Some Quotes for Reflection
Thus the divine life comes down from heaven and is sown in a perishable body. But the divine life gradually rises up as the imperishable that it truly is. The world itself is to be wrapped in the mantle of divine praise, the presence of the life-giving Spirit. And this takes place through us, the highly conscious elements of the world, the humanity made from “humus,” from the dust of the earth, the dust of the stars, and organized into a “living being,” which is ultimately to realize itself as the “life-giving Spirit.”
The first humanity was from the earth, a humanity of dust; the second humanity is from heaven....Just as we have borne the image of the humanity of dust, we shall also bear the image of the humanity of heaven. (1Cor.15:47,49)
-Beatrice Bruteau
The Easter Mysteries
For “we ourselves,” he [Paul] says “groan inwardly as we wait for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Our adoption as sons is our passing from human to divine consciousness, which is the destiny of all humanity. And this will come through “the redemption of our bodies.” The new consciousness is not a bodiless state; it is the transformation of our present body consciousness, which is limited by time and space, into a state of transformed body consciousness which is that of resurrection. In the resurrection Jesus passed from our present state of material being and consciousness into the final state when matter itself, and with it the human body, passes into the state of the divine being and consciousness, which is the destiny of all humanity.....Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode conditioned by time and space will the new creation appear, which is the eternal reality of which our world is a mirror.
-Bede Griffiths 1906-1993
A New Vision of Reali
And he did not rise in order finally to depart from hence, not so that the travail of death which gave birth to him anew might transfer him to the life and light of God and he would leave behind him the dark bosom of the earth empty and without hope. For he rose again in his body. That means he has already begun to transform this world into himself. He has accepted the world forever. He has been born again as a child of the earth, but of the transfigured, liberated earth, the earth which in him is eternally confirmed and eternally redeemed from death and futility.
He rose, not to show that he was leaving the tomb of the earth once and for all, but in order to demonstrate that precisely that tomb of the dead - the body and the earth - has finally changed into the glorious, immeasurable house of the living God and of the God-filled soul of the Son....He rose again to reveal that through his death the life of freedom and beatitude remains established forever within the narrow limits and sorrow of the earth, in the depth of its heart.
-Karl Rahner
The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations
In the incarnation he mingled himself with our being in order to make us divine through contact with his nature, after he had snatched it from death. His resurrection becomes for mortals the promise of our return to immortality.
Our whole nature had to be recalled from death to life. God therefore stooped over our dead body, offering his hand (so to speak) to the poor creature lying there. He came near enough to death to make contact with our mortal remains, and by means of his own body provided human nature with the capacity for resurrection, thus by his power raising to life the whole of humanity.
-Gregory of Nyssa
A Reading from a Catechetical Oration
Quoted from Celebrating the Seasons: Daily Spiritual Readings for the Christian Year
Our bodies play an enormously important role in our life in the Risen Christ. The Incarnation has given a sacramental quality to our flesh and blood, so that we can offer an unceasing prayer of the body that can begin here and never end. This prayer sanctifies not only the suffering of the body but its joys as well. The prayer of the body is preparation for the eternity when our bodies will be glorified as the risen body of Christ is glorified now.
-Caryll Houselander 1901-1954
The Risen Christ
quoted from Gail Ramshaw in Treasures Old and New:Images in the Lectionary
Shared Life and Mission
Both Judaism and Christianity see the body as God's good creation, and for Christians the language of the resurrection of the body praises the God who gives life to the matter of the earth. Although a literal re-creation of human-like individual bodies may await us at the end of time, the Christian faith is not focused on such a personalized future expectation. According to eschatological thought, the future is already appearing in the present. We are already now to experience in Baptism, in Eucharist, and in shared life and mission some of what the faith means by the resurrection of the body.
-Gail Ramshaw
Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary
He rose again to reveal that through his death the life of freedom and beatitude remains established forever within the narrow limits and sorrow of the earth, in the depth of its heart.
-Karl Rahner 1904-1984
The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations
