Many religions teach that the soul is immortal, but the Catholic Church also teaches the resurrection of the body as an article of faith. This is a source of hope for all Christians.
Easter commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the first fruit or prototype that makes it possible for the bodies of all mankind to be resurrected.
Humans are creatures composed of both body and soul, united during life but separated at death when the soul immediately goes to either Heaven, Hell or Purgatory while the body remains on Earth.
When Jesus comes again at the end of time, the flesh and bones of the dead will be resurrected and the just will be reunited with their soul in Heaven to live in the presence of God for eternity, as He intended.
Although made of the same flesh and bones, resurrected bodies in Heaven will be glorified, having the same characteristics of Jesus’ resurrected body and perfectly in tune with their soul.
The bodies of those who chose to turn away from God and rejected his mercy while they were living will also be resurrected, but they will join their soul in Hell, damned to suffer physical and spiritual torment, apart from God and alone forever.
Returning to perfect unity and harmony:
Why Catholics have hope in seeing one another again:
But someone may say, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come back?” You fool! What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; but God gives it a body as He chooses, and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for human beings, another kind of flesh for animals, another kind of flesh for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the brightness of the heavenly is one kind and that of the earthly another. The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It 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.
1 Corinthians 15: 35-44
A body not just revived but glorified:
Your body is not going away:
Resurrected like Jesus:
What is “rising”? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 997
Resurrected bodies that reflect how life was lived:
All humans will be resurrected:
The “historical” man, as a consequence of original sin, experiences a multiple imperfection of this system of forces, which manifests itself in the well-known words of Saint Paul: “I feel another law in my members that is repugnant to the law of my mind.” The “eschatological” man will be free of this “opposition”. 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 in him and what is corporeal. “Spiritualization” means not only that the spirit will dominate the body, 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.
Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 9 December 1981
Destroying death by reuniting body and soul:
A glorified body that will never die:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
God is the first artist:
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