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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF WEDNESDAY, 16 DECEMBER
At the General Audience on Wednesday, 16 December, in
the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father continued his series on the theology of
the body.
1. "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but are like angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30, similarly Mk 12:25). "They are
equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk
20:36).
The eschatological communion (communio) of man with God,
constituted thanks to the love of a perfect union, will be nourished by
the vision, face to face, of contemplation of that more perfect communionbecause
it is purely divinewhich
is the trinitarian communion of the divine Persons in the unity of the
same divinity.
Perfect subjectivity
2. Christ's words, reported by the synoptic Gospels, enable us to
deduce that participants in the "other world"in
this union with the living God which springs from the beatific vision of
his unity and trinitarian communionwill
not only keep their authentic subjectivity, but will acquire it to a far
more perfect extent than in earthly life. Furthermore, this will confirm
the law of the integral order of the person, according to which the
perfection of communion is not only conditioned by the perfection or
spiritual maturity of the subject, but also in turn determines it. Those
who participate in the future world, that is, in perfect communion with
the living God, will enjoy a perfectly mature subjectivity. In this
perfect subjectivity, while keeping masculinity and femininity in their
risen, glorious body, "They neither marry nor are given in marriage." This
is explained not only with the end of history, but also, and above all,
with the eschatological authenticity of the response to that
self-communication of the divine subject. This will constitute the
beatifying experience of the gift of himself on God's part, which is
absolutely superior to any experience proper to earthly life.
3. The reciprocal gift of oneself to Goda
gift in which man will concentrate and express all the energies of his own
personal and at the same time psychosomatic subjectivitywill
be the response to God's gift of himself to man.(1) In this mutual gift of
himself by man, a gift which will become completely and definitively
beatifying, as a response worthy of a personal subject to God's gift of
Himself, virginity, or rather the virginal state of the body, will be
totally manifested as the eschatological fulfillment of the nuptial
meaning of the body, as the specific sign and the authentic expression of
all personal subjectivity. In this way, therefore, that eschatological
situation in which "They neither marry nor are given in marriage" has its
solid foundation in the future state of the personal subject. This will
happen when, as a result of the vision of God face to face, there will be
born in him a love of such depth and power of concentration on God
himself, as to completely absorb his whole psychosomatic subjectivity.
Union of communion
4. This concentration of knowledge (vision) and love on God himselfa
concentration that cannot be other than full participation in the interior
life of God, that is, in the very trinitarian realitywill
be at the same time the discovery, in God, of the whole "world" of
relations, constitutive of his perennial order (cosmos).
This concentration will be above all man's rediscovery of himself, not
only in the depth of his own person, but also in that union which is
proper to the world of persons in their psychosomatic constitution. This
is certainly a union of communion. The concentration of knowledge and love
on God himself in the trinitarian communion of Persons can find a
beatifying response in those who become participants in the other world,
only through realizing mutual communion adapted to created persons. For
this reason we profess faith in the "communion of saints" (communio
sanctorum), and we profess it in organic connection with faith
in the resurrection of the dead. Christ's words which affirm that in the
other world, "They neither marry nor are given in marriage" are at the
basis of these contents of our faith. At the same time they require an
adequate interpretation in its light. We must think of the reality of the
other world in the categories of the rediscovery of a new, perfect
subjectivity of everyone and at the same time of the rediscovery of a new,
perfect intersubjectivity of all. In this way, this reality signifies the
real and definitive fulfillment of human subjectivity, and on this basis,
the definitive fulfillment of the nuptial meaning of the body. The
complete concentration of created subjectivity, redeemed and glorified, on
God himself will not take man away from this fulfillment, in facton
the contraryit
will introduce him into it and consolidate him in it. One can say,
finally, that in this way eschatological reality will become the source of
the perfect realization of the trinitarian order in the created world of
persons.
Revelation of the body
5. The words with which Christ referred to the future resurrectionwords
confirmed in a singular way by his own resurrectioncomplete
what in the present reflections we are accustomed to call the revelation
of the body. This revelation penetrates in a way into the heart of the
reality which we are experiencing. This reality is above all man, his
body, the body of historical man. At the same time, this revelation
enables us to go beyond the sphere of this experience in two directionsin
the first place, in the direction of that beginning which Christ referred
to in his conversation with the Pharisees regarding the indissolubility of
marriage (cf. Mt 19:3-9); in the second place, in the direction of the
other world, to which the Master drew the attention of his listeners in
the presence of the Sadducees, who "say that there is no resurrection" (Mt
22:23). These two extensions of the sphere of the experience of the body
(if we may say so) are not completely beyond the reach of our (obviously
theological) understanding of the body. What the human body is in the
sphere of man's historical experience is not completely cut off from those
two dimensions of his existence, which are revealed through Christ's
words.
Spiritual and physical
6. It is clear that here it is a question not so much of the body in
abstract, but of man who is at once spiritual and physical. Continuing in
the two directions indicated by Christ's words, and linking up again with
the experience of the body in the dimension of our earthly existence
(therefore in the historical dimension), we can make a certain theological
reconstruction. This is a reconstruction of what might have been the
experience of the body on the basis of man's revealed beginning, and also
of what it will be in the dimension of the other world. The possibility of
this reconstruction, which extends our experience of man-body, indicates,
at least indirectly, the consistency of man's theological image in these
three dimensions, which together contribute to the constitution of the
theology of the body.
NOTE
1. "In the biblical conception...it is a question of a 'dialogic'
immortality (resuscitation!), that is, that immortality does not derive
merely from the obvious truth that the indivisible cannot die, but from
the saving act of him who loves, who has the power to do so; therefore man
cannot completely disappear, because he is known and loved by God. If all
love postulates eternity, love of God not only wishes it, but actuates it
and is it.
...Since the immortality presented by the Bible does not derive from the
power of what is in itself indestructible, but from being accepted in the
dialogue with the Creator, for this reason it must be called
resuscitation... J. Ratzinger, Risurrezione della carneaspetto
teologico, Sacramentum Mundi, Vol. 7 (Brescia: Morcelliana,
1977), pp. 160-161).
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