Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 4/9/23 The Body

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

Homily from The Resurrection of the Lord I believe in the resurrection of the flesh. Just as Jesus Christ conquered death by dying and gave us life by rising from the dead, every person will get their body back. Those who are lost will have the bodies in Hell, and those who are saved will have their glorified bodies in Heaven. What will those bodies be like?Mass Readings from April 9, 2023:Acts 10:34a, 37-43Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8 John 20:1-9

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777.7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless.

The Lord be with you. He reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Lallory to you, O'Hod. Chapter 20, verses 1 through 9. On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdalah came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved and told them, they have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him.

So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first. He bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloth there and the cloth that had covered his head, not with a burial cloth, but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

I should have a seat. So on this Easter Sunday, I am reminded of this one time. So I was in seminary at one point, and I went home for a long weekend. I might even have been for like Easter weekend, and I'm not sure. And I went up to my bedroom in my parents' house. And on my bed, there was this children's book. And it was called The Next Place. What had happened was my mom had gone to a funeral.

And at this funeral, they had read this book. And so I opened it up. So she thought, you know, you're going to do a lot of funerals one day, you know, maybe if you get ordained, here's a book. Maybe it'd be helpful for you to that, do that. And so, I picked it up to start flipping through it. And it was, okay, it's called the next place. And it was like, okay, in the next place, right, in the afterlife, when I die, I'll go to the next place. And in the next place, it goes on to say, he says, in the next place, you'll be peaceful, I'll be happy, that kind of a thing. And that's great. But then it goes on to say, it says, in the next place, I will no longer be

tall or short. I'll no longer be fat or thin. I'll no longer be a boy or a girl. In fact, I won't have a body at all and I'll finally be free to just be me. So I remember walking downstairs and I was like, mom, I got the book and she's like, oh, do you like it? I'm like, well, it's heresy. And she's like, oh, but I like that book. I'm like, well, you're a heretic, mom. That's it. I mean, the reality, of course, is my mom's not a heretic culture is. A modern-day culture is. A modern-day culture lives in this place where we call ourselves Christian, but we're actually this, here's the fancy term. There's one fancy term I'll use today. Actually, use a bunch of fancy terms. One of the first fancy terms is called Gnostic, which basically means this idea that our true self is our soul and our

body's just a shell, that the real me, like it said in the book, the real me is my soul. But the body is just the thing kind of captures real me. It's the thing that it's the cage. I have to carry this thing through life, but finally when I die, and sometimes Christians think this way, finally when I die, I'll be free. I'll be free of this cage, be free of this flesh, free of this body. And yet, what do we know? We know that you are your body. What a human being is is a body and soul together. That's what a human being is. That's why death is so horrible. It was what's death? Death is the separation of body and soul. That's why death is, I love Dr. Peter Crave says death is an obscenity. Why? Because what a human person is is body and soul together. You are your

body. Jesus Christ has revealed this so fully to us. I mean, think about this. How does Jesus save us? He doesn't save us by simply declaring us saved. Doesn't save us by simply stating, that's what we created us. I mean, that's what we created the whole world. God said, let there be light, boom, there's light. So God could have just saved us by saying, I call you saved.

How did he save us? He saved us through this thing called the incarnation, right? The infleshment of God, that God took on flesh, God took on a body. And, I mean, this is not small. This is actually the second most central doctrine that we believe in. The first more central is the very identity of God,

the Trinity. but the second most central most incredible mystery is that at one point in time, the immaterial, immortal, eternal God entered into this time. And he entered and he joined his divinity to our humanity and not just like to a human soul. He joined his divinity to a human body as well.

And what did he do? How did he do? How did he save us? He saved us by living in that body, by teaching the body, sleeping, breathing, eating. He saved us by suffering in that body, dying in that body, and rising in that body. That's what saves us. The body saves us. In fact, there's a guy named Tertullian from the early part of the church, and he said,

the flesh is the hinge of salvation. Without the flesh, none of us are saved. And now without the resurrection of the body, none of us are saved. In fact, today we get to celebrate this fact that not only has Christ conquered death by his death, he has brought us new life by his resurrection. This is so important for us to understand. He has conquered death by his death in the body, and he's brought us to new life by his resurrection in the body. That's why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical fact.

It's one of those things that it's disputed, of course, because there's always someone who's not going to believe this, but it's an historical reality. In fact, Peter talks about this so many times. Peter, Peter goes back, think about the very first sermon on Pentecost, Peter says, yeah, he died for us, and then he spent the rest of the sermon. It's like three quarters of the sermon, I think it is, talking about, and then he rose from the dead. And we actually saw him. like literally just saw him. We lived with him for 40 days after he rose from the dead. He had a body that was real.

He had a body that we could see. He had a body that we could touch. He had a body. This is very important. Peter was saying, not only, this is not a myth. In fact, First Peter says that. He says, we didn't devise cleverly concocted myths about the resurrection of the body. We saw him with our own eyes.

We saw him dead, and we saw him alive. We felt his dead body. Then we actually came into contact with his. risen body, that this isn't just a myth. In fact, St. Paul goes on to say how important this is. He says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, then your faith is useless. You're still dead in your sins. There are some modern Christians who will say things like, well, you know, he didn't really have to physically rise. Jesus didn't need to physically rise from the dead. He just rose in the hearts of the apostles. He rose in the hearts of the disciples. That is completely false.

That's also heresies. So two heresies in one mass. We have this recognition that Jesus Christ truly has conquered death in his body. He's truly been raised in his body. He ascended into heaven in his body. And the body is so absolutely important. Why? Because Jesus Christ has come to not just save your soul. He came to save you. This is the heart of Christianity. Jesus did not simply come to save your soul. He came to save you. And what are you? You are a body and soul together. That's what a human being is. So, yes, Christ saves our souls. Of course, he saves us from sin.

But he actually, his intention is to save you entirely, which means that we believe in the resurrection of the body. In fact, the Apostles' Creed states this so clearly. The foundational and fundamental belief of early Christians was we believe in the resurrection of the body, not just like kind of the body-ish. That word that they used was the word sarks, which means we believe in the resurrection of the flesh,

which means you get your body back. In fact, here's this core belief of Christianity that so often we neglect or forget. Maybe we've never been taught. Maybe we've never actually reflected on this. But the resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of the resurrection that God wants for all of us.

So we're going to celebrate, of course, the whole point of this is Jesus. The whole point of this is Jesus' resurrection. But I think it's important for us to also recognize that the resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste, is a foreshadowing of what God has in store for you. In fact, Jesus says in John chapter 5,

He says, at the end of time, right? So here's let's back up. When you die, when we die, we will face immediate judgment, right? We get what we've chosen. Either we've chosen not God, which means we get not God, hell, or we've chosen God and we get God, whether that's through purgatory and purification of our hearts and getting ready to see him face to face, or immediately we see him face to face. We either get what we've chosen, either damnation or salvation. That's, those are the two options. There's no others. Either heaven or hell. At the end of time, though, Jesus promises, and this is John 5, at the end of time, what happens, is you're not just there with a soul, you get your body back.

At the end of time, Jesus even says in John 5, he says, even those who are damned, right? Even those who are lost, they get their body back. And it's a resurrection to shame. And all they're deemed to get their body back. And it's resurrection to glory. So at the end of time, for all eternity, whether you and I are saved or whether you and I are lost,

every one of us will have our body back. But the resurrection of the body for those who rise in glory, has some really unique and really incredible qualities to it. Why am I bringing all this up? Well, because we did this whole series throughout Lent called Prototype, right? The whole series throughout Lent is called The Imitation of Christ. And it's all about how we can follow our rabbi and become more and more like him, right? The whole point of the Christian life, the whole point of Lent is not just to become slightly better.

It's not just to get rid of bad habits. The whole point of Lent is to become like Jesus because the whole point of Christian life is to become like Jesus, not just in his behavior, but actually in our bodies. what will those bodies look like? Well, we base this off of what Jesus' resurrected body was like. And so there's kind of three things and then four things. So the total of seven things, we'll go through them relatively quickly. But it's really important for us to understand that this is what you and I can look forward

to because this is what Jesus has done. He's our rabbi, he's our prototype. An imitation of him, by his grace, this is what happens. So number one is one is one of the qualities of the bodily resurrection is identity, which means that you get your body back. You get your body back. You're the same person. It's the same body.

Now I realize that sometimes people are like, wait a second, What if someone's been cremated? What if someone's been dead so long, their body's decomposed? Okay, the God who created everything out of nothing, he can give you your body back. Just trust me on this one. Because it's going to be your body. Meaning, if you are a man on this earth in this life, you're a man forever.

You have a male body, you will have a male body forever. If you have a female body, you will have a female body forever. Because this is your body. It's your identity. That's why they're able to actually, people are able to recognize Jesus. When it appears, they recognize your Jesus. At the same time, there's integrity. That's the second quality.

Equality of integrity, which means that, yes, if there was a wound, if there was some kind of defect, right, if I lost an arm, lost an eye, lost a leg, or maybe if I didn't have good eyesight or good hearing, if at some point my body fell apart, you get full bodily integrity. Like everything is restored, not just as good as it was, but vastly better than it was. And that's the third quality, which is called quality. So you have identity, it's you, you have integrity, it's your whole, and you have quality. And the quality is that sense your body's fully restored. Your body is fully restored and not just restored to your ideal.

You know, Thomas Quina said positive this and is like, what age are we? You know, if someone dies as a baby, are they a baby forever in heaven? If someone dies at 99 years old, are they 99 forever in heaven? Some people have just, they've posited that since Jesus died at 33, that we'd all have kind of 33-year-old bodies. The idea behind this is not that you're going to be 33. Because like, that was a bad year for me. That's not it.

The idea is that until we're mature, we're not fully ourselves, right? So we need to be fully mature, but also not so mature that we start declining. So all of us are somewhere on that spectrum of like, I'm on my way to be fully mature, and then now I'm declining a little bit. Quality means, in so many ways, your body at its peak. And not just your body at its peak, but your resurrected body is this peak, which means you have four other gifts, essentially. This is the quality of Jesus' resurrected body, and the first one is impassibility.

So it's not just that, okay, my body back, great, with all my flaws. No, impassibility means that you can't get sick, you can't get hurt, you can't get tired, you can't grow old, you cannot die, that your body has a new strength to it, a new power to it, that is essentially you're invulnerable. But not just invulnerable bodily, also invulnerable in their spirit. Like you can't sin. And that's not a limitation on your freedom. It's actually a perfection of your freedom.

That impassibility is the absolute freedom. And speaking of freedom, the second quality of this last. last four. The second quality is you have what's called subtlety. And subtlety is like, where do we get this from? We get this from Jesus. Here's the apostles in the locked room. And Jesus passes through walls. So this ability to be subtle doesn't mean like you're understated and whatnot. To be subtlety means you can pass through walls. Essentially, you're in full control of your body with the ability to not only like pass through objects, but you can will your body completely. Right now, I can say, well, I'm going to tell my body what

to do. And sometimes again, I'm going to raise my right arm. Boom. there I am. But other times I say, you know, I want to get up at five and I do not do it. Or I want to be able to continue working. I want to be able to continue spending time with this person. I want to be able to continue focusing on whatever the task is at hand and I can't do it. Subtility means your absolute control over your body, the soul is now and control the body fully. There's the third quality, which is agility. And agility is what it sounds like and more. So not only would you, you know, be able to dunk someday, that kind of idea, but even better than that. How is Jesus? He's on the road to Emmaus. He's talking with the two disciples in the road to a mass.

He has dinner with them. He reveals to himself to them in the breaking of the bread. And instantly, he disappears and appears in Jerusalem. That's the same kind of thing, quality your body will have, this agility to be able to say, I would like to be in Vienna right now, drink, sipping some Viennese coffee. Like, boom, there you are. I would like to be with my family in this moment. Like, boom, there you are. because this agility is the character, the quality of the resurrected body that Jesus wants for you. Same. Again, let's go back to this. So often, we're like, I don't know if I really want my body. Yes, you do. Why? Because God's promises for us are not less than. There are more than anyone can ever hope for, dream, or imagine. This is the truth because we recognize what does first John say. Bluven, he says, Bluven, we are, you are God's children now. We are God's children now.

What we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed, we should. shall be like him. Why? Because he's our prototype. So there's all these, these aspects, right? We have identity. It's your body. Integrity. Your whole again. You have quality. That there's this uniqueness, this fullness. It's impassibility. Can't get sick. Can't die. Can't suffer. You have subtlety. This quickness of thought. You're able to control your body fully. Agility. And the last one is called clarity. What does that mean? Well, glory. is what it means, that your body for eternity will radiate the glory of God. Your body for all eternity will have some capacity to just by looking at a person.

You can communicate not only your very identity, not only very self, but your entire story, the entire ways in which God has met us in our weakness, in our wounds, and given us his grace and his strength. That for all eternity, you're existing, will radiate God's glory. for eternity to meet another person is to encounter God's glory. And that's the thing, is that heaven is not just one person walking around or one person looking at God and he's staring us back. Dr. Scott Hahn says, you know, eternity is not going to be some divine staring contest. We look at God and he looks at us and like, okay,

because even that in many ways, maybe you could say, could be boring after a billion trillion years. But without end, this clarity, this glory shining, that everyone's story is no. that everyone is known, that you are known. And in that being known, everyone being fully loved. And that story is revealed and is radiated and is communicated in and through the body. So these are these qualities.

Identity, integrity, quality, impassability, subtlety, agility, and clarity, that glory. I think what we need to do on this day where we praise God for Him, him raising Jesus from the dead and conquering death and giving us new life is not only to praise God and say, oh my gosh, Lord, thank you Jesus Christ for rising from the dead. Thank you so much for conquering death and conquering the grave and conquering what conquers me. But to also look forward in anticipation of, okay, this life is good and this life is a blessing and this life is where I'm going to try to become like my prototype, where I'm going to try to become like my rabbi, where we're pursuing the imitation of Christ, but also to know that in eternity,

and for eternity. All those who have said yes to Jesus, by his grace, will participate in his resurrection, that you will have a glorified and resurrected body. And again, like St. John says, right now we're God's children. We don't have any idea what we shall be, but we do know that we shall be like him.

So for the rest of this mass, to be able to just recognize, as often as you sit, stand, kneel, as often as you say with your voice, say with your body, the prayers. No, this is the same body. this is the same voice, this is the same you that will be in relationship with God forever.

In your body, but in a completely redeemed and completely resurrected body for all eternity. This is the heart of Christianity. We've been saved in and through our bodies. We've been saved in and through Christ's body. And he in turn has redeemed and saved and will resurrect your body and mine for all eternity. Thank you.