it seems to me.

For we rise together, together with Christ, with one another. And just as a host of cooperating minds and hands make all the things we know, so we might better think that the last glorious day will be the culmination of an infinite number of us working together for that end. Albeit unknowingly.

A jet flies overhead thrusting ahead of its sound every day about 5:00 A.M. How many minds, how much labor, how much history is involved in that achievement that we take so matter of factly. And that but one of them.

Things have their time. Development is made, and out of that, new development, almost by the nature of things, for often significant new departures occur in several parts of the world at the same time. Things are ripe for them. The combustion engine made flight possible, not wings.

Our faith in Christ, our living that faith, is one modest share in a great day coming. The modesty of it cannot detract from its magnificence or its absolute necessity. The suffering, the dying, the believing, the hoping, the loving, in word, in deed, are part of a great work going on with speed and decision. And one day the time will come, all will be ready, the fruit ripe.

And maybe we could say it is our work, this resurrection? That we have it in us. We have the gift, the capacity for it. "He has destroyed our death; He has restored our life." But how many generations of concerted effort will bring it about? We rise together. With one another in the power of God. To the glory of God.

There is nothing human that is not communal. You cannot mail a letter alone. Try it. It will never leave the box. How great our joy must be, then, in knowing that we take part in a glorious, ultimate fulfillment that is far beyond any imagining. If we are dazzled by superb human achievement — and who is not? — what are we to respond in the face of what is really going on? And if disheartened by the evil in so much of what is human, how earnest to repudiate, to avoid, to atone in Christ.

Perhaps we could cheer ourselves by thinking now and then of the glory of our call to being part of a new creation that we bring about. An essential part. And God is in it all. And we in God.

If alone I cannot so much as make a needle and thread, how could I be so blind as to think I can rise from the dead in a general resurrection? But I can. With Christ. With you. With all who have ever lived. I do believe that. And believing it will bring it about. Amen.

1) Fr. Matthew was originally an SVD missionary in Papua, New Guinea before joining the Trappist community of Gethsemani.