What about the "resurrection" and future of our deceased loved ones?

The words and message of a Jesus who is risen and his followers who have experienced his continuing presence is a pretty good assurance, 'a blessed assurance,' that our loved ones live on. I find it confirming and reassuring that modern science describes a universe:

(1) where nothing is ever lost.
The old view of a three-story world with an upstairs space for 'heaven' is long gone, replaced by billions and billions of galaxies; but it is a universe where even the smallest atoms and energy are never lost and where Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) can describe life continuing in another dimension;

(2) where there is the new-found sense of the universe as a journey, rather than a random series of stops and starts, and a universe that accumulates and progresses, rather than turns backwards and loses what it has achieved (like human lives!);

(3) where at the heart of each person's life is consciousness and relationship, that--I believe--is never lost.

Our loved ones live on!

Fr. Brian Joyce