The Third Word, Part 1

Pronouncing Christ’s word about the resurrection of the body

01/02/2024

When I read a book I have the bad habit of jumping ahead to the end and reading the last few pages. Do you do that? I can’t wait to know who lives or dies and how the story will end. I love it whenever someone says, “Spoiler alert!” Well, these three homilies on Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body should come with a “spoiler alert” because we are skipping ahead to the end, the end of time. You will recall the first part (or first half) of the pope’s book was a rigorous treatment of Christ’s three key words: first, on our Edenic origins, second, on our earthly pilgrimage, and third on our eternal destiny. We have already spent some time on Christ’s first word, but now we will leap-frog over his second word and try to learn to enunciate his third word. We should note, however, the pope spends the least amount of time on this third word, a mere eighty-three pages (pp. 379-462). Compare that to the ninety-two pages he wrote about Christ’s first word (pp. 131-223), and the lion’s share of one hundred and fifty-three pages he committed to Christ’s second word (pp. 225-378). But don’t be fooled by its relative brevity: “there’s gold in them thar hills!” even if they are just foothills.

But before we explore Christ’s third word, I should familiarize you with a rather unfamiliar word, namely, eschaton or eschatology. In the seminary we learned that eschatology is a branch of theology that concerns the end times, especially heaven and the resurrection of the body. Just like we did with Christ’s first word calling each insight (or syllable for us) “original” – like Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness – so too with Christ’s third word, we will use the adjective “eschatological,” meaning end times or heavenly. The Holy Father explains his overall strategy:

The dialogue that we propose to analyze now is, I would say, the third component of the triptych of Christ’s own statements, the triptych of words that are essential and constitutive for the theology of the body. In this dialogue, Jesus appeals to the resurrection, thereby revealing a completely new dimension of the mystery of man” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 380).

By the way, did you catch how John Paul wants us to avoid superficial two-dimensional thinking but rather urges us – really just repeating Christ’s own invitation – to vertical, three-dimensional thinking when he says “a completely new dimension of the mystery of man”? That is, Christ’s first word plunged us lower or deeper into our Edenic origins as we strolled in the world of Genesis 1-2 and beheld our bodies before the Fall. Now, Christ’s third word will carry higher into heaven, to our eternal destiny, as we stroll on the streets paved with gold (Rv 21:21) and behold our bodies after the resurrection of the dead. And by the way, Exhibit A in heaven is Jesus’ own resurrected body, and we might add that Exhibit B is the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is why we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension forty days after Easter and Mary’s Assumption on August 15. The Church is liturgically underscoring the importance of their bodies being in heaven. I have a Greek Orthodox friend who insists that the bodies of Enoch (Gn 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kgs 2:11) from the Old Testament are also in heaven. But I’m not buying it because I’m Catholic and not Orthodox.

John Paul’s first insight – or syllable – is “Eschatological Integrity” by which the pope reiterates the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body and not merely of the soul. Now, that may not sound like breaking news to us. After all, every Sunday we Catholics say in the Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” But too many Roman Catholics lull ourselves into thinking that after death the soul goes to heaven but the body just decomposes in the ground. Have you ever thought that? Well, stop thinking that! Why? Well, that is not the authentic Catholic faith, but rather, shallow two-dimensional thinking. This was the mistaken view of Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, which the pope corrects, stating: "In fact, the truth about the resurrection clearly affirms that man’s eschatological perfection and happiness cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated (according to Plato, liberated) from the body, but must be understood as the definitive and perfectly “integrated” state of man brought about by such a union of the soul with the body that it definitively qualifies and assures this perfect integrity (Man and Woman He Created Them, 390). That is, just like Jesus’ body (and not just his spirit) was raised from the dead on the first Easter Sunday, so too our bodies (and not just our souls) will be raised from the dead on the last Easter Sunday, that is, at the Eschaton.

Now, where does the pope find proof for this article of faith about our resurrection and reunion of body and soul? Does he just pull it out of thin air? No. He points to Jesus’s resurrection, saying: “We find the confirmation of this new state of the body in Christ’s resurrection” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 388). Put simply: our souls united with our bodies will become glorious as Christ’s own body was after his resurrection. Remember how Jesus told Thomas to put his finger into his hand and his hand into his side in Jn 20:27, or how Jesus’ risen body was able to eat fish with the disciples in Jn 21:13? The saints, therefore, whose souls alone are in heaven at this moment are incomplete without their bodies, and so they are not one hundred percent happy. That is, the saints – and hopefully one day you and me – will only enjoy total glory and endless beatitude at the resurrection of the dead, when their bodies are reunited with their souls in glory. This is how we start to say “Eschatological Integrity.”

But wait that’s not all (like that knife commercial)! The pope adds that this reunion of body and soul at the resurrection will reach a new peak of intensity and vitality, something John Paul calls “spiritualization.” The pope elaborates: “’Spiritualization’ signifies not only that the spirit will master the body, but, I would say, that it will also fully permeate the body and the powers of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 391, pope’s emphasis). In 2020 Scott Hahn wrote a book about the resurrection of the body called Hope to Die. Hahn loves double entendres. He describes this spiritualization with stunning examples, saying: "Basically, our [resurrected] bodies will do whatever we want them to do, and they will do it perfectly: they will dunk basketballs, do pirouettes, leap tall buildings, and fly through the air…If you want to stand in a green meadow in heaven, all you will have to do is think that thought, and you’ll be there. If you want to see your great-great-great grandpa in heaven, you will…instantaneously, as soon as you want to see him. Essentially, your body will travel at the speed of your thoughts… (Hope to Die, 96, 97). But then Hahn mentions this important caveat: “None of these movements of the glorified body, however, will be dictated by our whims. Every movement we make will be inspired by divine wisdom and ordered to knowing and loving God better” (Hope to Die, 97). In other words, we are not going to be running around like resurrected chickens with our heads cut off. Our movements will be purposeful, even providential.

But again, wait, that’s not all! Besides spiritualization, the resurrected body will also enjoy “divinization.” The pope writes: “Participation in the divine nature, participation in the inner life of God himself, penetration and permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine, will then reach its peak, so that the life of the human spirit will reach a fullness that was absolutely inaccessible to it before” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 392). The way I understand that dense and difficult passage is to compare it to the moment of receiving Holy Communion. On the natural, biological level, when we eat something we absorb that food into ourselves. We joke: "A minute on the lips but a lifetime on the hips.” But on the supernatural and theological level, when we receive Holy Communion, we are absorbed into Christ. It is truer to say that at Communion we don’t receive Jesus into us as much as Jesus receives us into him. Today on earth this divinization occurs incrementally and sacramentally, whereas in heaven at the eschaton (in the end) divinization will happen instantaneously and gloriously.

Just to wrap up: we are learning how to pronounce the first syllable of the third word of Christ on the resurrection of the body, namely, Eschatological Integrity. And John Paul has taught us that syllable includes three aspects, we might say “three letters”: (1) the seamless reintegration of body and soul, (2) a spiritualization where we will enjoy “another ‘system of powers’ within man” (Man and Woman He Created Them, 389), and (3) a divinization where, as St. Paul says “that God may be everything to every one” (1 Co 15:28).

Praised be Jesus Christ!