Four Gifts of Glorified Bodies

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“It is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit.” “Just as we have born the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.” And St Paul, in the reading today is continuing, speaking to believers, but who are struggling to believe, who are doubting in the resurrection. Because our Christian belief is not just that our souls continue after death, but that at the resurrection, our bodies also will rise. And this was a very new and startling revelation. And it makes us think we could ask ourselves, how happy are we with our bodies? Are we completely happy with our bodies? These poor bodies we have, which they get very cold, like in the weather we’ve just had for the past couple of days, and in the Texas summers, they get very hot, and our bodies get sick and get injured and get tired and gradually get old, and they often don’t look the way we want them to look. And today, also now, we have these controversies about transgender, new controversies about bodies, people feeling like they not in the right body. And so there’s a lot of challenges with our bodies. And so these words of St Paul shed a lot of light on this. And so first of all, let’s go back a little bit to what he was saying before the passage today, because the passage today is just part of a much longer treatment he gives on the resurrection of the body. He says, “some will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” And so he responds with the example of a seed. He said, “You foolish man. You foolish man. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body, which is to be but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body.” So about this great mystery of the resurrection of the body, to help us understand it, St Paul takes the example of a tiny seed so that hidden in this thing, which is so ordinary, seeds, he sees a teaching that God has given us about the destiny of our own bodies. He said, “so think of it, a seed, a seed which is so little, hard, dark and it seems dead. And then when it’s sown, it can begin to rise, green, tender, and it can grow very big; that from this thing that seemed dead and was buried, now there comes this new life. And we know that it’s the same being, but in a very different state. And so then St Paul continues. He says, “not all flesh is alike, for there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, another for fish.” And then he says, “There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars.” For stars differ from star and glory, and with our telescopes, we can see that even more clearly, how even each star has its own color and light. So he says, “so it is with the resurrection of the dead.” And so this is the key passage that I want to focus on today. He says, “so it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a physical body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” And so the Church and theologians who have reflected on this passage of St Paul have distinguished four different marks or gifts of the glorified body. And so he’s talking only about the glorified bodies. “The bodies of those who are damned also rise, but they don’t rise to glory, they rise to punishment.” And so I want to focus today on these four gifts or marks of the resurrected body. And I’ll be following especially the teaching of the Roman catechism, the catechism of Trent, which itself was following the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas. So the first is it says, “it is sown a physical body. It is raised a spiritual body.” And the theologians call this subtility. And that is, it’s truly a body. When it says a spiritual body, that doesn’t mean that it’s just a pure spirit, like the angels are pure spirits, but it’s truly a body. But he says it’s a spiritual body, because now our bodies are obstacles, often through our spirit, as our Lord says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How often have we experienced that? For instance, you’re trying to pray the rosary, your spirit wants to pray the rosary, and then you start to fall asleep because you’re tired. Or you’re trying to listen to Father John Mary give a homily, but you start to fall asleep because he has a voice that lulls you to sleep. And so our spirit is often willing, but our body is not always cooperating. And St Paul says, “I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do.” And a lot of times our body is part of that, which our body is often an obstacle, and so it’s like a battle. Some of the saints have compared it to like a stubborn donkey that doesn’t go where we want it to go, that doesn’t do what we want it to do. But then, as the Roman Catechism says, “in the resurrection, the body will be subjected to the absolute dominion of the soul and to an entire obedience to her control.” So that is that our body will be completely in harmony with our soul, with our spirit. It’s not the case right now. Again, oftentimes, our spirit wants to do something good, but our body is really struggling and pulling us in a different direction or just worn out. And in this case, the body will be completely docile to the Spirit. And one example they see in the Gospel is how Jesus appears through walls, that even walls, when Jesus wants to be some place, even walls cannot be an obstacle to His resurrected body. So that’s the first point. And then the second, as St Paul says, “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable,” or incorruptible, that is, our bodies now are subject to suffering and pain. As I said, I was just mentioning the example of the cold and the heat and so many ways that our body suffers but that will no longer be the case in the resurrection. As the book of Revelation says, “They shall hunger, no more, neither shall they thirst anymore.” No more hunger, no more thirst. That is the Catechism says that the resurrected bodies will be able to eat. In fact, that’s often one of the ways that Scripture speaks of the eternal life, like a great banquet that we won’t need to eat. And then the third point is, it is St Paul says, “it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” And this is what the theologians call agility. Our bodies, especially as we get older, become weak and slow and stiff, and so not easily moved, you know, not easily moved by ourselves. Even here in the hill country, even walking up the hills, we feel, you know, sometimes the heaviness of our bodies. But the resurrected bodies will be strong, agile, fast, responsive. And the character, this catechism sites the prophecy of Isaiah, who says, “they who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength.” So the resurrection of the body is the great renewal of the strength of the body. It says, “They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.” And so it’s applying this as a prophecy, which is speaking of the resurrection of the body. And we have all these movies today about superheroes and all the cool things that they can do with their bodies as superheroes. And that’s just a little inkling of the power of our resurrected bodies, even better than what we see, you know, Superman or spider man or whoever doing. So that’s pretty cool, right? To think that even better than the superheroes is what will be the case of the resurrected bodies. And the fourth and last one is, he says, “It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory.” And the theologians call this brightness. And so our bodies are now subject to many defects and miseries. This dishonor, you know, sometimes very humiliating, that the problems that our body can have, and as I say, many times, our appearance is not what we want. And in many ways our body can be humiliating. Because, you know, one thing that it’s an obvious fact of life is that beautiful bodies and beautiful souls don’t always go together, right? It’s not the people who look best who are always the holiest, right? I think we’re all aware of that, and it’s not the persons who are the holiest, who necessarily look the best. And so there’s disharmony between them. But that will no longer be the case in the resurrection. As the Gospel says, “the righteous will shine as the sun, in the Kingdom of their Father.” Notice what it says. It says, “the righteous will shine like the sun.” Because, again, there’s a lot of people who have good looking bodies here on earth who are not especially righteous. In fact, sometimes there can be a difficulty. Some of the saints, who are very beautiful, they tried to mar their body because they knew that it could be a temptation. But in the resurrection, those who will shine are the righteous. And we have some examples of this, like the Old Testament talks about Moses. After he had been speaking with God, he came down and his face was shining bright, so bright that the people couldn’t look at him, and it was a sign of the body itself being transfigured. And we also have the example that Jesus’ own Transfiguration, in which His earthly body begins to shine with brightness, as a sign of the body manifesting His glory. But that was just for a moment, but that’s a sign of the resurrection, in which the radiance of the soul will shine through the body. And as the Catechism says, “the supreme happiness, from the supreme happiness of the soul, and which is participating in the divine happiness, the body itself will shine with this light.” There’s already some little signs of that and our human experience, there’s already ways in which the body manifests what’s in our soul. For instance, if a person is happy, you know, they tend to smile and their face is brighter, so that you can sense it in their eyes. Or if they’re sad, so there’s already, the body is often manifesting or, you know, kind of, if you’re sad, you’re maybe kind of, you know, crouched and drooping and so our body already manifests, in some ways what our soul is experiencing, and especially in the face. I mean, think of someone like Mother Teresa, even like as she grew older, in her face, had a lot of wrinkles, but there was still a lot of beauty in her face. And I was also thinking of an apparition, a video of an apparition of one of the visionaries, one of the young women at Kibeho in Rawanda. You can, I think, find this on the internet. She’s just having an apparition of Our Blessed Mother, and her face is just radiantly beautiful. Beautiful face, not with light, but just the whole expression.  So already on this earth, there are some ways in which our body manifests what our soul is experiencing. But it’ll be much more so in the resurrection and even with, like even the very suffering of the body. The sufferings for the Lord, like the wounds of Jesus, did not disappear in His resurrected body and was manifested in the image of the Divine Mercy. When St Faustina saw it, she saw wounds in the hands of our Lord and His feet, and especially from the heart, where the rays are coming from, that the wounds didn’t disappear, but instead of becoming, instead of being ugly, they were like jewels, like special beauty, because they manifested God’s love. And so in a key point of this, of this brightness is that it will, just like as St Paul says that there’s a different brightness of the sun, of the moon and of each star. The Catechism says that all the bodies of the saints will be equally impassable. That is that they won’t suffer pain, but the brightness will be different for each one, because as each soul has its own holiness and its own degree of holiness, so each soul will manifest its own particular holiness and its own degree of holiness. And so it’ll be specific for each one. As again, as that example, St Paul gives up the sun, the moon and each star, like Jesus, will certainly be the brightest and then our Blessed Mother. And each person will have their own special brightness, but also different degrees, depending on the holiness of each person, depending on the divine love of each person. And so many, as Jesus says, “Many of the last will be first.” Many people who on this earth, maybe their bodies were very humble and not particularly maybe the bodies, which manifest a lot of suffering, they will be some of the most beautiful in heaven. And so these, these four, to summarize these four, those subtility, the complete subjection of the body to the soul, impassibility, the body is immune to suffering, the agility, the freedom from weakness, and then the brightness, the outward radiance in proportion to the degree of holiness. And so this puts a lot of our teaching, Christian teaching, in clear perspective. It puts our Lord’s teaching about chastity in perspective. The Christian teaching is not anti-joy or anti body. For instance, you wouldn’t say for a gymnast, a young gymnast who is going to a young man or woman who’s going through a lot of discipline and subjecting their body to a lot of discipline in what they eat and the exercises they do and then the schedule they keep. They’re not doing it because they hate their body. They’re doing it because they want their body to be especially capable and especially free. And so the Christians, the discipline in our body is not a rejection of the body, but it’s actually to free a discipline which frees our bodies, frees our bodies for the abundant joy. And just like an athlete, has to make sacrifices now to so that they’ll be more capable of their abilities, will grow. That is, they have to be willing, because they might not always, as I say, sacrifices of what they eat and exercises they do and they don’t necessarily see the fruit immediately. They have to be patient for the fruits. And so just also with our body, here on this earth, we don’t always see the fruits, because the resurrection, the fullness of these graces in the resurrection will only be after this life. But this resurrection of the body shows that what Jesus is teaching is not a rejection of the body, but it’s actually a special, the special dignity and respect for the body. There’s no other religion which manifests such an eternal dignity and destiny of the human body as what Jesus manifests. And St Paul said, “God gives each a body,” and this is really key, “as he has chosen and through each kind of seed, its own body.” But listen to what he says. “God gives each a body as he has chosen,” because we hear sometimes today of people being told that maybe they were born in the wrong body. Well, then who made a mistake? Did God make a mistake? Did he get too busy and he lacked quality control or something. What? How does that happen? St Paul is saying that God says, saying, God, our bodies come from God, true, that they come in a damaged state, because we’ve all been born  in a damaged, wounded world, but our bodies come from the Lord, and they are destined, even if they struggle and suffer in this life, they are destined, if we are open to Him, to experience His glory forever, not just in our souls, but also In our bodies. And the bodies, the sacrifices we make in our bodies now, prepare an even greater glory in heaven. And so this sheds light also on this whole transgender issues, and we have to be very compassionate, because there can be a lot of struggles and experiences some people have in our very wounded world. But it’s helpful to know that even if we struggle in a lot of ways with our body, but our body has an eternal destiny, and if we’re open to God, God will lead our bodies to this great freedom and glory. And so our bodies, our bodies are not to be an idol like our society sometimes make an idol out of bodies. They’re not a machine either that we can just cut off parts and replace it with different parts. And our bodies are not something evil. They are gifts of God to respect and care for in this life, so they can share His glory, share his happiness forever. And again, often those whose body is most humble, most poor, which suffers most on this earth, will be the bodies which will be especially glorious in heaven. And so just to conclude, St Paul says, we heard, “just as we have born, the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.” Now we bear this painful, wounded image of Adam, but then we shall bear the image of Jesus. “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is imperishable. What is raised is imperishable, sown in dishonor, raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power.” So in a physical body, raised a spiritual body. And our Blessed Mother has already experienced that. This is experiencing this now, in the very Eucharist that we come to celebrate, to receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord is preparing us, preparing our soul and our body. As Jesus says, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life in their soul.” And he says, “and I will raise him up on the last day.” Will raise up our body also on the last day. And finally, as St Paul says, “No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” Amen.

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
1 Corinthians 15:45-49
Luke 6:27-38