As we emerge from the ruins of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, we trek to the cemetery to remember our dead and to honor the saints. On the one hand, we have been preoccupied with the devastation wrought by two powerful typhoons and the memory of our loved ones who have gone ahead of us. On the other hand, our gaze is lifted toward the heavens where, we believe, the saints and our loved ones who have died have been given life anew by God.
It is not our nature to outlast death. As biological, mortal beings, death and decay are our natural ends. Yet, God has gratuitously infused us with immortality, so that, for us, death is not our final destiny. But what in us perseveres beyond death?
Many Catholic theologians today reject the Greek dualistic notion of the human person as a dichotomy between the body and soul, the flesh and the spirit. Because we are each a composite integral person, we do not say “the body of Lolo has perished.” Instead, we say “Lolo has died.” Death claims not just our bodies, but our entire selves as embodied persons. Nonetheless, the Christian Good News proclaims that something in us survives death.
The Distinction between My Person and My Body. My body is constantly changing. My body as a toddler of two years is different from my body as a young adult of 20, as it is different from my body as a mid-forty year old man. Nonetheless, something, or better yet, someone, remains constant. This is my person, the acting subject, underlying the human person Manoling at different stages of life.
And even though I fall into a coma, my brother Jesuits and my family will continue to take care of me, because they believe that someone, Manoling, is alive despite his almost lifeless body.
It is this acting subject, the person underlying the changing form and condition of my body that will survive death. And it is this person that will be brought before God and be made eternal. This promise of immortality would have been more than enough for me, but not for God who wills more for all of us.
The Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Body. The survival of my person is what is called the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. However I call this soul, whether I call it spirit or personhood, I am proclaiming that the acting subject, my “self” underlying my embodied person, will, by God’s grace, be made eternal. Still, the mystery of the immortality of the “soul” is not equivalent to the mystery of the resurrection.
Beyond all human logic, beyond the conjectures of science, we believe that on the Last Day, God will reunite our personhood with our transformed bodies. How this glorified body will look like, we can only speculate. Nonetheless our belief is not spiritual illusion, but rather, religious faith and conviction grounded on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. How do we know that what God the Father has done for Jesus, He will do for us? The assumption of Mary, body and soul, into heaven is the icon of our universal destiny.
By the transformation of our bodies and their eventual reunification with our personhood, God is declaring that everything about us, including our bodies, is important and has lasting significance. Nothing of us will be wasted.
The Recapitulation of the World. Among all creatures, will the human species be the sole creature that will outlast death and decay? Will all other creatures, the world and the cosmos be doomed to annihilation? If our bodies, representative of the material world, will be transformed and redeemed from death, so, too, will everything within and without our world. Jesus Christ, at the End Time, will recapitulate the cosmos. This implies that the End Time is not to be feared, but to be looked forward to, for it will mean the reunion of our glorified bodies with our “selves”, the gathering of all humanity, and the transformation of the entire world.
The end of the world is not the destruction and decay that Ondoy and Pepeng have wrought. The ultimate end of humanity and the world is divinization, a participation in the divine life of God: “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” This is our faith. It is indeed too good to be true. And yet, assured us by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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