View
Easter Field
S. M. Hutchens on an Old Cemetery Opening Soon
There is a cemetery just north of U.S. 35 in the little town of Economy, Indiana, some miles northwest of Richmond. I am quite sure that by now the citizens of the necropolis outnumber its living inhabitants, of whom there are about 160. Among the former are my parents, whom my brother and I laid to rest there among the graves of many generations of our family. It is a pretty little cemetery that I try to visit when I am in the area, not drawn so much by duty or filial piety—the dead do not need my company, and are as much with me outside the cemetery as within it—as by a combination of memory and hope borne in our common faith that I may be by some divine chance there when the Trumpet sounds and the dead are raised incorruptible.
If our faith is not in vain, I think I know how it will be: The graves will be broken open in the similitude of our Lord's, and out, with a rush of light and power, shall unbend and rise living men, beautiful beyond description. Their faces will be raised and their arms will be open, for that is how the springing plants, so often used by our Lord and his apostles as figures of the resurrection, come forth. I can imagine no more wonderful experience short of the Beatific Vision itself than to witness the resurrection and ascension of the dead, corruption putting on incorruption, the seed breaking the bonds of its shell and becoming something that can hardly be imagined from the form of the seed, but still truly the very same self that was laid in the earth.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
14.1—January/February 2001
The Christian Heart of Fatherhood
The Place of Marriage, Authority & Service in the Recovery of Fatherhood by John M. Haas
29.4—July/August 2016
on Noticing That Modern Science Has Rendered Atheism Irrational by Harry Biltz
24.1—January/February 2011
How Planned Parenthood's Founder Played the Christians, and Won by Allan C. Carlson
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
