Second Sunday of Easter

Thomas 

            Jesus’ disciples were afraid of the Jews and locked the doors where they were staying. Jesus came through the walls, stood in the midst of them and said: Peace be with you. He came with his glorious body and they found difficult to recognise him. This is the kind of body we are going to have at the end of time, when our soul will be reunited to our body. We are body and soul, and to be truly human we need our body back. Our society adores the body and has forgotten the soul. It tries with all its might to keep the body young and immortal, but it is a useless and frustrating exercise, because you cannot stop the inevitable. Where is the soul? All over the body. It is so entangle with the body that you cannot separate. We only see the body and we can deny the soul. But we know that our soul is more important because it is immortal.

            Some people hate their bodies. They are not happy in the way they are and would like to be different, taller, thinner, have blue eyes, blond hair, more beautiful. We compare ourselves with others, specially through social media. No worries. Our present body is provisional, recycable. An amazing, glorious body, is waiting for us in the next life. Here we are too concern about a body, which is going to be transformed into something new.

            There are a lot of theories about what sort of body we are going to have. What we know is that it is going to be the same body we have now, same identity, but with all our lost capabilities restored, our missing limbs back, with all its integrity. They say it is going to be of perfect quality, the best age, our body at its peak, like the day of a wedding. You won’t need social media in the other life to depict a perfect body.

            Theologians have come out with four qualities of our glorified bodies: impassibility, subtlety, agility and clarity. There are big words, but they express simple concepts. Impassibility means that our bodies are going to be immortal, imperishable, without getting old, with no suffering, no sickness, and without the inclination to sin. Subtlety means that our bodies are going to be spiritual, with the possibility of going through matter, in full control of our faculties, with quickness of thought, sharp intellect, and great memory.

            Agility will make our bodies very powerful, that will obey the soul with great ease and speed of movement, without any difficulty of going from here to there. Clarity is very much connected to the name glorious, free from deformity and filled with beauty; it will be surrounded by brightness of splendour, radiance of light and full of whiteness. Are you upset with your body? No worries, you are going to have a body you have never seen, and you have never dreamed. It will be the envy of all your friends on social media now.

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