since we know that the just shall rise in bodies like to Christ’s in glory? Cato and compel the soul with violence to leave the body? We have sometimes many discomforts and miseries to suffer here, it is true; but what does it matter? Our suffering lasts but for a short time; so that we have just reason for adding to the discomforts of the body every day; for we are assured, not by Plato, but by the infallible word of God Himself that we shall rise again in the same bodies and live forever. And provided we have suffered here with our suffering Lord, what shall the bodies be like in which we shall arise? They shall not be mortal, corruptible, faulty, subject to heat, cold, hunger, thirst, weariness, and countless maladies and miseries, as they are now; but hear what the holy Apostle St. Paul says of them: “The dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption: and this mortal must put on immortality.”[1] The weak body shall become strong, the sickly healthy, the deformed beautiful, the wasting incorruptible, the suffering impassible; to say all in a few words: our bodies shall resemble the glorified body of Christ Himself, as the same Apostle assures us: “We look for the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of His glory.”[2] Mark well the magnificent words of our most faithful God: “made like to the body of his glory.” These bodies of yours and mine, O Christian, provided we serve our dear Lord truly and walk in His footsteps, these bodies, I say, that are now only masses of filth and rottenness, shall then be in glory and perfection like to the body of Him who is seated on a throne of glory at the right hand of His heav enly Father, surrounded by countless myriads of angels and princes of heaven, who adore Him with the utmost humility, whose beauty forms a paradise of exultation for the elect.
That is, in most beautiful and glorious bodies. By a single ray that the soul of Jesus Christ allowed to fall upon His then mortal body on Mount Thabor, His face, says the Scripture, shone like the sun, and His garments became white as snow: “His face did shine as the sun: and His garments became white as snow,”[3] so that Peter, ravished out of himself at the sight of such transcendent beauty, wished to remain there for-
- ↑ Mortui resurgent incorrupti, et nos immutabimur. Oportet enim corruptibile hoc induere incorruptionem, et mortale hoc induere immortalitatem.—I. Cor. xv. 52, 53.
- ↑ Salvatorem exspectamus Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, qui reformabit corpus humilitatis nostræ, configuratum corpori claritatis suæ.—Philipp. iii. 20, 21.
- ↑ Resplenduit facies ejus sicut sol; vetimenta autem ejus facta sunt alba sicut nix.—Matt. xvii. 2.
