The Ascension and Resurrection of the Body

Before His Ascension into Heaven, Jesus spent 40 days on earth, preparing his apostles for their mission.  In the story of the Emmaus journey, two of the disciples walk with Jesus but do not initially recognize Him.  Why is this?  Did His resurrected body really look that different?

The resurrection of the body has been doctrine for Christians for 2000 years.  In the Apostles’ Creed, we state that we believe in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.”  We say the words, but when it comes to the afterlife, do we really believe in the resurrection of our bodies?  Or do we believe that only our souls count?

The idea that the physical world is bad and only the spiritual is good is a heresy.  This mistaken teaching is one that church leaders have tried to eliminate from Christianity from its earliest days.

It is easy to understand why the elderly and sick look toward an eternity without a body that has become a burden for them.  But we must remember that after death, God transforms our mortal bodies.  When will this happen?  As Catholics, we believe that immediately after death, a person’s soul goes through the particular judgment, and depending on the state of the person's soul, goes to heaven, purgatory, or hell.  The general judgment, also called the last judgment, will happen at the end of time.  Jesus, in Scripture, tells us that no one, except the Father, knows when this will happen.  When it does, Christ will come in His glory and each person who has ever lived will be judged with perfect justice.  This is when the resurrection of the dead and the reuniting of people's souls with their physical bodies will occur, and those in heaven will remain in heaven; those in hell will remain in hell; and those in purgatory will be welcomed into heaven.

The sight of zombies roaming the earth in their corrupted bodies makes for entertaining books and movies, but for Christians, that is fiction.  The book of Romans tells us that once the Kingdom of God arrives in its fullness, “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay.”  And the Catechism says that, “By death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul.  Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so all of us will rise at the last day.”  We don’t know how God will accomplish this, but in faith, we know He will.