Why Be Catholic?
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the primary and most apparent reason to be both a Christian and a Catholic. Christ's Resurrection provides undeniable evidence of the truth of the relationship between mankind and God, a truth that He both revealed and accomplished.
Question: How do we know that Christ's teachings are true? Answer: Because He rose from the dead.
Christ Himself argued that we should believe in Him because of the works He performed. His miracles served as proof that He came from God, and thus, His words were true.
The Resurrection guarantees the truth of Christ's words, the authority of the Church, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the effectiveness of the entire order of grace.
But what about my own personal life, my own existence? St. Paul addressed this question directly when rebuking those who denied the resurrection of the dead:
"For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor 15:16-22)
In other words, Christ's Resurrection guarantees our own resurrection, our own personal immortality. We will not only exist as disembodied souls, but as complete human beings, with body and soul united to God. We can gain an understanding of what this means by reflecting on the process of aging. As we grow older, we sometimes look in the mirror and feel surprised. We do not perceive ourselves as "old". We see ourselves as simply ourselves, the same person we were aware of when we first reflected on our existence as children. Not necessarily the young self, but certainly the very same self. We find it strange, even unsettling, that the body can betray this self, this "permanent me", through change, growth, and decay.
In Christ's Resurrection, this "permanent me" is guaranteed to experience eternal life in its fullest form: elevated, free from sin, perfected, and living in boundless love. Yet, always remaining essentially myself.
No other philosophy or religion offers as much, or to put it differently, no other philosophy or religion captures so perfectly what we instinctively understand about ourselves. It captures our uniqueness compared to the rest of nature and the inherently permanent and potentially glorious nature of our own existence. The reason is simple: no other philosopher or theologian can claim a resurrection. When it comes to being Christian and Catholic, this single, solitary, concrete, and miraculous historical fact makes all the difference.
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