New Threshold of Complete Truth
About Man
General Audience, January 13, 1982
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 resurrection—words
confirmed in an extraordinary way by his own resurrection—complete
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 directions—first,
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 image—which, 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 female—that is precisely that nuptial
significance—is 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 clear—on the basis of man's experiences and
knowledge in his temporal life, that is, in this world—that 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 again—that is, in depth—the
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
female—seemed 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 body—the threshold which
Christ took as his foundation in his teaching on marriage and its
indissolubility—then 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 body—and also our Christian spirituality of the body—to be
able to use it as a complete image.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 18
January 1982, page 3.
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