|
HOLY FATHER'S ADDRESS AT THE GENERAL AUDIENCE, 9 DECEMBER
In the course of the General Audience on Wednesday, 9
December, the Holy Father delivered the following address to the faithful
gathered in the Paul VI Hall.
1. "At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given
in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30; cf. Mk 12:25).
"They are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the
resurrection" (Lk 20:36).
Let us try to understand these words of Christ about the future
resurrection in order to draw a conclusion with regard to the
spiritualization of man, different from that of earthly life. We could
speak here also of a perfect system of forces in mutual relations between
what is spiritual in man and what is physical. As a result of original
sin, historical man experiences a multiple imperfection in this system of
forces, which is expressed in St. Paul's well-known words: "I see in my
members another law at war with the law of my mind" (Rom 7:23).
Eschatological man will be free from that opposition. In the
resurrection the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the
spirit. Man will no longer experience the opposition between what is
spiritual and what is physical in him. Spiritualization means not only
that the spirit will dominate the body, but, I would say, that it will
fully permeate the body, and that the forces of the spirit will permeate
the energies of the body.
Perfect realization in life to come
2. In earthly life, the dominion of the spirit over the bodyand
the simultaneous subordination of the body to the spiritcan,
as the result of persevering work on themselves, express a personality
that is spiritually mature. However, the fact that the energies of the
spirit succeed in dominating the forces of the body does not remove the
possibility of their mutual opposition. The spiritualization to which the
synoptic Gospels refer in the texts analyzed here (cf. Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25;
Lk 20:34-35), already lies beyond this possibility. It is therefore a
perfect spiritualization, in which the possibility that "another law is at
war with the law of...the mind" (cf. Rom 7:23) is completely eliminated.
This state whichas
is evidentis
differentiated essentially (and not only with regard to degree) from what
we experience in earthly life, does not signify any disincarnation of the
body nor, consequently, a dehumanization of man. On the contrary, it
signifies his perfect realization. In fact, in the composite,
psychosomatic being which man is, perfection cannot consist in a mutual
opposition of spirit and body. But it consists in a deep harmony between
them, in safeguarding the primacy of the spirit. In the "other world,"
this primacy will be realized and will be manifested in a perfect
spontaneity, without any opposition on the part of the body. However, that
must not be understood as a definitive victory of the spirit over the
body. The resurrection will consist in the perfect participation of all
that is physical in man in what is spiritual in him. At the same time it
will consist in the perfect realization of what is personal in man.
A new spiritualization
3. The words of the synoptic Gospels testify that the state of man in
the other world will not only be a state of perfect spiritualization, but
also of fundamental divinization of his humanity. The "sons of the
resurrection"as
we read in Luke 20:36are
not only equal to angels, but are also sons of God. The conclusion can be
drawn that the degree of spiritualization characteristic of eschatological
man will have its source in the degree of his divinization, incomparably
superior to the one that can be attained in earthly life. It must be added
that here it is a question not only of a different degree, but in a way,
of another kind of divinization. Participation in divine nature,
participation in the interior life of God himself, penetration and
permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine,
will then reach its peak, so that the life of the human spirit will arrive
at such fullness which previously had been absolutely inaccessible to it.
This new spiritualization will therefore be the fruit of grace, that is,
of the communication of God in his very divinity, not only to man's soul,
but to his whole psychosomatic subjectivity. We speak here of subjectivity
(and not only of "nature"), because that divinization is to be understood
not only as an interior state of man (that is, of the subject) capable of
seeing God face to face, but also as a new formation of the whole personal
subjectivity of man in accordance with union with God in his Trinitarian
mystery and of intimacy with him in the perfect communion of persons. This
intimacywith
all its subjective intensitywill
not absorb man's personal subjectivity, but rather will make it stand out
to an incomparably greater and fuller extent.
United with the vision of God
4. Divinization in the other world, as indicated by Christ's words,
will bring the human spirit such a range of experience of truth and love
such as man would never have been able to attain in earthly life. When
Christ speaks of the resurrection, he proves at the same time that the
human body will also take part, in its way, in this eschatological
experience of truth and love, united with the vision of God face to face.
When Christ says that those who take part in the future resurrection
"neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25), his wordsas
has already been pointed outaffirm
not only the end of earthly history, bound up with marriage and
procreation, but also seem to reveal the new meaning of the body. Is it
possible, in this case, at the level of biblical eschatology, to think of
the discovery of the nuptial meaning of the body, above all as the
virginal meaning of being male and female, as regards the body? To answer
this question, which emerges from the words reported by the synoptic
Gospels, we should penetrate more deeply into the essence of what will be
the beatific vision of the divine Being, a vision of God face to face in
the future life. It is also necessary to let oneself be guided by that
range of experience of truth and love which goes beyond the limits of the
cognitive and spiritual possibilities of man in temporality, and in which
he will become a participant in the other world.
In the dimension of the "other world"
5. This eschatological experience of the living God will not only
concentrate in itself all man's spiritual energies, but, at the same time,
it will reveal to him, in a deep and experiential way, the
self-communication of God to the whole of creation and, in particular, to
man. This is the most personal self-giving by God, in his very divinity,
to man: to that being who, from the beginning, bears within himself the
image and likeness of God. In this way, in the other world the object of
the vision will be that mystery hidden in the Father from eternity, a
mystery which in time was revealed in Christ, in order to be accomplished
incessantly through the Holy Spirit. That mystery will become, if we may
use the expression, the content of the eschatological experience and the
form of the entire human existence in the dimension of the other world.
Eternal life must be understood in the eschatological sense, that is, as
the full and perfect experience of that grace (charis) of God, in
which man becomes a participant through faith during earthly life, and
which, on the contrary, will not only have to reveal itself in all its
penetrating depth to those who take part in the other world, but also will
have to be experienced in its beatifying reality.
We suspend here our reflection centered on Christ's words about the
future resurrection of the body. In this spiritualization and divinization
in which man will participate in the resurrection, we discoverin
an eschatological dimensionthe
same characteristics that qualified the nuptial meaning of the body. We
discover them in the meeting with the mystery of the living God, which is
revealed through the vision of him face to face.
|
