The Body With Which We Resurrect

"This is all very confusing; explain to me, Father: when we die, our bodies go into the ground, our souls go to heaven, and we? Where do we go?"

Death as a passage - Easter
From the point of view of our faith, we should not use the word death as if it were a final destiny. The deceased are the dead; deceased means gone, finished, the end. This however is not true in the context of our faith.

In this context, death is not the last thing that happens to us, but the second to the last. Death is more a stage of growth, the passage from a spatiotemporal life to an eternal life beyond space and time. We believe there is life beyond space and time because God our creator of space and time and lord of life is himself spaceless and timeless.  

Even in nature death is never a definitive state, but a passage from one form of life to another. According to Lavoisier, in nature nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed. The death of one living being always gives rise to the life of another. Life is a perpetual circle of living and dying, because life feeds on life, every living being is the food for another living being.

The grass that rises from the soil dies between the teeth of the gazelle that feeds on it. The grass does not die, it is transformed into the gazelle, which then become a lion, and when this dies, it is eaten by vultures and hyenas, which then give life to countless worms, which in dying, fertilize the soil that gives rise to new grass and so the cycle repeats itself.

Death is not a state, but a passage. Those who have near-death experiences speak often of a tunnel and a light at the end of this tunnel. The same happens when we are born: there is a tunnel and there is a light; in Portuguese to give birth is translated literally as to give light. Our birth can be viewed as our first death, a death to the life we had in our mother's womb. In the same way, our earthly death can be seen as our birth into eternal life, in the bosom of God.

Death is a passage from one form of life to another form of life, from being in the womb attached to our mother by the umbilical cord to coming into the light, breathing for ourselves. Life is a gift from God, it is the air that we inhale through our nostrils that leads us to start living until the day we exhale that air and we return to Him.

The butterfly metaphor
In nature, there are living beings that change form during their lives. The frog is one of them, and the butterfly is another. The change of form also requires a change of environment, both in the case of the frog and in the case of the butterfly. The butterfly is born as a caterpillar that crawls on its belly across the earth, eating leaves until the day it apparently dies.

What seems to be a death is in fact only a change of form which while maintaining some similarities with the previous form, it is also startling different from it. Our life on earth is like that of the caterpillar, and our life in heaven is like that of the butterfly; our physical body is like that of the caterpillar, very attached to the earth, while our spiritual body is like that of the butterfly, freer, flitting from flower to flower.

The caterpillar is a metaphor of our earthly life, of our physical body that is dependent on the earth. Like the caterpillar, we drag our body across the earth, but we are called to a higher life, we are potential butterflies. To become butterflies and realize man's dream of being able to fly, we have to go through a near-death passage. We cannot be a caterpillar and a butterfly simultaneously; to be a butterfly, we have to stop being a caterpillar.

Life as a butterfly is flying on a warm spring day in a sea of different flowers with other butterflies of different colours, through fields, valleys and meadows, in the light of the radiant sun of the early morning hours, this is the life to which we are all called: Heaven.  

The water metaphor
Another metaphor that nature gives us that helps to conceptualize Resurrection is the three physical states of water. Water, without ceasing to be what it is, that is, without changing into another compound, exists in nature in three different states that are so distinct from each other that one might even think that they are three different compounds when we compare them to each other.

It comes from the ocean in the form of vapour that cannot be seen. It condenses and falls on the earth, penetrates it and springs up, forming rivulets, streams and rivers. It is buried and springs up again, flowing and forming rivers, giving life along its way, until it returns to the sea.

Instead of rain, it can fall in the form of snow; at zero degrees Celsius, it freezes, becoming hard as a rock; at 100 degrees Celsius, it boils and evaporates and, without ceasing to be what it is,comes into existence in the gaseous state, invisible to our eyes and intangible to our touch. We can see and touch it again if it condenses on a surface colder than the air temperature.  

If water, without ceasing to be what it is, can exist in an invisible and intangible form, we could say almost in a spiritual form, how can we who have a body that is made up of 70% of this element not be able to also exist invisibly and intangibly?

The 12 physical bodies of our life
The first living being that inhabited this planet was a single-celled being; there are still living beings that are single-celled, like the amoeba. The ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis, that is, the millions of years of the history of life on this planet recapitulates or repeats itself abbreviated in the individual history of every human being who comes into this world.

We too were once a single-celled being that was formed by a half-cell from our father, the sperm, and a half-cell from our mother, the egg. The two joined and we were formed, a human cell with a unique genetic code in the history of mankind; in a comparatively short time, this cell subdivided into other cells to form an adult human body consisting of 30 trillion cells.

Each one of our cells follows the general law that governs life on this planet: to be born, to grow, to reproduce and to die. This explains the growth and the aging of our body. In fact, with the exception of our brain cells, the neurons, all others follow this general rule – we can say that every 7 years we change, every 7 years we have a biologically different body.

Within an average lifespan of 85 years, we have 12 different bodies. With which of these 12 bodies would we be resurrected? With none of them, because it is not the physical body that resurrects, but rather the spiritual body which is a synthesis of all of them, but none of them in particular.

What is the spiritual body?
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling – if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked.  2 Corinthians 5:1-3

Putting it simply and bluntly, our spiritual body in heaven is made up of all the treasures that we accumulate throughout our life here, (Matthew 6:19-34). These treasures, these spiritual goods, which at the end of our lives form a body that is our history, are the good works, or what we have managed to spiritualize with our material resources and our spiritual talents.

People say that those who give to the poor lend to God, that is, the money or any temporal material good, when it is used for a spiritual purpose, becomes an eternal good, that is, it becomes spiritualized or an accumulated treasure in Heaven.

Using a metaphor that we all understand, our life is like a distillery. Distillation is a process by which material goods are evaporated by boiling, thereby removing their essence. To obtain the essence of a perfume, for instance, it is necessary to distill tons of a particular flower, thus acquiring a few drops of its essence. Alcohol resulting from the distillation of grapes or barley is called "spirit", whisky and brandy or cognac are thus called because they result from the distillation process.

This is a story about a woman who was accustomed to all the luxuries and flattery that this world can give because she was rich and famous. She died one day and when she reached heaven, St. Peter took her by the hand to lead her to her heavenly dwelling.

As they passed by many charming Beverly Hills-style mansions, the woman thought that she would be assigned to one of these. But they continued, reaching the suburbs and the high-rise buildings with apartments and she thought, "Well, it'll be at least one of those," but no...

Then they arrived at the slums of Heaven and St. Peter showed her a hut made of cardboard and tin. "This is your home," said St. Peter. "What?" said the woman, "that? I can't live in this dump!” "I'm sorry," St. Peter said, “but this is all we were able to build for you with the materials that you sent to us during your lifetime."

It seems to me that the more mysteries of nature science unravels, the easier it becomes to believe in a God who has made everything, and in a life beyond death. In the context of Newton's mechanistic physics, where matter is matter and energy is energy, it was hard to believe in the Resurrection.

With Einstein’s quantum physics, where matter and energy are one and the same thing, that is, that matter can become energy and energy can become matter, it is much easier to believe that our material physical body can become an energized spiritual body.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Religion and Science

“Science discovers; religion interprets. Science gives knowledge and power to men; religion gives them wisdom and control. Science is about facts; religion is about values. The two are not rivals, they are complementary. Science makes religion not fall into irrationalism, fanaticism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the swamp of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."
Rev. Martin Luther King

Science and technology as the new religion
A growing number of people have been replacing faith in the omnipotence of God with faith in the pseudo-omnipotence of science and technology. Science discovers, technology applies, and our lives become more comfortable from a material point of view. In addition to material, the human person is also spirit, a spirit that questions the whys and the meaning of life and of everything around him. Science will never have answers to these questions, but religion does.

The agnostic will say that no one cares to know the "why" and the "for what". It is true, as the atheists say, that man is the moment when nature became aware of itself. However, it is precisely from that moment on that the human being began to seek the meaning of his life. Every individual, at the moment when he becomes aware that he exists, around 6 or 7 years of age, begins to wonder where he comes from, where he is going and what is the meaning of life; only animals do not do so, and it is only because they are not aware that they exist.

There are more and more people who have abandoned God in order to idolize science and technology. The idea that religion is nothing more than an ignorant and primitive way of investigating the mysteries of the world has taken root in public opinions nowadays. The episode of Galileo's condemnation earned the Church the reputation of obscurantist that prevails even to this day.

Galileo was condemned, on the one hand because the obstinate Church leaders of the time had not yet realized that the Bible does not reveal scientific truths, but only truths concerning human nature. On the other hand, as some historians say, Galileo did not present evidence to confirm his theory. Because we are on Earth, we do not perceive its movement and hence from this point of view, it seems that it is the sun that moves; the same happens to us when we travel in a car or a train – we who are in motion seem to be still, and the landscape that is fixed seems to move before our eyes.

Einstein was also criticized by some scientists of his time because his theory of relativity lacked empirical proofs, as it was an intuitive elucubration of Einstein's mind. It is only now that empirical evidences are beginning to appear that show the veracity of his theory.

Faith and reason
If God exists, then He exists as the Creator of everything and everyone; as creatures created by Him, it is not logical that our mind can encompass the mind of God, that the part can understand the whole. God can never be the object of science; for that matter, the same is true of man. In fact, the mystery does not involve only God and man, it is common to all areas of knowledge.

No science or area of knowledge can boast of having already discovered everything there is to know in its field; the more one knows, the more there is to know; therefore, the true wise man considers himself ignorant. Nicholas of Cusa called it the learned ignorance: in the face of the immensity of what there is to know, all I know is that I know nothing.

Science investigates nature; religion also investigates nature but more specifically, the nature of God. True science knows that the more one knows, the more there is to know. Religion also knows that but keeps on investigating the mystery of God, knowing that it can never encompass it in its totality.

Historically, reason has been constituted and instituted as science, which is the process of determining the behaviour of matter or of the universe using observation, experimentation and reason. Historically, faith has been constituted and instituted as religion, which is an organized system of beliefs, ideas or answers about the cause, nature and purpose of the universe that are not and cannot be the object of science.
 
Faith does not live only in religion, nor does reason only live in science. Faith and reason are complementary and we need both in our daily life. Practically every act contains a bit of reason and a bit of faith. In life, reason analyzes, faith decides. Without reason we would decide prematurely and make more mistakes than we already do; without faith we would never make a decision, nor risk a solution to our problems, because we would always think that something could have escaped our analysis and we fall into immobilism.

When I accept a cheque for a service rendered, in good faith I trust that the cheque is covered, it would be rude and I could lose a friend if I refused to take it and ask for cash instead. When I board a plane, I believe that the airport security has done a good job in preventing someone from putting a bomb in their luggage, and I believe the pilots are well trained and well-intentioned.

When I sit down to eat in a restaurant, I trust that the food is safe to consume and I do not demand that it be analyzed in a laboratory before eating it; it is this lack of faith and the fear of being poisoned that the cook in Ethiopia is made to always taste the food in front of the guests before a meal.

To know and to love
To know means to dominate and to control. If I know the principle that regulates rain, I can make it rain, as in fact the Chinese did a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, to prevent it from raining on the opening day. With God, one cannot know Him in the same way. One knows God as one knows the human person.

A person only reveals himself, only makes himself known if he is loved. In contrast, if it is an enemy who knows us, we become vulnerable to him. Like all people, God only makes himself known to those who love him. We can’t love God or a person without getting personally involved with him. We cannot put God or a human person inside a test tube. To love is to implicate oneself with the beloved; among humans, knowledge without love is manipulation and control.

Church, society and science
In the case of abortion, it is the Church that is on the side of science, and the sociopolitical world, cultured or uncultured, that is against it. There is no scientist who denies that human life begins at conception, when half-cell consisting of 23 chromosomes – sperm – joins another half-cell consisting of the same number of chromosomes – the egg – forming an indivisible union, a human cell of 46 chromosomes with a unique, never seen, genetic code in the history of the universe.

This human cell immediately subdivides into replicas of itself, because all the cells that make up the human body contain the same DNA. Many people, following their conveniences, not science, decide that this embryonic life is not yet a human life, as if time could transform something that is not human into something that is human, or something that is not yet human to become human after a short time. Do these ignorant lovers of science forget that they themselves went through this embryonic phase and were they themselves not human at the time?

Abortion is a legalized homicide, a convenience for some, and a business for others. There is no scientific, moral or human basis for this killing and yet the science that knows that human life begins at conception also shuts up for convenience. This is Galileo Galilei of society and science, hypocrisy taken to its highest level.

The Church does not fear science
Far from fearing science, the Church even promotes it. The 19th century Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel, is known to be the father of modern genetics. The only acceptable theory about the beginning of the universe is authored by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest. According to him, the "Big Bang" marks the beginning of Time, Space and Matter.  

Since in the universe as well as in nature nothing creates itself, it is perfectly plausible that it was God, someone outside of creation, the uncaused cause that by externalizing his creativity and love, caused an explosion of the atom he had previously created and, with this big explosion, created time, space and matter.

The Big Bang is the kick-off to an infinite succession of causes and caused, until it reaches the moment when a human being appears. Since the Church is not averse to science, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Humanae Generis, states that Darwin's theory of evolution of species is not in contradiction with the book of Genesis which, using mythological language, says that man was the last living being to be created. Whether it was created directly or as the end of an evolutionary process makes little difference.

The more science advances, the easier it is to believe. For centuries, the Bible and the Church have been ridiculed for speaking about the end of the world; today it is scientific to say that the universe had a beginning and will have an end. I firmly believe that science will never come to prove faith wrong, quite the contrary, the more science discovers, the easier and the more reasonable it is to believe than not to believe.

In which case not to believe will be reduced to a stubbornness that is more proud and ignorant than scientific or enlightened. We are not far from a time when we will be able to say, with all the scientific proof we have at our disposal, that only those who do not want to believe do not believe.

To speak of the miracles that Jesus did within the framework of Newton's mechanistic physics, according to which reality works like a perfect machine in the unalterable routine of a clock, is more difficult than to speak of the same topics in the framework of the theory of relativity and quantum physics, where there is no longer talks of fixed and absolute laws of nature, but of statistical probabilities. The Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle goes even further when it suggests that reality, far from being fixed and subject to routine, has a high degree of uncertainty and unpredictability.

For Einstein, matter is a form of energy, and energy is a form of matter; 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter that is invisible. How easy it becomes to speak about the resurrection, of the glorious body of Christ and of the spiritual body that we will possess after death!

Science tells us what the world is like and how it works; but the why of the world science can never find out because this is of another nature. 

Conclusion: Science discovers, technology applies, and our life becomes more comfortable. Religion discovers the meaning of life, ethics the values that define human nature, spirituality shows us the way to self-realization and happiness as sons and daughters of God.

                                                Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC