Our Destiny

Friends in the Lord,

in these Octave days of Easter, the many, beautiful flowers in the Church, and that lovely smell – can’t help but make us think of heaven, of Paradise.

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What will heaven be like? Well, it’s a whole new heaven and earth, that’s what the Catechism says: a totally renewed cosmos. Heaven also means the resurrection of our bodies, like Jesus.  Christ did not rise from the dead in his glorified body for his own sake – he rose for our sake – he shows us our destiny. ‘The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they who have done good shall come forth unto resurrection of life….

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An older woman, a practicing Catholic, thought that this is a strange thing: that we would rise in our physical bodies, and walk around in Paradise. She was shocked to hear that this is a dogma of our Faith, one of THE most important beliefs. But she liked it!

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Our destiny is not to be some kind of floating, disembodied soul. Today we see, that when Jesus came to the apostles in his resurrected body – they thought they were seeing a ghost. They could not accept that Jesus was bodily alive.

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The Lord’s reaction?  Why do questions still arise in your hearts?!! What is wrong with you?! Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I. Touch me and see, because a spirit – a soul – does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.

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To prove it to them more, Christ took some baked fish and ate it in front of them.   Souls do not eat food.

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An angel is pure spirit, but we will not be angels, we are a different species: human. Human beings are body and soul. A soul is not a complete human being.

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True, our soul separates from our body at death. How long will we wait ‘till the resurrection?  What will be our experience of time? We don’t know. Perhaps the time will seem very short.

But however long the wait, we will not be disappointed.