 | Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com. |
***image1:left***QUESTION: What body and mind will one have in eternity… the one he or she had at death or the one he or she had when both were the best they ever were?
ANSWER: It is evident that at death the soul or spirit of the individual person is separated from the body. What you call "the mind" I understand to be: the principle of life and intelligence or understanding, (i.e. the soul or spirit.) By faith we know that the soul or spirit lives on: that there is life after death. Reason helps faith to understand that at death the souls of good and just persons enter into a state of perfect happiness, whereas the souls of selfish and evil persons enter into eternal punishment. It is evident that the remains of the human body quickly corrupt and disintegrate into dust.
Faith also convinces us that, at the end of time, there will be resurrection from the dead before the general judgment of all mankind. This resurrection involves the restoration of each person's soul and body in the unity of each individual person. The soul of the just person will be restored to its body for complete happiness in heaven. The soul of the damned person will also be reunited to its body for complete frustration in hell.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that at the resurrection: each person will rise and their soul be reunited to it's body in the state of perfect manhood or womanhood. Thus children and even aborted infants will rise as full adults; whereas persons, who lived until old age before dying, will rise with their bodies restored to young adulthood. This applies even to persons, whose bodies were atomized, as happened to those killed in the catastrophe of September 11, and those whose bodies were eaten by cannibals, who in turn were eaten by other cannibals. God, the Creator, can do all things. Therefore He is able to make it easy for the various parts of our body to be reintegrated into the complete person.
Just how or when this resurrection will happen only God knows! So far only Jesus and His holy mother Mary have experienced the resurrection. Their human bodies are completely united with their human souls in heaven. The other saints await, as we do, the final resurrection. As regards the individual parts of our body, remember that in each human body the process of nourishment and regeneration continues through life on earth: so that the individual parts of our body are completely replaced atom-by-atom every seven years. Nevertheless we recognize our present body as having the same identity with us as it did seven years ago or in childhood. Our aged parents have no problem recognizing us adults as the same identical person, whom they brought forth as an infant many years ago. Really, this process is a miracle accomplished by the God of nature. So it is not a problem for God to restore the individual parts of our body to our soul or spirit or mind.