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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF WEDNESDAY, 13 JANUARY
During the general audience in the Paul VI Hall on 13 January, the
Holy Father continued his catechesis on marriage in the following address.
1. "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:25; cf. Mt 22:30). "They
are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk
20:36).
The words in which Christ refers to the future resurrectionwords
confirmed in an extraordinary way by his own resurrectioncomplete
what we are accustomed to call in these reflections the revelation of the
body. This revelation penetrates the heart of the reality that we
experience, and this reality is above all man, his body, the body of
historical man. At the same time, this revelation permits us to go beyond
the sphere of this experience in two directionsfirst,
in the direction of that beginning which Christ referred to in his
conversation with the Pharisees concerning the indissolubility of marriage
(cf. Mt 19:3-8); then, in the direction of the future world, to which the
Master addressed the hearts of his listeners in the presence of the
Sadducees, who "say that there is no resurrection" (Mt 22:23).
2. Neither the truth about that beginning of which Christ speaks, nor
the eschatological truth can be reached by man with empirical and
rationalistic methods alone. However, is it not possible to affirm that
man bears, in a way, these two dimensions in the depth of the experience
of his own being, or rather that he is somehow on his way to them as to
dimensions that fully justify the meaning of his being a body, that is, of
his being a carnal man? As regards the eschatological dimension, is it not
true that death itself and the destruction of the body can confer on man
an eloquent significance about the experience in which the personal
meaning of existence is realized? When Christ speaks of the future
resurrection, his words do not fall in a void. The experience of mankind,
and especially the experience of the body, enable the listener to unite
with those words the image of his new existence in the "future world," for
which earthly experience supplies the substratum and the base. An adequate
theological reconstruction is possible.
3. To the construction of this imagewhich,
as regards content, corresponds to the article of our profession of faith:
"I believe in the resurrection of the dead"there
greatly contributes the awareness that there exists a connection
between earthly experience and the whole dimension of the biblical
beginning of man in the world. If at the beginning God "created them male
and female" (cf. Gn 1:27); if in this duality concerning the body he
envisaged also such a unity that "they become one flesh" (Gn 2:24); if he
linked this unity with the blessing of fertility, that is, of procreation
(cf. Gn 1:29); if speaking before the Sadducees about the future
resurrection, Christ explained that "In the resurrection they neither
marry nor are given in marriage"then
it is clear that it is a question here of a development of the truth about
man himself. Christ indicated his identity, although this identity is
realized in eschatological experience in a different way from the
experience of the beginning itself and of all history. Yet man will always
be the same, such as he came from the hands of his Creator and Father.
Christ said: "They neither marry nor are given in marriage," but he did
not state that this man of the future world will no longer be male and
female as he was from the beginning. It is clear therefore that, as
regards the body, the meaning of being male or female in the future world
must be sought outside marriage and procreation, but there is no reason to
seek it outside that which (independently of the blessing of procreation)
derives from the mystery of creation and which subsequently forms also the
deepest structure of man's history on earth, since this history has been
deeply penetrated by the mystery of redemption.
Unity of the two
4. In his original situation man, therefore, is alone and at the same
time he becomes male and female:
unity of the two. In his solitude he is revealed to himself as a
person, in order to reveal, at the same time, the communion of persons in
the unity of the two. In both states the human being is constituted as an
image and likeness of God. From the beginning man is also a body among
bodies. In the unity of the couple he becomes male and female, discovering
the nuptial meaning of his body as a personal subject. Subsequently, the
meaning of being a body and, in particular, being male and female in the
body, is connected with marriage and procreation (that is, with fatherhood
and motherhood). However, the original and fundamental significance of
being a body, as well as being, by reason of the body, male and femalethat
is precisely that nuptial significanceis
united with the fact that man is created as a person and called to a life
in communione personarum. Marriage and procreation in itself do not
determine definitively the original and fundamental meaning of being a
body or of being, as a body, male and female. Marriage and procreation
merely give a concrete reality to that meaning in the dimensions of
history.
The resurrection indicates the end of the historical dimension. The
words, "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage" (Mk 12:25), express univocally not only the meaning which the
human body will not have in the future world. But they enable us also to
deduce that the nuptial meaning of the body in the resurrection to the
future life will correspond perfectly both to the fact that man, as a
male-female, is a person created in the "image and likeness of God," and
to the fact that this image is realized in the communion of persons. That
nuptial meaning of being a body will be realized, therefore, as a meaning
that is perfectly personal and communitarian at the same time.
5. Speaking of the body glorified through the resurrection to the
future life, we have in mind man, male-female, in all the truth of his
humanity: man who,
together with the eschatological experience of the living God (the face to
face vision), will experience precisely this meaning of his own body. This
will be a completely new experience. At the same time it will not be
alienated in any way from what man took part in from the beginning nor
from what, in the historical dimension of his existence, constituted in
him the source of the tension between spirit and body, concerning mainly
the procreative meaning of the body and sex. The man of the future world
will find again in this new experience of his own body precisely the
completion of what he bore within himself perennially and historically, in
a certain sense, as a heritage and even more as a duty and objective, as
the content of the ethical norm.
Mutual communication
6. The glorification of the body, as the eschatological fruit of its
divinizing spiritualization, will reveal the definitive value of what was
to be from the beginning a distinctive sign of the created person in the
visible world, as well as a means of mutual communication between persons
and a genuine expression of truth and love, for which the communio
personarum is constituted. That perennial meaning of the human body,
to which the existence of every man, weighed down by the heritage
of concupiscence, has necessarily brought a series of limitations,
struggles and sufferings,
will then be revealed again, and will be revealed in such
simplicity and splendor when every participant in the other world will
find again in his glorified body the source of the freedom of the gift.
The perfect freedom of the children of God (cf. Rom 8:14) will nourish
also with that gift each of the communions which will make up the great
community of the communion of saints.
Difficult to envisage
7. It is all too clearon
the basis of man's experiences and knowledge in his temporal life, that
is, in this worldthat
it is difficult to construct a fully adequate image of the future world.
However, at the same time there is no doubt that, with the help of
Christ's words, at least a certain approximation to this image is possible
and attainable. We use this theological approximation, professing our
faith in the resurrection of the dead and in eternal life, as well as
faith in the communion of saints, which belongs to the reality of the
future world.
A new threshold
8. Concluding this part of our reflections, it is opportune to state
once more that Christ's words reported by the synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt
22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:34-35) have a decisive meaning not only as regards
the words of Genesis (which Christ referred to on another occasion), but
also in what concerns the entire Bible. These words enable us, in a
certain sense, to read againthat
is, in depththe
whole revealed meaning of the body, the meaning of being a man, that is, a
person incarnated, of being male or female as regards the body. These
words permit us to understand the meaning, in the eschatological dimension
of the other world, of that unity in humanity, which was constituted in
the beginning, and which the words of Genesis 2:24, ("A man cleaves to his
wife, and they become one flesh")uttered
in the act of man's creation as male and femaleseemed
to direct, if not completely, at least especially toward this world. Since
the words of the Book of Genesis are almost the threshold of the whole
theology of the bodythe
threshold which Christ took as his foundation in his teaching on marriage
and its indissolubilitythen
it must be admitted that the words reported by the Synoptics are,
as it were, a new threshold of this complete truth about man, which we
find in God's revealed Word. It is indispensable to dwell upon this
threshold, if we wish our theology of the bodyand
also our Christian spirituality of the bodyto
be able to use it as a complete image.
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