Resurrection explained
Let John Paul II (1920-2005) clarify for us,
The words Christ spoke about the resurrection enable us to deduce that the dimension of masculinity and femininity, that is, being male and female in the body-will again be constituted together with the resurrection of the body... a spiritualization of man according to a different dimension from that of earthly life (and even different from that of the beginning itself)... man will keep his own human psychosomatic nature... The resurrection means the restoring to the real life of human corporeity, which was subjected to death in its temporal phase... The resurrection means a new submission of the body to the spirit... the state of man definitively and perfectly "integrated" through such a union of the soul and the body... the spiritualization of man, different from that of earthly life.
As a result of original sin, historical man 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).In the resurrection the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit. Man will no longer experience the opposition between what is spiritual and what is physical in him.It is therefore a perfect spiritualization, in which the possibility that "another law is at war with the law of...the mind" (cf. Rom 7:23) is completely eliminated.The resurrection will consist in the perfect participation of all that is physical in man in what is spiritual in him. At the same time it will consist in the perfect realization of what is personal in man.
The "sons of the resurrection"-as we read in Luke 20:36-are not only equal to angels, but are also sons of God. The conclusion can be drawn that the degree of spiritualization characteristic of eschatological man will have its source in the degree of his divinization, incomparably superior to the one that can be attained in earthly life.Participation in divine nature, participation in the interior life of God himself, penetration and 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. This new spiritualization will therefore be the fruit of grace, that is, of the communication of God in his very divinity, not only to man's soul, but to his whole psychosomatic subjectivity.that divinization is to be understood not only as an interior state of man (that is, of the subject) capable of seeing God face to face, but also as a new formation of the whole personal subjectivity of man in accordance with union with God in his Trinitarian mystery and of intimacy with him in the perfect communion of persons. This intimacy-with all its subjective intensity-will not absorb man's personal subjectivity, but rather will make it stand out to an incomparably greater and fuller extent.Divinization in the other world, as indicated by Christ's words, 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.
It is also necessary to let oneself be guided by that range of experience of truth and love which goes beyond the limits of the cognitive and spiritual possibilities of man in temporality, and in which he will become a participant in the other world.This eschatological experience of the living God will not only concentrate in itself all man's spiritual energies, but, at the same time, it will reveal to him, in a deep and experiential way, the self-communication of God to the whole of creation and, in particular, to man. This is the most personal self-giving by God, in his very divinity, to man: to that being who, from the beginning, bears within himself the image and likeness of God... Eternal life must be understood in the eschatological sense, that is, as the full and perfect experience of that grace (charis) of God, in which man becomes a participant through faith during earthly life, and which, on the contrary, will not only have to reveal itself in all its penetrating depth to those who take part in the other world, but also will have to be experienced in its beatifying reality.
Those who participate in the future world, that is, in perfect communion with the living God, will enjoy a perfectly mature subjectivity. This will constitute the beatifying experience of the gift of himself on God's part, which is absolutely superior to any experience proper to earthly life.
This concentration of knowledge (vision) and love on God himself-a concentration that cannot be other than full participation in the interior life of God, that is, in the very trinitarian reality-will be at the same time the discovery, in God, of the whole "world" of relations, constitutive of his perennial order (cosmos). This concentration will be above all man's rediscovery of himself, not only in the depth of his own person, but also in that union which is proper to the world of persons in their psychosomatic constitution. This is certainly a union of communion. The concentration of knowledge and love on God himself in the trinitarian communion of Persons can find a beatifying response in those who become participants in the other world, only through realizing mutual communion adapted to created persons.
Book: Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan by John Paul II
When I spot the "Mystical City of God" books on a shelf in a video, it gives me joy, as Mary is with that person. Let a death experience enlighten us about the afterlife,