The Resurrection of the Body (5)

Father Richard M. Hogan

Chapter 5

On May 13, 1981, a week after the Pope concluded the second cycle of the Theology of the Body series (nos. 24-63) and presumably the day he planned to begin the third cycle on the resurrection of the body (nos. 64-72), he was shot in St. Peter’s square by Mehmet Ali Agca. The bullet hit the Pope before the audience had formally begun as he was touring the square, greeting the crowd assembled for the Wednesday audience, in a specially built jeep, the so-called Popemobile.  At these Wednesday audiences, the Pope would normally make one or two circuits of the square in the Popemobile. In this way, the Pope could interact with the crowd and they could greet him before he took his seat on the raised platform in front of the Basilica to begin the audience. On May 13, just after the Pope had returned a little girl to her parents and as the Popemobile headed towards the platform, the shots rang out.  The Pope suddenly slumped into the arms of his long-time secretary, Monsignor Dziwisz. (now Archbishop Dziwisz). John Paul was rushed to Gemelli hospital. Miraculously, the bullets from Agca’s gun missed major arteries and nerve centers, but John Paul was for a time close to death from the loss of blood.  Through the talent and skill of surgeons, the Pope gradually recovered only to be felled in June by a viral infection.  By early fall, he had regained much of his strength, but the third cycle of the Theology of the Body series did not begin until the Wednesday audience of November 11, 1981.

The assassination attempt on John Paul II, an attack on his body, gives his great principle that the body is the expression of the person a concrete reality.  The Pope’s body was attacked, but it was his person who was wounded.  The person, not just his body, was near death.  When the body is touched, it is the person who is touched because the body and person form one entity, one being: the human being.  Further, near death, suffering the real possibility of the separation of his body and his spirit (soul), the Pope experienced in a very direct way what death means for the human person.  Death is the separation of soul and body. But the resurrection is the reunion of soul and body.  In facing death, the Pope also faced the certainty of the resurrection. His teaching on the resurrection of the body, certainly already formulated and written by this time, took on an experiential reality for him.  In facing death, he would have affirmed everything he had planned to say that day, May 13th, at the audience and in the subsequent eight addresses in the cycle on the resurrection of the body.

The Pope begins his resumed series without reference to the assassination attempt or his wounds. He simply says, “After a rather long pause, today we will resume the meditations . . . on the theology of the body.”[1]  Having already considered two previous “words” of Christ on marriage: the one regarding divorce which was occasioned by the Pharisees’ question about the Old Testament practice of allowing a man to divorce his wife;[2] and the one about adultery from the Sermon on the Mount,[3] the Pope now takes up  the third “word” of Christ on marriage: the one about marriage in heaven.

As with his teaching on divorce, Christ’s teaching on marriage and the resurrection is a response to a question put to him. The Sadducees came up to Christ and tried to trap him on the question of the resurrection and its relationship to marriage.  They did not believe in any resurrection of the body and they knew he did.  Through their question, they hoped to make it appear that  the resurrection of the body was impossible.

In the Old Testament, there was a law that if a man died without children, his brother should marry the widow and preserve “his brother’s line” by giving the widow children.[4]  Based on this law, the Sadducees present the case that there was a wife and seven brothers. She married the oldest brother who died without children. She then married the second brother who also died without children. In the end, she married all seven brothers who all died childless. Finally,  the woman died.  The Sadducees ask Christ, “Now at the resurrection, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had been married to her. 

Of course, the question turns on the question of the human body. Marriage is very much a bodily reality—a union of two persons expressed through the flesh. Husbands and wives, after all, become “one flesh.”  The resurrection is also a bodily reality: the re-union of soul and body.  If there is a resurrection of the body, i.e., if there are bodies in heaven, then the Sadducees suggested, there must be a possibility of marriage after the resurrection.  But if a wife were married more than once on earth, i.e., were “one flesh” with more than one husband, to whom would she be joined in one flesh in heaven? Whose wife would she be in heaven?  The Sadducees were arguing that the earthly bodily reality of marriage would necessarily be extended to heaven if there was a bodily resurrection.  Implicitly the Sadducees claimed that the one person body-soul unity on earth would be identical to the one person body-soul unity in heaven. Since it is impossible for the woman with seven husbands to be married to more than one husband in heaven, a fortiori, there can be no marriage in heaven.  Further, since the one person body-soul unity in heaven is identical to the one person body-soul unity on earth, if there is no marriage in heaven, there is no body-soul unity in heaven, i.e., there is no resurrection of the body.

Christ’s answer is: “You are misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.  At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.” Christ denies the basic premise. He teaches that the body-soul unity in heaven is not identical to the body-soul unity on earth. “The resurrection [of the body] . . . means . . .a completely new state of human life itself.” Still, since Christ talks about human beings after the resurrection of their bodies as “neither marrying nor given in marriage,” it is clear that in heaven the human body will retain its masculinity or femininity.  But the meaning of masculinity and femininity will be different in heaven then it was “in the beginning” before sin or in the “historical” state, i.e., after sin. Christ also says that those who attain to the resurrection of the dead  “can no longer die, for they are like angels.”[8]  This correlates with the statement from the Psalms that even now, on earth, in the “historical” state of man after sin, we are “a little less than the angels (Ps. 8:5).”[9]  “It must be supposed that in the resurrection this similarity [to the angels] will become greater: not through a disincarnation of man, but by means of another kind (we could also say another degree) of spiritualization of his somatic nature—that is, by means of another ‘system of forces’ within man. The resurrection means a new submission of the body to the spirit.”[10]  “We could speak here also of a perfect system of forces between what is spiritual in man and what is physical. ‘Historical’ man, as a result of original sin, experiences a multiple imperfection in this system of forces which is expressed in St. Paul’s well-known words: ‘I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind”(Rom. 7:23). ‘Eschatological’ man will be free from that ‘opposition. . . . ‘Spiritualization’ means not only that the spirit will dominate the body [as in the state of man before sin], but, I would say, that it will fully permeate the body, and that the forces of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body.”[11] This new spiritualization of the body will have its source in what the Pope calls a “divinization” of each person’s humanity.  The divine life of grace, given in Baptism, will be perfectly united with human life to the extent that grace will permeate every aspect of humanity.  “Participation in the divine nature, participation in the interior life of God Himself, permeation of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine, will then reach its peak so that the life of the human spirit will arrive at such fullness which previously had been absolutely inaccessible to it.”[12] 

The spiritualization of every aspect of the human person has as its source, grace, which will make us, and every aspect of our persons, sharers in the divinity. This divinization of all powers and capacities of human nature includes the body.  “ ‘Divinization’ in the ‘other world’ will bring the human spirit such a ‘range of experience’ of truth and love such as man would never have been able to attain in earthly life.”[13] The Pope’s description of the joy of the human person in his or her body-soul unity in heaven is difficult to grasp because no one living on earth has ever experienced it or anything close to it.  Further, even the Pope’s views of the resurrection of the body are necessarily incomplete because not everything about this state has been revealed to us.  Nevertheless, it is clear from what the Pope describes that we will be so taken up by the vision of God, so permeated by the divine itself, that every capacity and power we have will be completely and forever focused on Him.  Nothing else will interest us or attract us.  For brief moments on earth and in a much less intense way, most of us have experienced something like what the Pope is describing.  We can lose ourselves in the beauty of nature; be awed by the power of a storm, volcano, or earthquake; be so intent on a loved one that nothing will intrude on our concentration.  These are very pale, imperfect reflections of what the Pope is trying to describe. In more theological terms, we can understand Christ’s words about the resurrection of the body as the complete fulfillment of the nuptial meaning of the body.  The human body reveals to human persons through its nuptial meaning that we are called to love, to give ourselves in imitation of the Trinity.  The nuptial meaning of the body is the understanding in each of our intellects that we are created to give ourselves to one another in a God-like self-giving, life-affirming and life-giving love. Husbands and wives give concrete reality to the nuptial meaning of the body by living a loving union expressed in and through their bodily self-giving.  The marital act between husbands and wives is not only an expression of their love, but it also enriches their union and allows their mutual affection to grow and intensify.

In heaven, the nuptial meaning of the body, i.e., the understanding that we are to love, will be expressed and lived not through the bodily union with a spouse, but through the “penetration of what is essentially human by what is essentially divine.”[14] Once established, the union between each person and God will not need to grow or intensify because it reaches its pinnacle at the very first moment of the union and it remains at that point. (Therefore, one of the aspects of the marital act, the intensification of the loving union of the spouses will not be needed.) The human body will participate in this union because every bodily power will be completely fixed on the union.  The joy of the divinization will translate itself into a bodily expression which, in turn, will completely absorb every bodily human power. “There will be born in him [i.e., in the human person experiencing the resurrection in heaven] a love of such depth and power of concentration on God Himself, as to completely absorb his whole pscychosomatic subjectivity.”[15] 

As a very imperfect image of the bodily absorption in the union with God, one might think of a child who hears some glorious news, e.g., the family is going on vacation to Disney world, and can do nothing but dance in a wild whirling motion for a few minutes.  The child is completely focused on the joy of the news and is oblivious to the family members around him or her. The same absorption often occurs in young children on Christmas.  They become completely focused on the gifts as to be almost oblivious to every request their parents or elders might make.   Similarly, the sheer and unbelievable constant joy of the union with God will so absorb every power of the human body that every sense, every power, will be focused on God. The absorption in God will be so intense that we will be oblivious to everything else.  The mystical experiences of some saints who have been so taken up in prayer, i.e., in union with God,  that they have been oblivious to time, to noises around them, even to physical pain, foreshadows, again in a dim way, this absorption of the bodily powers in the union with God.

We might also understand the absorption of the bodily powers in the union with God in light of the surge in our emotions which the vision of God face to face will cause. The union with God in heaven is one of love.  Love certainly involves the emotional powers of the body. It is obvious to most people after some experience that the physical powers of the human body are intimately tied to one’s emotions.  Even the most talented athlete does not perform well (or at least as well) if troubled by emotional difficulties.  We often speak of not bringing “distractions” on to the field or court. We also talk of not “bringing the office home.”  These “sayings” are a way of emphasizing that emotions play a huge part in the exercise our physical powers: on the field or court as a professional athlete; at home in expressing love and affection.  Similarly, every spouse knows when the other spouse’s mind is “somewhere else.”  In heaven, our emotions will be so taken up with the indescribable joy of the union with God that it would be impossible for us to exercise any of our physical powers in a union other than the union with God.   (Therefore, the bodily expression of  love in the marital union of spouses will not occur. The bodily expression of love will be totally focused on God, Himself.) 

It is very important to understand that the absence of the marital union in heaven is not a deprivation or a lack.  In our present state, most of us experience a deep and profound longing to express more adequately our love for God, our love for our spouses, our love for children, for our friends.  The human body, as marvelous as it is, is incapable of completely expressing even the movements of the human spirit, i.e., the human soul, (let alone the movements of a divine Person, e.g., Christ or the Holy Spirit.)  This would be true even in the state of man before sin, but is especially true for “historical” man.  In heaven, in the resurrection of the body, these limitations will all pass away because the divine will penetrate every human power and we will be able to express and feel with our bodily powers, the loving union we will have with God. Therefore, we will not experience the lack of the marital union in heaven as a loss. Rather, the very purpose of the marital union, i.e., to love one another as God loves us, will be brought to such perfection that we will know and feel that we are totally fulfilled, i.e., that we are loving in the way we were created to love. Rather than feeling any loss or lack, we will finally be satisfied that we are adequately expressing our love for God and love for others through God. This satisfaction at the adequate (i.e., in conformity with our deepest desires) expression of love for God will yield an indescribable joy! It is obvious from what has been said that the union with God “face to face” will, strictly speaking, not be a “nuptial” one if by “nuptial,” we mean a union of a man and a woman expressed through the sexual powers.  While heaven has been likened to the perfect marriage and a marriage feast, this is by way of analogy. “Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”[16]  “Marriage and procreation in itself do not determine definitively the original and fundamental meaning [i.e., that we are called to love] of being a body or of being, as a body, male and female. Marriage and procreation merely give a concrete reality to that meaning in the dimensions of history. The resurrection indicates the end of the historical dimension.”[17]

Given these teachings of Christ and Pope John Paul’s reflections on those teachings, it could be argued that comparing the union of the human person in his or her body-soul unity in heaven after the resurrection of the body to a marriage feast is almost to lie.  The comparison is so false, i.e., it conveys so many images of the earthly marital union which are not part of the union with God in heaven, e.g., the sexual aspects, as to actually mislead people. Even in the primary truth it does convey, i.e., that in marriage we are to love our spouses as God loves us and in heaven we will love Him as He loves us, it conveys falsehoods because in no marriage on earth, even the most perfect one, do spouses give themselves to each other in the way we will be able to give ourselves to God in heaven. 

To argue that comparing the resurrected state of human persons in heaven with marriage is to mislead more than to illumine is only to say what many mystical authors have said for centuries. They point out that human language and images are linked to concepts formed from this world. God is so completely “other” that to invoke these concepts and images is to convey falsehoods about God because God is so far beyond human concepts and earthly images as to make them almost lies when applied to God.  There is then in mystical thought a long tradition of invoking pure silence with regard to God. Anything we would say is so far beneath the reality as to be more false than true and so we should say nothing. 

Obviously, we need to say something!!! However, the value in the mystical tradition of silence is to underline the obvious truth: everything we say is only by way of analogy and not by way of actual fact.  When comparing the resurrected state of heaven with a marriage feast, it is very good to remember this essential point. 

The differences between a earthly marriage and the union with God in heaven are perfectly illustrated by the Pope’s remark that “the virginal state of the body will be totally manifested as the eschatological fulfillment of the ‘nuptial’ meaning of the body.”[18]  In heaven, we will all be as virgins, i.e., we will not enter into marriages.  Still, we will be penetrated by the divine and divinized. We will be taken up into the love of God seen “face to face.”  The “nuptial meaning of the body,” i.e., that we realize that we are called to love as God loves, will be perfectly realized in our total gift of self to God and His gift of Himself to us.  And yet, we will not be married. We will be virgins.  Both marriage and the virginal state, celibacy and virginity, will find their fulfillment together in the same union: the union with God. 

The Pope writes that the union with God in heaven will be a  “concentration of knowledge and love on God Himself [which] cannot but be a full participation in the interior life of God.”[19] The word, participation, is important in the Pope’s thought and means the way two or more people unite to act together and yet preserve themselves and their own dignity and value in that union.  In a word, it means joining together with others in love. 

For an adequate understanding of  John Paul’s thought on this point, it is necessary to remember that for the philosopher, Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II),  the human person reveals himself through acts.  Created as persons, human beings have free will. We are able to act according to our own choices.  Unlike the animals who are “programmed” by instinct, we have the power of free choice.  When we freely choose to act, those acts become part of us and shape us.  For example, those who choose to practice playing the piano, become piano players.  Through our acts, we shape ourselves, i.e., we determine ourselves.  Our acts should always be in conformity with the truth we know through our intellects and our bodies should be orchestrated by our choices in conformity with the truth.  When we freely choose to act in conformity with the truth and our bodies express those acts outwardly, we shape and determine ourselves.  In doing this, we transcend the mere physical.  Horizontal transcendence occurs when we freely choose our own acts and vertical transcendence occurs when we act in accordance with the truth.  Determining and transcending ourselves and acting with integration (the body expressing what we choose and know to be true), we act as human persons and reveal who we are to the world. 

Transcendence, self-determination, and integration are the defining characteristics of human acts.  In acting with others, these must be present. But if we are forced against our will to do something, then our personal dignity and value are harmed and attacked.  How do we act together with others and preserve our own dignity and value? This is what the Pope calls participation. If two or more people, each acting with the characteristics of transcendence, self-determination, and integration, join to do something together, they are participating with one another.  As one author puts it, “ ‘Participation’ is used by Wojtyla to indicate the way in which, in common acting, the person protects the personalistic value of his own acting [i.e., protects the characteristics of transcendence, self-determination, and integration] and participates together in the realization of common action and its outcomes.”[20] Participation means not being treated as an object or treating others as an object, i.e., as a mere thing to be used.  In fact, in any cooperative activity, each person sees the value and dignity of the other or others.  Each person affirms that infinite dignity and value in the other or others and experiences the other or others affirming that same dignity in himself or herself.  Participation is thus an affirmation of one’s own dignity and value and that of others.

In heaven, participation will reach a level beyond our imagination because our participation will be with God Himself.  The Creator Himself, Who made all of us in His image and likeness, will affirm our dignity and value by giving Himself to us so that He will permeate our very being.  How could one’s dignity and value be more affirmed than by the gift of God Himself?  Further, permeated with the divine Power, we will also be able to affirm Him by giving ourselves to Him as He gives Himself to us.  (Of course, God does not need in any way our affirmation, but He loves us so much that we will be able to love {participate with} Him in the same way that He loves {participates with} us. This “affirming” God will be an expansion {beyond anything we can imagine} of what we do on earth when in prayer we praise Him for His goodness, for His power, etc.) 

In this mutual act of participation, we will experience transcendence, self-determination, and integration to the point that we will become completely who we are meant to be: images of God.  In fact, we can never reach this goal (of becoming perfectly who we are as images of God) until we reach heaven because only in heaven will we be able to love perfectly through transcendence, self-determination, and integration. In other words, we will act perfectly as human persons. Our acts and the elements of our acts will have reached a perfection beyond anything we are capable of in this world. 

Further, we will only reach this perfection in heaven because only in heaven will we be completely united with Him in whose image we are all created.  In this union, there is a mutual exchange—each person receives the gift of the other person and in a certain sense “possesses” the other person.  (This possession is by way of receiving the gift of the other, not by way of ownership.)  The “possession” of God means that we will  not just be images of God, but actually “have” God Himself as perfectly as it is possible for human beings to “possess” God.  All this occurs through the gift of the love of God, but without either God (what is in any case  impossible) or us (theoretically possible) losing ourselves. God does not absorb us. Rather, He donates Himself to us and makes it possible for us to donate ourselves to Him. Neither God nor human persons “lose” their identity or cease to exist, but each comes to “possess” the other through love, the love realized through transcendence, self-determination, and integration. 

Acting perfectly as human beings, giving ourselves in love to God (through the gift of God’s grace) and receiving God Himself in return, means a perfect participation with the One to Whom we are all drawn because He created us.  Only in God can we be satisfied because only in Him, with Him, and through Him do we “live and move and have our being.”[21]  Only by receiving His gift of Himself in love perfectly can our dignity and value as images of God be finally and sufficiently affirmed.  Perfected in giving and in receiving, heaven will certainly be “what eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart.”[22]

While everyone in heaven will be individually linked in a communion of persons with God Himself in His Triune mystery, through God there will be a link to everyone else in heaven.  “We must think of the reality of the ‘other world’ in the categories of the rediscovery of a new, perfect subjectivity of everyone and at the same time of the rediscovery of a new, perfect intersubjectivity of all.”[23]  Each of us will be totally concentrated on God, but through God, everyone will be linked to everyone else because in love, He will “possess” all of us and in “possessing” Him through love, we, in turn, will be united with all others in heaven. Thus, in God, we will be united especially with those we knew on earth. Of course, this is only one of the reasons why we should pray fervently for the salvation of those we love and care for—so that we will know them in heaven through God. In the last three addresses of this cycle, nos. 70-72, Pope John Paul turns to an analysis of Paul’s words regarding the resurrection of the body. John Paul notes that Paul’s perspective is different from Christ’s.  When Christ answered the question posed to Him by the Sadducees, He did not use His own resurrection as an argument for the resurrection of the body. Since that event had not happened, He could not refer to it.  But Paul, having seen the risen Christ on the way to Damascus, some years after Christ’s Resurrection, certainly could and did to refer to Christ’s rising from the dead. Saint Paul writes: “It  [the human body] is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.”[24]  Clearly, Saint Paul contrasts the way the human person body-soul unity is now on earth (“historical man”) with the way it will be in heaven at the resurrection of the body.  Paul emphasizes the spritualization of the body when he writes that “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.” This spiritualized body will be powerful and glorious. All this, of course, confirms the previous analysis from Christ’s answer to the Sadducees. 

The Pope is at some pains to show that in Paul’s view the resurrected human body will not just be “restored” to the state of original innocence, i.e., to the state before sin, but rather will have a “new fullness.”[25]  It cannot be simply a return to the state of Adam and Eve before sin because that would mean that the human race would have no hope of the vision of God. Without the perspective of heaven, of the spiritualization of the body in a new fullness—different from the state of Adam and Eve before sin--the whole logic of Creation, not to mention the Redemption, would fall.  After all, God made Adam and Eve to share heaven with Him.  At some point they were to experience the joys of heaven.  They looked forward to seeing God “face to face.” Certainly, Christ’s mission could not simply mean that we were to return to that previous state without any hope of seeing God “face to face.” 

With the remarks on Paul’s view of the resurrection of the body, the Pope concludes this third cycle of his Theology of the Body series.  He also concludes the study of the “words” of Christ on marriage and the body-soul relationship of the human person.  The next three cycles of theTheology of the Body series apply the analysis already undertaken to the areas of celibacy and virginity (4th cycle), to marriage (5th cycle), and to the teaching of the Church on the connection between the marital act and procreation (6th cycle).  Since celibacy and virginity have always been understood by the Church as a sign of the future perfection of humanity in the kingdom of God after the resurrection of the body, Pope John Paul’s analysis of Christ and Paul’s words on the resurrection of the body are fundamental to his examination of celibacy and virginity undertaken in the next (4th cycle).  The next chapter, then, following John Paul’s order, will apply the analysis of  this chapter on the resurrection of the body to the question of virginity and celibacy in the lives of ‘historical’ men and women.

[1] See no. 64, Theology of the Body, November 11, 1981: "Marriage and Celibacy in the Light of the Resurrection of the Body," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 46. 

[2] See Matthew 19:3-19. See also above, Chapter 2: "The Nuptial Meaning of the Body." 

[3] See Matthew 5:27-28. See also above, Chapter 3: "Sin and Shame."

[4] See Genesis 38:8.

[5] See Matthew 22:23-32. See also Mark 12:18-27 and Luke 20:27-38. 

[6]See Matthew 22:29-30. 

[7] See no. 66, Theology of the Body, December 2, 1981: "The Resurrection and Theological Anthropology," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 49. 

[8] See Luke 20:36. 

[9] See no. 66, Theology of the Body, December 2, 1981: "The Resurrection and Theological Anthropology," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 49. In this quotation, Pope John Paul II is using an older translation. The NAB translates Psalm 8:5-6 as: "What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them little less than a god, crowned them with glory and honor." The NAB uses "little less than a god" instead of "little less than the angels" of the papal text. 

[10] See no. 66, Theology of the Body, December 2, 1981: "The Resurrection and Theological Anthropology," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 49. 

[11] See no. 67, Theology of the Body, December 9, 1981: "The Resurrection Perfects the Person," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 50. 

[12] See no. 67, Theology of the Body, December 9, 1981: "The Resurrection Perfects the Person," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 50. 

[13] See no. 67, Theology of the Body, December 9, 1981: "The Resurrection Perfects the Person," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 50. 

[14] See no. 67, Theology of the Body, December 9, 1981: "The Resurrection Perfects the Person," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 14, no. 50. 

[15] See no. 68, Theology of the Body, December 16, 1981: "Christ’s Words on the Resurrection Complete the Revelation of the Body," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 1. 

[16] See Luke 20:35. 

[17] See no. 69, Theology of the Body, January 13, 1982: "New Threshold of Complete Truth About Man," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 3. 

[18] See no. 68, Theology of the Body, December 16, 1981: "Christ’s Words on the Resurrection Complete the Revelation of the Body," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 1. 

[19]See no. 68, Theology of the Body, December 16, 1981: "Christ’s Words on the Resurrection Complete the Revelation of the Body," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 1.

[20] See Rocco Buttligione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II," translated from the original Italian by Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy, (William B. Eerdmann: Grand Rapids, MI: 1997, p. 169. 

[21] See Acts 17:28. [22]See 1 Cor. 2:9. 

[23] See no. 68, Theology of the Body, December 16, 1981: "Christ’s Words on the Resurrection Complete the Revelation of the Body," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 1. 

[24] See Paul, 1 Cor. 15:42-44 

[25] See no. 72, Theology of the Body, February 10, 1982: "Body’s Spiritualization Will Be Source of Its Power and Incorruptibility," L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), vol. 15, no. 7. 

March 31, 2004 ---- Fr. Richard Hogan