“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” So the Nicene Creed which we pray each Sunday concludes. Last week, I spoke about the purity of heart by which we can see God. This vision of God, called the beatific vision (the sight of God in Heaven that makes us happy), is our ultimate destiny. Everything in this life is building toward the eternal life to come, when our bodies will be raised from the dead and we will live with God and with the saints forever. St. John Paul II connects this purity of heart with eternal life by speaking of the ‘Eschatological Man’, the human person in final glory. By seeing the finish line, we can prepare to run the race of life well.

   The columns in the Theology of the Body so far have hammered home one point: the body matters. It is not a temporary shell holding our immortal soul, to be shuffled off at the end of this life. Christians do not believe in a permanent disembodied spiritual existence; rather, the separated soul in Heaven is an anomaly that God will remedy with the resurrection of the dead (that is, their bodies). Resurrection is not about the immaterial soul which outlives the material body, but the raising of the material to be united forever with the immaterial. Just as bodies reveal the person, so they also point to our future glory, when our limited and fragile bodies will be endowed with immortal glory.

God’s big plan is to redeem not only our souls, but our bodies as well. Our bodies do not dematerialize or are annihilated, but are so filled with the Holy Spirit that they share in God’s own divine life and are transformed in ways we can scarcely imagine. If in this life the body expresses the call to love and communion, in the next life this ‘nuptial meaning’ will reach its fulfillment through our total communion with God and the saints. No longer capable of lusting or objectifying, we will see each other through God’s eyes and will have that purity of heart that is difficult to achieve here below.

   What does this vision of the future change about our present? Everything, as it turns out. It affects how we treat other people, as C.S. Lewis wrote: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” It affects how we treat our own bodies, as St. Paul quips: “you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20). The type of eternal life we inherit (infernal or celestial) depends on how we use this fragile body in this life: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor. 5:10). So use your body well and “look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

   -Fr. Stephen