'Cause I Gotta Have Faith - Part XII

Only two more to go!  Here’s one of them:

Article 11:

Current Text:

We look for the resurrection of the dead

Beginning Advent 2011:

And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

Ok, let’s just be clear: in the current text, we’re not looking for the resurrection of the dead because we lost it.  This is one of those really great changes that’s coming in Advent, because it makes our beliefs much easier to understand.  Now that that’s been said, let’s move on…

So how do the dead resurrect?  If you’ve ever seen a movie where someone digs up a grave, or opens up an old coffin, the person who was buried within that hold was probably depicted in the form of a skeleton.  After we die, our organs deteriorate, and the only things that are left of us are our bones and our teeth.  That raises the question of what will happen with what we call the “Resurrection of the Dead.”  Will our skeletons grow our organs back and our hearts start beating again?  Will our skeletons start walking around on their own?  As Catholics, we feel it’s probably not exactly either of those—although the former is closer to what will probably happen.  Theologically speaking, when we die our bodies and souls separate.  Our bodies are left on earth to do what they do, and our souls go on to (hopefully) meet God.  In the Resurrection (of the Dead) God will give incorruptible (not able to die and decay) life to our “bodies”, which will be reunited with our souls.  This idea comes to us pretty much straight from St. Paul’s 1^st Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 42-44: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible.  It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.”  This incorruptible body is the one that will be given to us by God at the end of this worldly age, and is the “body” we will experience eternity in.  I’m using quotation marks because we need to remember that the “body” we will have then is not like the body we have now.  Our body now is able to be hurt, get sick, and be killed.  The “body” God will give us at the end of this time, and the beginning of eternity is unlike that.  We really don’t have any way of knowing (and we DEFINITELY don’t have any way of fully understanding) what this body will look like or how it will operate.  We just have to have faith that God knows what he’s doing and that when the time comes, we’ll know what we need to know.

I was going to try to put the last article in this post as well, but although it’s only 8 monosyllabic (I love that word) words long, it’s pretty huge, so I’ll save it for its own post.