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 communion—because it is purely divine—which 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 communion—will 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 God—a gift in which man
will concentrate and express all the energies of his own
personal and at the same time psychosomatic subjectivity—will 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
himself—a concentration that cannot be other than full
participation in the interior life of God, that is, in the very
trinitarian reality—will 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 fact—on the contrary—it 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
resurrection—words confirmed in a singular way by his own
resurrection—complete 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 directions—in
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 carne—aspetto teologico, Sacramentum Mundi, Vol. 7
(Brescia: Morcelliana, 1977), pp. 160-161).
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 4
January 1982, page 2
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