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Q.

Dear Father,

I am writing you in relation to your answer to the question “Where is now the Body of Jesus?” https://www.amicidomenicani.it/en/where-is-christs-body-that-ascended-into-heaven-in-the-flesh-and-in-the-spirit/

You have properly quoted CCC 645, but I do not think that it is the most precise quote, since the resurrected body of Jesus:

1. Being a real body, it extends and occupies some space.

2. Lives and can pass from potency to act – the human nature of Jesus is not pure act – and this passage is potentially measurable.

Therefore, it is located in time and space, even though they are not the same as our Earth’s – as happens for the cherubic time and saint’s aevum – but real time and real space.

Am I off base?

In Corde Matris

Father A.


A.

Dear Father A.,

1. The central statement from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ’s humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm” (CCC 645).

The resurrected body of Jesus is real. It is a real body but at the same time, it owns the new characteristics of a glorious body.

These are the characteristics that during the resurrection made Christ’s body become a spiritual body, as St. Paul said (see 1 Cor 15, 44).

If a man were there in that moment in the sepulcher, he would not have seen the glorious body of the Lord.

Much less would he have seen him come out of the tomb. Nevertheless, he would have noticed that the bandages that wrapped him fell back on themselves and that the material body of Jesus was no longer there.

2. With the resurrection, Jesus’s body left the space-time conditions that characterize the current world.

He entered – if I may say so – in another world, God’s own world.

The Holy Scripture and the Church’s profession of faith state that he is at the right hand of the Father.

This is the reason why the Catholic Church’s Catechism reiterates at CCC 646 that “in his risen body he passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space.

The Body of Jesus is, in the Resurrection, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit; it participates in the divine life in the state of his glory, so that Saint Paul can say of Christ that he is “the heavenly man.” (see 1 Cor 15, 35-50)” (CCC 646).

3. To the question, where is the resurrected body of Christ? We could answer that he is at the right hand of the Father.

However, we need to clarify – as St. Thomas would say, quoting St. John of Damascus – that “We hold, moreover, that Christ sits in the body at the right hand of God the Father, but we do not hold that the right hand of the Father is actual place. For how could He that is uncircumscribed have a right hand limited by place? Right hands and left hands belong to what is circumscribed. But we understand the right hand of the Father to be the glory and honor of the Godhead” (De fide orthodoxa 4,2)” (Summa theologiae, III, 58, 1, 1)

4. The fact that Christ’s glorious humanity somehow increases its glory until the end of the world does not mean that it dwells in some space because the holy souls of Paradise – likewise the Angels and conversely the demons – also have a certain growth until the universal judgment.

However, this does not mean that any of them dwell in some space because the holy souls of Paradise, Angels and demons are all spiritual substances.

5. It is true that time and space of the other world are different from the ones of our Earth; however, since we do not know to what extent they differ we should just say the glorious humanity of our Lord and Blessed Virgin Mary are within God.

Thank you for your question. I remind you to the Lord and I wish you all the best for your precious ministry.

Father Angelo


Translated by Rossella Roma