As a follow up to my post from a couple weeks ago on the culture of death and how the culture of life will come out of the culture of death I want to reflect on the resurrection of Jesus for a minute and I'll explain how it connects below.
Christians have always believed that after his crucifixion Jesus Christ was risen from the dead and that we would share in the resurrection. In the Creed we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We know that our bodies will be raised by Christ because a human being is made up of a body and a soul. If we are only a soul we are a ghost and if we are only a body then we are a corpse. Neither of these is a human being. To be human is to be a living body, or an enfleshed soul. Therefore, in Heaven, we must have our physical bodies if we are to be fully human. Further proof of having physical bodies in Heaven is that there are already two physical bodies in Heaven; Jesus and Mary. How this is possible is a mystery.
If we look at the Gospel accounts of the resurrected Jesus we learn that his resurrected body is not merely a spiritual body, but a physical body. Proof of this is the Gospel accounts which tell us that Jesus eats fish and Thomas puts his hand in Christ's wounds. In order for these things to occur Jesus' resurrected body must be physical. However, there is something different about his resurrected body. He passes through solid objects, like walls, to stand among the disciples. We can never be certain of what our resurrected bodies will be like, but we know that they will be physical, but also glorified.
The image of Divine Mercy, which I shared above, struck me. If you look at this image you see beams of light shining from the heart of Jesus; where the soldier pierced him with a lance. You will also notice that their are holes in Christ's hands and feet from the nails. In the Theology of the Body, John Paul II, talks about how the wounds of Christ shine the brightest in the resurrection.
If Christ's resurrected body still bears the wounds from his crucifixion then we can say that we too will carry our wounds with us into Heaven. This is true even now. The wounds, scars, mistakes, failures, etc. of our past have made us who we are. Our bodies bear the physical marks of injuries and our souls bear the invisible marks of our weaknesses, failures and sins. We need these wounds as reminders of how we got to the place we are at. This is not to say that we need to hold on to these wounds and remain slaves to our past, we can allow healing to take place but we cannot entirely erase the effects of these wounds. Once they are healed they will become a bright light for us and something great will come out of them.
The point I am trying to make is that every bad experience, every wound, every failure, can be used to move us towards happiness. And once we have experienced healing and are able to talk about the pain we have experienced from a place of peace and acceptance, our wounds will bring forth great things for the world. For example, in Catholic circles there are a number of big-name speakers who are sharing their stories and changing lives. People like Christopher West, Jason and Crystalina Evert, Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Jeff Cavins, Christ Stefanick, Leah Darrow, Matt Fradd, and many many more. My favourite example is Pope John Paul II who lost his whole family by the age of 24 and lived the majority of his life under foreign occupation. Yet he opened himself up to the healing love of God and his experiences and suffering made him the man he was and enabled him to change the world. We too can change the world if we allow accept our brokenness and open ourselves up to the healing love of God.
How does this connect to the culture of death? The culture of death is made up of wounded people. We have all been impacted one way or another by the world we live in and once we accept ourselves in our brokenness we begin the process of healing. By opening ourselves up to healing we give other people permission to do the same. As more and more people begin to accept each other's weakness and failings the culture of death will transition into the culture of life. We are all broken, we are all wounded. So let's stop pointing fingers, let's stop condemning each other and just accept that we are all sinners. Why don't we try accepting each other for who we are so we can all move forward together to the peace, happiness and joy which we all desire and which we are all destined to experience in the Resurrection?
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