Sunday, February 10, 2008

Acts 9, 40-43 Peter said, "Tabitha, rise up."

(Acts 9, 40-43) Peter said, "Tabitha, rise up."
[40] Peter sent them all out and knelt down and prayed. Then he turned to her body and said, "Tabitha, rise up." She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up. [41] He gave her his hand and raised her up, and when he had called the holy ones and the widows, he presented her alive. [42] This became known all over Joppa, and many came to believe in the Lord. [43] And he stayed a long time in Joppa with Simon, a tanner.
(CCC 999) How? Christ is raised with his own body: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself" (Lk 24:39); but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, "all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear," but Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body," into a "spiritual body" (Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 801; Phil 3:21; 2 Cor 15:44): But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel…. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable…. The dead will be raised imperishable… For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:35-37, 42, 52, 53). (CCC 1000) This "how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies: Just as bread that comes from the earth, after God's blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4, 18, 4-5: PG 7/1, 1028-1029). (CCC 1001) When? Definitively "at the last day," "at the end of the world" (Jn 6: 39-40, 44, 54; 11:24; LG 48 § 3). Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ's Parousia: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thess 4:16).

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