"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
He made a promise of His Divine Presence - but how are we to experience this?
Before I reverted back to my Catholic faith, I had always understood that Jesus meant that His Spirit would be with me. And then I was told that both the Holy Spirit and His spirit (but without His body) were with me. This was fine when I didn't appreciate that Jesus, and we humans, are both body and soul (and not body, spirit, and soul, as some Protestants also believe), and it's very important to understand that correctly. With the wrong understanding, I made the error of believing that my body was not that important once I am done with this life. So I had decided for cremation when I die. In fact I told my wife to scatter my ashes along Book Road in Ancaster (which is actually illegal to scatter human remains on public ground!), where I have always had a love for its beauty and peacefulness, every time I ride my bike on it (and I used to do my 20km training run on it during my Marathon days). So now instead of this my wife and I have recently decided to actually purchase a burial ground in this Catholic cemetery for a proper burial, in accordance to church teaching). The reason for treating my body with such dignity is that God created it lovingly and uniquely, along with my soul, and they are created in His image. And you know what, what God had created, it was very good (Genesis 1:31).
So at the end of time my body will be resurrected along with everyone else. My body will be reunited with my soul then, and face the final judgment (the first judgment, called the particular judgment, will take place immediately after my death - according to the Catholic teaching).
So I used to believe in getting a "glorified body" quite different from the one I have now. And now I believe I will get back my own body which God created in the beginning - minus all the imperfections as a consequence of sins, of course. It won't be a totally new body which I'd like to imagine to be: Einstein + Brad Pitt + Lance Armstrong!
But of course it will always be a mystery, "I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. " (1 Corinthians 15:50-53)
All this leads back to the homily I heard yesterday (it was the Feast of the Ascension). The scripture text was from Acts 1:1-11). "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." What are we to do without Jesus? His bodily presence is important to us! Well He sent His Holy Spirit (we will be celebrating the Pentecost next week!). But through baptism we can have access to his Divine Presence - body, blood, soul, and divinity (ccc 1374) through the Holy Eucharist of the Mass - every day if I want to. It is wonderful that Jesus instituted these amazing sacraments to help me experience His Presence, and to draw power and grace from them to go out to make disciples so that they too can be baptized and experience His bodily Presence, until the last day, when we shall spend eternity with Him - with my body and soul, of course!
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