STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 25 April 1912, Page 3

STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the N.Z, Tablet by 'Ghimel.')

1. THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

•■ -' Christ is risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep: for by a man came death, and by a Man the resurrection of the dead ' (I. Cor. xv., 20-21).; . If Christ is risen again in a human body, it is possible for a human body to rise again. So argues St. Paul against the Greeks of his day, who thought the idea of resurrection evidently impossible. . If the risen Christ is the Head of the Church, His Mystical Body then the members of that Body must rise with. Him, its Head. So runs the argument for the actuality of our resurrection, when the present teaching is connected with the doctrine about Christ's-Headship laid down in chaps, vi., 15 and ' xii., 27. This message of hope for our future marks off Christianity %: from Paganism, ancient and modern. . : •' . The greatest geniuses among the Pagans of. olden time, with perhaps one exception, had no certainty in the matter of a future life: when they did not openly deny it and reject it as a fable, they thought it only a beautiful dream. Our latter-day Pagansand their name is legionlook upon life as a riddle, and sadly conclude that there is nothing after death, and that death itself is a mighty illusion. Dr. Barry, in his brilliant book, Heralds of Revolt (p. 233), thus sums up this pessimistic creed : A little moment of promise and passion, great fears, irremediable losses and then, the sea swallows _ down what the earth : has brought forth. Seed-time and harvest return, return for ever; but there is no garner of life. Endless generations, no immortality. The spiritual creed, relying on which men have dared and done noble things for thousands of years, has at length, these writers tell us, been shattered, dissolved, explained away, by science running out into nescience, like a stream losing itself in mid Atlantic. . . . . All alike is illusion, death as well as life, good and evil, pleasure and pain, love, righteousness, remorse, penitence, and beyond all other things, hope.' Therefore, llesigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute (Be content, sad heart sleep the sleep of the brute). We may set over against this sad and hopeless outlook on a blank future, the simple and yet sublime teachings of Catholic philosophy and theology about the destiny of soul and of body: (a) Reason teaches us that the soul of man is by nature imperishable or immortal. God, of course, could take away its existence, but apart from such a positive act, one of the properties incident to its nature as. such is immortality: it was made by its Creator in such a way as to survive the dissolution that takes place at death,' to exist always. ~ (b) Reason and faith combine to teach that as a matter of fact the soul will. survive the body, and, what is more, that this life of the soul after, what we call death will never end, J the human soul is immortal." (c) Faith bids us believe that at the Last Day the bodies of men, good and bad, will be raised up from the dead, and re-united to their souls. The ultimate ground for such a belief is to be found in the fact that God in the beginning, placed man in a supernatural stated and after man had. lost the privileges of this state by his sin, renewed them in Christ, Who came ' to restore all things'; one of these privileges is the final deliverance of the body from the power of death. Faith teaches us so much: does reason throw no light on the future of our bodies; as it does on that of our souls? What we know even by light of reason of the nature of the soul on the one hand, and of God's wisdom, justice, holiness, and goodness*on the other, assures us that the soul will live on;, is it also reasonable to think that the separation of soul and body at death will not be endless, that there will be a reunion, and that consequently the body will be raised up again Some philosophers--answer *linj the negative: St. Thomas _ answers in the affirmative, and : gives these convincing reasons : (1) The souls, of men are immortal. But the soul is naturally united with the body, being essentially the form [that is, the animating principle] of the body. Therefore it is against the nature of the soul to be without the body. But nothing that is against nature

can be lasting. Therefore the soul will not be for ever without; the 5 body. Thus the immortality of -the soul seems to require the resurrection of the body. (2) The natural desire of man tends to happiness, or final perfection. Whoever is wanting in any point proper to his perfect well-being has not yet attained to perfect happiness; his desire is not yet perfectly laid to rest. Now the soul separate from the body is in a sense imperfect, as- is every part away from its whole, for the soul is part of human nature. Man, therefore, cannot attain to his final happiness, unless the soul is again united to the body. (3) Reward and punishment are due to men both in soul and in body. But in this life they cannot attain to the reward of final happiness; and sins often go unpunished in this life; nay, here the wicked live, and are comforted and set up with riches' (Job xxi, 7). There must then be a second union of soul and body, that man may be rewarded and punished in body and in soul. . (Summa contra Gentiles, iv, 59; Rickaby's translation).