Sermon 242

SERMO 242

IN THE PASCHAL DAYS

On the resurrection of the bodies, against the gentiles.

Among the miracles performed by God, the resurrection of Christ stands out.

In these holy days dedicated to the Lord's Resurrection, as much as we can with His gift, let us discuss the resurrection of the flesh. For this is our faith, this promise was given to us in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and in Him, the example was set. For He wanted to not only announce but also demonstrate what He promised us at the end. Those who were with Him at that time saw Him, and as they were frightened and believed they saw a spirit, they held the solidity of the body. For He spoke not only words to their ears but also appeared to their eyes: and it was not enough to offer Himself to be seen unless He also offered to be handled and touched. For He said: "Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?" For they thought they saw a spirit. "Why are you troubled," He said, "and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet; handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh as you see me have." Against this evidence, people dispute. For what else would people do, who think in human ways, but argue against God about God? For He is God, they are people. But God knows the thoughts of humans, that they are vain. In a carnal man, the whole rule of understanding is the habit of seeing. What they are used to seeing, they believe; what they are not used to, they do not believe. God performs miracles beyond habit, because He is God. In fact, it is a greater miracle that so many people are born every day who did not exist than that a few who existed have risen: yet these miracles are not grasped with consideration but have become commonplace through their constancy. Christ is risen, it is a fact. He had a body, He had flesh, He hung on the cross, He gave up His spirit, He was laid in a tomb. He showed that body alive, who lived in that body. Why do we marvel? Why do we not believe? It is God who did this: consider the author and remove the doubt.

Why the Lord ate after the resurrection and kept the scars.

Men therefore ask whether this decay of the body, which they feel in their flesh, will be in the resurrection of the dead. We say it will not be. They respond to us: If there will be no decay, why will it be eaten? Or if it will not be eaten, why did the Lord eat after the resurrection? Just now, when the Gospel was read, we heard that when He presented Himself alive to the eyes and hands of His disciples, it seemed insufficient to demonstrate corporeal evidence: but He added: Do you have anything here that can be eaten? And they offered Him a piece of broiled fish, and a honeycomb: and He ate, and gave the leftovers to them. Therefore it is said to us: If the decay of the body will not rise, why did the Lord Christ eat? You have read that He ate, have you read that He was hungry? What He ate was of His power, not of necessity. If He desired to eat, He would have needed it. Again, if He could not eat, He would have been less powerful. Didn’t the angels, when they were received as guests by our fathers, also eat, and yet they were not corruptible?

They say again: Will the vices that were in the human body, with which a man dies, rise again? We answer: The vices will not rise again. And it is said to us: Why then did the Lord rise again with the scars of his wounds? What do we say to this, except that even this was of power, not of necessity? Thus he wished to rise, thus he wished to present himself to some who doubted. In that flesh, the scar of the wound healed the wound of unbelief.

The resurrection of the little ones, what kind.

They still dispute and ask us: Will infants who die be resurrected as infants? Or will there be a full age of those revived, whose age was small when they died? This indeed we do not find definitively in the Scriptures. Incorruptible and immortal bodies are promised to be resurrected. But if a small age is restored, if short stature is recalled, then will also weakness be recalled for that reason? If they will be small, will they lie down and be unable to walk? It is more credible, however, and more probable and more reasonable to accept that full ages will be resurrected, in order to give what was going to come with time as a gift. For we would not believe that even old age will be resurrected wheezing and bent. In short, take away corruption, and add what you will.

How will the earthly body be in heaven?

But, you ask, how will an earthly body be in heaven? The philosophers of the Gentiles, those very great ones, whose opinions I have already revealed to you, either as mad or at least as human (for they sought these things not by the spirit of God but by the conjecture of the human heart); these primarily make this question, considering subtly the moments of weights and the order of the elements: and they say, as we also see, the world to be so ordered, that the earth is at the lowest point as if at its foundation, water is poured above the earth as the second layer, air comes third, and the ether covers all. That upper element, which they call ether, they say is liquid and pure fire, from it the stars are formed, and nothing earthly can be there, because the order of weights does not admit it. If we say to them that our bodies will live on a new earth and will not be in heaven; we speak boldly and rashly, or rather unfaithfully. For we ought to believe that we will have such bodies, so that wherever we want, whenever we want, there we will be. For if we respond, to solve the question of the order of weights, that we will live on the earth; there is also the question for us about the very body of the Lord, with which he ascended into heaven.

The body of Christ ascended into heaven.

You have heard what has just been sounded in our ears from the Gospel: He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it happened, while He blessed them, He departed from them and was carried up into heaven. Who was carried up into heaven? The Lord Christ. Which Lord Christ? The Lord Jesus. For what, will you separate man from God, and make another person of God, distinct from the person of man, so that there is no longer a Trinity, but a quaternity? Just as you, man, are soul and body; so the Lord Christ is Word, soul, and body. But the Word did not depart from the Father: He came to us, yet did not forsake the Father; He received flesh in the womb, and ruled the world. What, therefore, was lifted into heaven, if not what was taken from the earth? That is, that flesh, that body, of which He spoke to the disciples, saying: "Handle and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." Let us believe this, brothers: and if we find it difficult to refute the arguments of philosophers, let us hold without difficulty to that which has been demonstrated in the Lord, through faith. Let them babble, we believe.

With God willing, that which otherwise cannot be done is done.

But they say that a earthly body cannot be in heaven. What if God wills it? Argue against God, and say: God cannot. Do you not, whoever you are pagan, say that God is omnipotent? Is it not read in the book of Plato, which I demonstrated yesterday, that God said to the gods made by him: Since you have been born, you cannot indeed be immortal and indissoluble; yet you will not be dissolved, nor will any fates of death destroy you; nor will they be stronger than my will, which is a greater bond for your perpetuity than those by which you are bound? God has reduced everything to his will, who can also do what is impossible. For what else is it, You cannot be immortal, but that you may not die I make; except, and what cannot be done, I do?

The order of bodies arises from the diversity of weights.

I wish, however, to discuss a little about the diversity of weights. I ask you, tell me, Earth is earth, Water is water, Air is air, Aether, that is, the heavens, and that liquid fire is the heavens. These four indeed have, as it were, built and constructed the world step by step, that is, the world was built from these four. Seek what is at the bottom, it is earth: what is above, it is water: what is above the water, it is air: what is above the air, it is heaven, it is aether. What of solid bodies that are held and touched? I do not speak of liquids, which slide and flow; I speak of tactile bodies, where are they from? Are they to be assigned to earth, or to water, or to air, or to aether? You will answer, To earth. Therefore, is wood an earthly body? Clearly earthly. It is born in the earth, nourished in the earth, grows in the earth. It is tactile, not fluid. Return with me to that order of weights. Earth is at the foundation: follow the order. What is above the earth? Water. Why does wood float above water? It is an earthly body: if you refer to that order of weights, it should be under the water, not above. We find water between earth and wood: under earth, above water, and above water, again earth, since wood is earth. You lost that order, keep the faith. Therefore, earthly bodies are found above the element, which is second in the order of elements, when woods float and do not sink.

Pay attention to something else that will astonish you more. The heaviest bodies themselves, and yet earthly ones, which as soon as they have been set upon the water, immediately sink and reach the lowest depths, as is the case with iron, finally as is the case with lead. For what is heavier than lead? Nevertheless, the craftsman’s hand approaches the lead, makes from it some hollow vessel, and the lead floats on the water. Will not God then give to my body what the craftsman gives to the lead? Then where do you place the water itself? Return to the order of the elements. Surely you will answer that water is above the earth. Why then, before they run on the earth, do the rivers hang in the clouds?

The swifter motion of certain heavier bodies.

Recall then your consideration and thought to what I am about to say, if, with the Lord's help, I can. What is more easily moved, what is more swiftly agitated, the heavier body, or the lighter one? Who would not answer, the lighter? For lighter bodies are more easily moved, more quickly agitated: heavier ones more difficultly and more slowly. Surely you established the rule, surely you considered, and, after examining everything, you responded that lighter bodies are more easily moved and more swiftly agitated than heavier ones. It is so, you say. Then answer me. Why does the lightest spider move slowly, and the heavy horse run swiftly? I will speak of humans themselves: a larger human body is heavier; a shorter body which has less weight is lighter. That is so, but if someone else carries it. But if the man himself carries his own body, the strong one runs, the thin one weakened by illness can scarcely walk. Weigh a thin and a robust man; the one weakened by illness scarcely weighing a few pounds, the one with the health of the body bearing much weight in his flesh: try to lift them both; the strong one is heavy, the thin one is light. Let the carrier depart, let the walker appear; leave them to themselves, let them move their own bodies; I see the thin one scarcely moving a step, I see the strong and robust one running. If this is the power of health, what will the power of immortality be?

Spiritual bodies after the resurrection, from where they are so called.

God will therefore grant wonderful ease, wonderful lightness. These bodies are not called spiritual without reason. They are not called spiritual because they will be spirits, not bodies. For the ones we have now are called animal bodies: and yet they are not souls, but bodies. Just as these are now called animal bodies and are not souls, so those are called spiritual bodies, but they will not be spirits, for they will be bodies. Why is it called a spiritual body, dearest, if not because it will serve at the command of the spirit? Nothing from you will contradict you, nothing in you will rebel against you. There will not be what the Apostle laments: "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." There will not be: "I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind." These battles will not be there: peace will be there, perfect peace will be there. Wherever you wish, you will be: but you will not depart from God. Wherever you wish, you will be: but wherever you go, you will have your God. In whom you will be blessed, you will always be with Him.

Let us hold firmly to the promises of God with steadfast faith.

The promise of resurrection is confirmed by the so many other promises of God already fulfilled. Let no one deceive, let no one argue, let no one be deluded by their own suspicion: what God promised us, we should hold most certainly is to come. When Christ appeared, my brothers, when He was thought to be a spirit, to convince that He was a body, He did not only present Himself to be seen by the eyes, but also to be touched by the hands. To confirm the truth of faith in His body, He deigned to take food not out of necessity, but by His power. Yet, while they were still trembling with joy, He reinforced their hearts with the Holy Scriptures; and He said to them: These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds, as the Gospel speaks which has just been read, so that they might understand the Scriptures; and He said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. This we did not see, but that we see. When these things were promised, they were not yet seen. The Apostles saw Christ present: but they did not see the Church spread throughout the whole world: they saw the head, and believed concerning the body. We have our own turn, we have the grace of our dispensation and distribution: the times for believing from the most certain evidences are distributed to us in one faith. They saw the head, and believed concerning the body: we see the body, let us believe concerning the head.