On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.—St. John 20:19-20.
Notice in the above passage about the Resurrection, Christ is able to walk through walls (hence, the doors being locked and yet He comes to the disciples.) But the reason we know this is not a ghost passing through the walls is precisely because St. John immediately tells us that Christ then “showed them His hands and His side.” This means that Christ’s resurrected body is physical, but it has spiritual powers he chose not to exercise before His Passion and Resurrection.
So also, our resurrected bodies will be endowed with extraordinary powers and protections in heaven. Even the new catechism has this stunning line: “From the beginning, Christian faith in the resurrection has met with incomprehension and opposition. On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body. It is very commonly accepted that the life of the human person continues in a spiritual fashion after death. But how can we believe that this body, so clearly mortal, could rise to everlasting life?”—CCC 996.
Sadly, a few folks today still believe the 1970s heresy that the Resurrection of Christ was only spiritual, not physical. But even among those Catholics who [rightly] believe in the physical Resurrection of Christ, many of them do not realize that both those in heaven and hell at the General Judgment (the last day on earth when Christ returns in glory) will receive their physical bodies back: Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.—St. John 5:28-29.
Yet even among those who fully believe in the coming resurrection of the body for the saints (which is even mentioned in the Creed) there are a many in that happy category who still do not know that the same powers enacted by Christ in His own body will be granted to all believers who are saved, more or less according to their cooperation with grace on earth and the sacrificial charity they exercised on earth.
What I am going to show in this article on the resurrected body will be evidence from Public Revelation (infallible) and Private Revelation (non-infallible.) The two greatest conglomerators of Magisterial statements are Denzinger and Ott. We will see below what Ott has to say about resurrected bodies, as well as the private revelations of Venerable Mary of Agreda in the Mystical City of God. As far as Ott, you may want to remember the memory mnemonic I made up for the four aspects of the qualities of the resurrected body as CASI (which happens to be almost in Spanish.)
The celebrated Ludwig Ott in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (a listing of all definitive De Fide statements and others of lower ranking slightly below infallibility) reads: “The bodies of the just will be re-modeled and transfigured to the pattern of the Risen Christ.” Re-read that sentence if you want one of the greatest promises of Easter Season put in a terse, almost missable, sentence of great glory.
Mr. Ott then quotes St. Paul to show the very source that precedes the Church Fathers, the Popes and St. Thomas Aquinas, namely, the Sacred Scriptures: But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.—Phil 2:21.
Notice again those stunning words that the promise of the Bible is that if you are saved, your body will be like Christ’s own glorious body, even to the point of having various powers subject to you. Yes, the saved will even judge the fallen angels (cf 1 Cor 6:3.)
Although Ott lists the four qualities of a resurrected body in a different order than this, I am going to list the four (with quotes from him) according to the mnemonic I suggest for you: CASI. Ott writes extremely beautiful and profound truths of Catholic eschatology using few adjectives or adverbs, so I would suggest you digest the following slowly. These are the four qualities or powers of the future physical resurrected bodies of all the elect:
C = Claritas. This word in Latin is claritas, which some people translate to the English as clarity, but it is better translated as glory. Ludwig Ott writes the resurrected body will be “free from everything deformed and being filled with beauty and radiance. Jesus assures us, The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.—Mt 13:43. The archetype of the transfiguration is the transfiguration of Jesus on Tabor (cf. Mt 17) and after the resurrection (cf Acts 9.) The intrinsic reason for the transfiguration lies in the overflowing of the beauty of the transfigured soul on to the body. The grade of the transfiguration of the body according to 1 Cor 15:41 will vary according to the degree of glory of the soul which is proportionate to the measure of the merits.”
A = Agility. “Agilitas is the capability of the body to obey the soul with the greatest ease and speed of movement. It forms a contrast to the heaviness of the earthly body which is conditioned by the law of gravity. This agility was manifested by the risen body of Christ which was suddenly present in the midst of His Apostles and which disappeared just as quickly (cf. John 20 and Luke 24.) The intrinsic reason of agility lies in the perfect dominion over the body of the transfigured soul to the extent that it moves the body.”
S = Subtility “is a spiritualized nature, which however is not to be conceived as a transformation of the body into a spiritual essence or as a refinement of the matter into an ethereal body (cf. Luke 24.) The archetype of the spiritualized body is the risen body of Christ which emerged from the sealed tomb and penetrated closed doors (cf. John 20.) The intrinsic reason of the spiritualization of the body lies in the complete dominion of the body by the transfigured soul insofar as it is the essential form of the body.”
I = Impassibility “is the incapability of suffering, that is inaccessibility to physical evils of all kinds such as sorrow, sickness or death. It may be more closely defined as the impossibility to suffer and die: And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and death shall be no more, nor mourning nor crying nor sorrow shall be anymore, for the former things are passed away.—Apo 21:4. Also, Neither can they die anymore.—Lk 20:36. The intrinsic reason for impassibility lies in the perfect subjection of the body to the soul.”—Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp. 491-492.
Although Public Revelation like the Bible and Magisterium (as outlined above in Ott) is considered more infallible than Private Revelation (like Agreda’s Mystical City of God) it is encouraging that the two of them teach the exact same thing about the resurrected bodies of believers.
Venerable Mary of Agreda writes about her vision of Christ’s Resurrection:
The excellence of these gifts in the Resurrection were far beyond the glory of his Transfiguration or that manifested on other occasions of the kind mentioned in this history. For on these occasions He received it transitorily and for special purposes, while now He received it in plenitude and forever. Through impassibility his body became invincible to all created power, since no power can ever move or change Him. By subtility the gross and earthly matter was so purified, that it could now penetrate other matter like a pure spirit. Accordingly He penetrated through the rocks of the sepulchre without removing or displacing them, just as He had issued forth from the womb of his most blessed Mother.
Agility so freed Him from the weight and slowness of matter, that it exceeded the agility of the immaterial angels, while He himself could move about more quickly than they, as shown in his apparitions to the Apostles and on other occasions. The sacred wounds, which had disfigured his body, now shone forth from his hands and feet and side so refulgent and brilliant, that they added a most entrancing beauty and charm.
In all this glory and heavenly adornment the Savior now arose from the grave; and in the presence of the saints and Patriarchs He promised universal resurrection in their own flesh and body to all men, and that they moreover, as an effect of his own Resurrection, should be similarly glorified. As an earnest and as a pledge of the universal resurrection, the Lord commanded the souls of many saints there present to reunite with their bodies and rise up to immortal life. Immediately this divine command was executed, and their bodies arose, as is mentioned by saint Matthew, in anticipation of this mystery (Matthew 27, 52).
Among them was saint Anne, saint Joseph and saint Joachim, and others of the ancient Fathers and Patriarchs, who had distinguished themselves in the faith and hope of the Incarnation, and had desired and prayed for it with greater earnestness to the Lord. As a reward for their zeal, the resurrection and glory of their bodies was now anticipated.
The Mother of God then describes to the Venerable of Agreda how the saints’ resurrected bodies will be like that of her Son:
Thou already knowest that the gifts of the soul are vision, comprehension and fruition, while thou hast already mentioned those of the body as being: clearness, impassibility, subtility and agility. Each of these gifts are correspondingly augmented in him who in the state of grace performs the least meritorious work, even if it be no more than removing a straw or giving a cup of water for the love of God (Matth. 10, 42).
For each of the most insignificant works the creature gains an increase of these gifts; an increase of clearness exceeding many times the sunlight and added to its state of blessedness; an increase of impassibility, by which man recedes from human and earthly corruption farther than what all created efforts and strength could ever effect in resisting or separating itself from such infirmity or changefulness; an increase of subtility, by which he advances beyond all that could offer it resistance and gains new power of penetration; an increase of agility, surpassing all the activity of birds, of winds, and all other active creatures, such as fire and the elements tending to their centre.
From this increase of the gifts of the body merited by good works, thou wilt understand the augmentation of the gifts of the soul; for those of the body are derived from those of the soul and correspond with them. In the beatific vision each merit secures greater clearness and insight into the divine attributes and perfections than that acquired by all the doctors and enlightened members of the Church.
Picture I snapped of the Cathedral in Zagreb, Croatia, currently under re-construction.
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