The General Resurrection
69. The Place of Departed Souls
1. Souls that depart from their bodies at death are assigned to certain corporeal places. However, these souls are not present in a place by quantity or dimension, as bodies are, for the souls are spirits and have no quantity or dimensions of their own. But a spirit can be in a place in a manner proper to itself. We rightly say that the souls of the departed are in heaven and purgatory and hell. And these terms mean places as well as states.
2. The assignment of a departed soul to its place occurs at the instant it is severed from its body. Souls fit for heaven, go there; souls in mortal sin are, by their own free choice and decision, assigned to hell; souls in God's grace but unready for heaven are detained in purgatory. For it may be, and doubtless often is, that a soul at the moment of death, even if free from mortal sin, is in venial sin, or has yet to pay some temporal punishment due to forgiven sins, and perhaps has upon it the remains of sin. Now, the soul that labors under these burdens is not fit for heaven (which is for those without spot or wrinkle, and is the place and state into which nothing defiled can enter), and still such a soul does not deserve the eternal pains of hell. Such a soul labors under an obstacle that must be first removed before it can enter heaven. As a body lighter than air tends to fly upward, but is prevented from reaching its true level by an overhanging obstacle, so the soul in purgatory is blocked by its burdens from ascending into heaven; it remains in purgatory until the preventing obstacle is removed by enduring the penalties of its state or by prayers and suffrages offered on its behalf.
3. Heaven, hell, and purgatory are places and states. No soul in heaven or in hell may ever leave its state, but it is possible by divine dispensation that a soul may leave its place and come in apparition before the eyes of people on earth.
4. Before the redemption, all the departed souls were said to be in hell. This was a general term, like our own expression, "the hereafter." Or we may say that the hell of the older time had two departments: the limbo of the just, and the hell of lost souls.
5. The limbo of the just was known as "the limbo of the fathers," that is of holy men (such as the patriarchs, and Job, and St. Joseph) who died before our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension. It is possible that the limbo of the fathers and the hell of eternal punishment were in the same place, but they were not the same state. For the fathers suffered only their unfulfilled longing for heaven, and not a pain of sense.
6. The limbo of children is the state and place of unbaptized children who have original sin only. As to place, this may be the same as the limbo of the fathers, but it is not the same state. In the limbo of children there is no suffering whatever.
7. Thus we distinguish the abodes of departed souls: heaven, hell, purgatory, the limbo of children. The limbo of the fathers ceased to exist when our Lord ascended into heaven carrying with him the souls of all the just who were awaiting that glad hour in the limbo of the fathers.
70. Quality of a Separated Soul
1. The soul, separated from its body, can no longer exercise the powers of sense, for these require the service of bodily members. But the soul is still the root-principle of sense-action and retains its fitness for activating sense-organs. Hence, we may say that the sentient powers belong radically (or in root )to the separated soul.
2. Certainly, sense-action itself is not within the power of the separated soul.
3. Although the fire of hell be a bodily fire, it can afflict a spirit thus far at least, that it can detain it, and hinder its movement according to its own will.
71. Suffrages for the Dead
1. The word suffrage really means a vote. A suffrage is a vote, or a request to God, that some good act of ours have its merit bestowed on another. A suffrage is a good deed cast, like a ballot, in favor of someone. All the faithful are members of one body which is the Church. And, as in a living body, one member may be assisted by another. Such assistance is a suffrage. So much we know from the doctrine called the "Communion of Saints." But one member cannot actually replace another; one member of the Church cannot save the soul of another. One member may, and should, help another, not only by giving him good example and praying for him, but by performing good and meritorious deeds, and ascribing the benefit of these to another.
2. The prayers and suffrages of the living, offered for the souls in purgatory, are of benefit to these souls. This we know from the infallible teaching of the Church, and also from scripture (II Machabees 12:46): "It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins."
3. Even those who are in the state of mortal sin may do something for the souls in purgatory. For the deed done may have a value apart from the status of the doer of the deed.
4. Suffrages offered by the living on behalf of the souls in purgatory are deeds of charity, and, as such, they confer a benefit upon those who perform them. Says Psalm 34: "My prayer shall be turned into my bosom."
5. Suffrages, however, can be of no benefit whatever to those who are in hell. The lost souls are changelessly beyond all aid. They are under debt of eternal punishment, and no suffrage with its gift of temporal satisfaction, can be of any avail.
6. It is a point of the faith itself that the suffrages of the living help the souls in purgatory to pay their temporal debt. For purgatory does the work of satisfaction that a person could have done in this life, but died without doing, or without completing. Temporal punishment can be paid off; we on earth can help pay it for our brethren in purgatory who can merit no longer for themselves.
7. Infants in Umbo cannot be aided by suffrages. For these infants are not under any debt of punishment for actual sins. We cannot relieve temporal suffering where there is no suffering to relieve.
8. Suffrages are called so because they help, just as a vote helps to elect a man. Now, we cannot help those who have achieved the glory of heaven. One cannot help another to get home if he is already at home. So we do not offer suffrages on behalf of the saints.
9. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the share we have in the general prayer of the Church, and almsgiving, are notable works of charity; therefore, these are powerful suffrages.
10. Indulgences granted by the Church and made applicable to the souls in purgatory can be gained by the faithful on earth for the benefit of the holy souls. And indulgences thus gained are suffrages.
11. St. Augustine says that the burial service for the dead, with its solemn ceremonies, is rather a consolation for the survivors than a help for the departed. And yet the burial service as prescribed by the Church contains many prayers for the dead, and even Holy Mass which is offered for the departed soul. Further, the ceremonies themselves may stir observers to pious thoughts, and lead them to pray and offer suffrages for the dead. And thus, "to bury the dead," is indeed a work of mercy. And as such a work, it is a suffrage.
12. It seems most reasonable to suppose that suffrages offered for one definite person are a help to him rather than to another who is perhaps more worthy of help. For the suffrage offered derives its value not only from the deed done, but from the intention of the doer of the deed.
13. Suffrages offered for several souls are divided among the souls. It is quite unreasonable to think or say, as some have done, that such suffrages are of as much value for each of the several souls as if they were offered for that one soul alone.
14. General suffrages (those offered in general for the souls in purgatory) are certainly of profit to the holy souls. But here again it is unreasonable to say that neglected souls find in general suffrages such help as makes up to them all they have been deprived of through neglect on the part of those who should help them.
72. Prayers to the Saints
1. The saints are all the human beings who have reached heaven. They enjoy the beatific vision, seeing, directly and intuitively, God in his essence. They behold in God all that they ought to know about themselves and about their glory. Now, it is part of their glory to assist others, and help them serve God and reach heaven. Thus the saints cooperate with God; thus they are made godlike. But the saints cannot assist others unless they know these others and understand their needs. Therefore, the saints know in God the devotions, prayers, and promises of people on earth who pray to the saints.
2. It is right to pray to the saints for their aid. We pray for one another here on earth. St. Paul, great apostle as he was, asked humbly for prayers (Rom. 15:30). Our brethren with God in heaven are in far better position to offer our petitions to him than are our brethren on earth. Besides, the Church prays to the saints, as, for example, in the solemn Litany of the Saints.
3. The prayers of the saints for us are effective. The saints pray in complete conformity with God's most loving will towards us, and they ask favors for us according to that will. Thus, their prayers are always granted.
73. Signs Preceding General Resurrection and Judgement
1. When our Lord comes in glory to judge the world at the end of time, certain signs shall herald his coming. These signs will be such as to forewarn all people and bring them into reverent subjection to God's will if they will heed. Just what the signs of Christ's second coming will be, we do not know. Those signs mentioned in scripture refer not only to his coming to judge mankind, but to his coming continually to visit his Church; some of them refer to the coming of divine justice upon unfaithful Jerusalem.
2. The actual darkening of the sun and moon may precede the coming of the Judge, and may stir sinners to fear and repentance. But it is not likely that the Day of Judgment will be dark. Our Lord will come in glory as scripture says (Isa. 30:26): "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold."
3. "The virtues of heaven shall be moved," says scripture, referring to the day of general judgment (Matt. 24:29). This prediction probably refers to the angels, either in general, or to the particular order of angels called Virtues. The end of time means a change in the temporal assignment of angels who have charge of earthly things.
74. The Fire of Judgment Day
1. At the end of time sin and all uncleanness on the earth shall cease. Those who are voluntarily and irrevocably given to evil will all be in hell. The earth where man has sinned will be cleansed and purified.
2. It appears that the cleansing agency for the bodily world will be fire. We read in scripture (I Peter 3:12): "The heavens being on fire will be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat."
3. The cleansing final fire will doubtless be the same kind of fire as the natural sort with which we are familiar. As natural water washed the sinful world in the great flood, so natural fire will cleanse it at the last day.
4. The heavenly bodies are not subject to contamination by man's sin. They need nothing to fit them for the state of glory but to have their local movement set at rest by divine decree.
5. It seems that after the cleansing by fire, the substances of air, earth, fire, and water will remain, but as purified, and no longer in natural conflict with one another.
6. Therefore, all earthly substances, including fire itself, will be purified and cleansed in the final fire.
7. The cleansing fire will precede the judgment: "A fire shall go before him" (Ps. 96). Yet the special action of fire which will engulf the wicked will follow upon their judgment.
8. The final fire will act on men as the instrument of divine justice. It will reduce or change all bodies; but it will pain the wicked, and not the good, except in so far as temporal punishment may still be needed for the cleansing of the good.
9. With the purifying of the world by fire, all that is evil and ugly will be cast into hell with the wicked; all that is beautiful and noble will be taken up to heaven for the glory of the elect.
75. The Resurrection of the Body
1. The body will rise again. Says scripture (Job 19:25, 26): "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God." Since man is one substance composed of soul and body, the ultimate state of man must involve the body as well as the soul. Hence, the body will rise again.
2. This, therefore, is true of all men without exception; for all are of the same species, that is, the same complete essential kind. No human soul will remain forever separated from its own body.
3. The resurrection of the body is natural in the sense that it is natural for the soul to have its body. But there is no power resident in soul or body to bring them together once they have been separated by death. Hence, the agency which actually joins souls with their respective bodies is wholly supernatural.
76. The Cause of the Resurrection of the Body
1. It was the divinity or Godhead of Christ (which is one in the three divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity), which raised him from the dead. And scripture says (Rom. 8:11): "He that raised up Jesus
Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies." We are to rise in the likeness of the Resurrection of our Lord, and indeed in virtue of that Resurrection. God is the cause of the resurrection of bodies; the Resurrection of Christ can be called the quasi-instrumental cause through which God will raise us up.
2. On the last day, the appearance of Christ in his glory will summon all men to resurrection and judgment. His voice will be as the trumpet to rouse and summon all.
3. The angels will come with the Judge, ministering to him, and preparing for the bodily resurrection of mankind. But the actual reuniting of souls and bodies will not be done by angels, but will be the immediate work of God himself.
77. Time and Manner of the Resurrection of the Body
1. The resurrection of the body will take place at the end of the world, not previously.
2. The time of the end of the world, and of the concomitant rising of men, is not humanly known; nor will it be known. Scripture says (Matt. 24:36): "Of that day and hour no man knoweth; no, not the angels of heaven." When the apostles asked our Lord about the time of the world's ending (Acts 1:7), he said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father hath put in his own power."
3. As to the hour of the bodily resurrection, many think that because Christ rose from the dead in the early part of the day while it was yet dark, the resurrection of men's bodies will be in the nighttime.
4. The resurrection of the body will take place in an instant, and not by degrees. St. Paul, speaking of the bodily resurrection, says (I Cor. 15:51-52): "We shall all indeed rise again ... in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."
78. The Starting Point of the Bodily Resurrection
1. Every movement has its starting point and its goal, and the movement itself consists in the transit or "going over" from the first of these to the second. Now, the movement of the bodies of men to life in the final resurrection, has its beginning or starting point in the state of death. Therefore, all men must die. Those who are alive on earth when the last day comes will die, and then rise in the general resurrection.
2. All human beings shall rise from the dust and ashes to which death and decay (or the final fire) reduces them. Scripture says (Gen. 3:19): "Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return."
3. There is, in the dust and ashes to which bodies are reduced, no tendency towards reconstruction as human bodies. The divine plan and the divine power bring about the resurrection, uniting each soul with the dust and ashes which, by reason of the union, is constituted as the proper body of the vivifying soul.
79. The Risen Body
1. In the resurrection, each soul will be united with its own body. For in a real resurrection, that which falls is that which rises again. If the soul be not joined substantially with its own body, then there is not a resurrection, but an assuming of a new body.
2. The selfsame man who dies will rise again. For, by the resurrection, a man is to live again, not to be turned into someone else.
3. However, it is the soul that constitutes the material element of man as his living body and gives it its personal identity in the body-soul compound that we call a man. By uniting substantially with matter, the soul constitutes that matter as its own body, holding it in continuous identity, notwithstanding the flow and change of bodily particles all through life. Perhaps, in the risen body will be present some of the actual physical particles which the living body used at some stage of earthly life.
80. The Integrity of the Risen Body
1. The human body will rise complete and perfect with all its members. In the elect, the perfected soul will animate its body and cause that body to be perfect.
2. Even in such things as belong to the body more as ornaments than necessary members, such as hair and nails, the risen body will be perfectly complete.
3. Man's risen body will lack nothing that belongs to the integrity (that is, the complete and rounded perfection) of human nature. The risen body will need none of the processes that merely preserve it, or make it grow, or propagate. But the body will have all that makes it enduring, mature, and perfect.
4. The risen body will have all that belongs to true human bodily nature; it will have all this in the most perfect and suitable mode and degree.
5. As noted heretofore, the actual material particles which flow through and in the human body during its term of earthly existence will not all be found in the risen body.
81. The Quality of Those Risen from the Dead
1. Those who rise will not have the imperfections of immaturity or old age. All will rise in the most perfect stage of human nature, which is the age of youth; that is, of youth just arrived at maturity and full development.
2. However, all arisen bodies will not be the same in size. Variety on this point is no defect in nature. We know only that risen bodies will not be deficient in any natural perfection. Each person's body will be of the size most suitable to him.
3. Human beings, then, will rise with perfect bodies, all in full maturity, none with infantile or childish imperfection, none bent with age. They will be perfect men and perfect women, with bodies of suitable size perfectly proportioned.
4. Risen bodies will not require the things they needed on earth to sustain them, preserve them, and move them to development or further perfection. Risen bodies will not eat, or drink, or sleep, or beget offspring, or feel the pull of fleshly appetites or passions.
82. The Impassibility of Risen Bodies
1. To be impassible is to be immune to suffering and change.
2. The bodies of the just will not be capable of suffering any pain whatever, nor will they ever undergo substantial change. The bodies of the damned will endure pains in hell, and hence are not impassible; yet these bodies will not undergo substantial change. St. Paul (I Cor. 15:42) says: "It [the body] is sown in corruption, it shall rise in in-corruption."
3. Impassibility in the risen bodies of the just does not mean numbness or insensibility. It means immunity to what is contrary to human nature and painful to it. The risen body will have sensation (that is, its senses will operate and bring in sense-findings or sense-knowledge), and it will have movement; these things belong to the perfection of the body.
4. The senses of the risen bodies of the just will find in the overflow of glory, which comes upon them from the soul, their complete and enduring perfection. The senses will be perfectly and satisfyingly in operation, and they will possess their objects, and not merely tend to these objects, or be in a state of readiness to perceive them.
83. The Subtlety of Risen Bodies
1. The risen body will be, in all organic action, perfectly subject to the soul, and instantly responsive to the will, needing withal no material sustenance. This spirit-like quality of the risen body is called subtlety or subtility.
2. The subtlety of a glorified body will not enable it to occupy the same place with another body, unless this be done by a miracle.
3. Now, there is no contradiction in the thought of two bodies being in the same place simultaneously, even though there is nothing in the nature of a body capable of producing this effect. What keeps bodies from compenetration is their external extension, and this is not of the essence or nature of bodies, but is an effect of quantity, which, in turn, is only a proper accidental of bodies and not their essence. Hence, there is no conflict or contradiction in the notion of compenetration of bodies; therefore, since the thing is conceivable, it might be done by a miracle.
4. However, the subtlety of the glorified body does not make this compenetration possible without a miracle. Besides, in heaven, distinctness of bodily being will be a perfection; if several bodies were to occupy the same place, this distinctness of being would be obscured.
5. The glorified body, just as the natural body on earth, will occupy space, and will be in a place according to its dimensions.
6. There will be nothing ghostlike in the risen body. It will be a true body. But it will have spiritual or spirit-like qualities. It will be something that can be touched and felt. When our Lord in his risen and glorified body came in, through closed doors, to his disciples, he told them he was not a spirit or ghost, and said (Luke 24:39): "Handle and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have."
84. The Agility of Risen Bodies
1. The glorified body will be able to move with the quickness of thought from place to place under the direction of the soul and the command of the free will. This quality of the risen body is called agility.
2. The risen body in heaven will move about. Scripture says (Isa. 40:31): "They shall run and not be weary"; and (Wisd. 3:7), "[The just] shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds." But this swift and untiring movement will not deprive the just of the beatific vision or diminish their happiness.
3. The movement of the glorified body will not be strictly instantaneous; it will take a moment of time, yet this moment will be so short as to be imperceptible.
85. The Clarity of Risen Bodies
1. The risen body in glory will have a measure of lightsomeness and splendor, according to the soul's degree of glory. Says scripture (Matt. 13:43): "The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." This shining and splendid quality of the risen body is called its clarity.
2. The clarity of the blessed in heaven will be visible to the non-glorified eye of the damned. For clarity is naturally visible, as it was to the eyes of the three apostles who beheld it in our Lord's body at the time of the Transfiguration.
3. Yet the glorified body is not necessarily visible; it will appear or disappear as the soul wills. It will be like our Lord's glorified body at Emmaus, that is, capable of being seen, but also capable of being withdrawn from the sight of men.
86. The Risen Bodies of the Damned
1. The bodies of all men will rise in natural perfection without deficiency or defect. But the bodies of the damned will lack the qualities of the glorified bodies: agility, clarity, subtlety, impassibility.
2. The bodies of the damned will not be corruptible. Scripture says (Apoc. 9:6): "Men shall seek death and shall not find it, and they shall desire to die and death shall fly from them."
3. As noted, the bodies of the damned will be passible, that is, capable of enduring suffering. Retribution must come to man, body and soul. And punishment of body involves passibility.