Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time—Romans 8:13-23

I believe in the resurrection of the body. We say it every Sunday in the Creed. Have you ever stopped to consider the jarring meaning of this creedal statement? In this week’s second reading from Romans, the Holy Spirit invites us to ponder this great mystery and source of hope.

The Spirit tells us that all of creation is awaiting redemption. It groans in anticipation of a new heavens and anew earth (see Isaiah 65:17-25, 2 Peter 3:13, and Revelation 21:1). At the “end of the world,” the world doesn’t end. The physical world will be recreated. And that includes our bodies.

A popular modern fallacy, which is actually a very old heresy, tries to convince us that the body is bad and the spirit is good. Our bodily actions, so says this fallacy, aren’t as important as our spiritual intentions; as long as I have a fundamental option for good, I can excuse away any bad thing I may have done with my body, whether it’s fornication and murder or a lustful look or a sarcastic glare. The problem here is that we are body-soul composites. A body without an immortal soul is called an animal. A soul without a body is called an angel. We are neither. We are human beings, and a human being without a body—a ghost—is not fully human because it’s not embodied.

When the Lord tells us that he intends to give new life to our mortal bodies, he is revealing something critically important about us. You are your body, and your body is you. And that is God’s intention for us. We live in a fallen world, and so our bodies become ill and frail. We experience disordered bodily desires. And someday, our spirit will leave our bodies in the sleep of death. But we follow the God who raises the dead! He doesn’t resuscitate the dead. He raises the dead to new life. The Lord intends for us to live forever as embodied beings, not with fallen and frail bodies but with risen and glorified bodies, like Jesus (see Philippians 3:21).

Last week, we heard Saint Paul remind that Romans, “If the Spirit of the one who rose Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). That is what he means in this week’s reading when he says we have “the first fruits of the Spirit.” This week, the Holy Spirit is challenging each one of us to let him dwell in us, to live through us, to bring supernatural life to our natural bodies. Come, Holy Spirit.