Your Body: Forever NOT Broken

What if your suffering… wasn’t the end of the story?

In this episode, we explore the Catholic teaching on the glorified body—a promise of total healing, perfect freedom, and a body made new in Christ.

Drawing from the wisdom of St. Anselm of Canterbury, we reveal what the Church teaches about our future in Heaven: no more pain, no more weakness—just glory.

💡 “He will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.” (Philippians 3:21)

Transcript

What if your body could never be trapped never feel pain never break down what if you could pass through walls soar across the stars and never grow tired st Anselm doctor of the church spoke of a body just like this not fantasy but your future in Christ total freedom perfect health a body remade by God himself this is the glorified body welcome back today is Tuesday of Holy Week and I know here in our dascese is the crism mass this evening oh okay so we continue on with our medit meditations on heaven going through this last week here so yesterday we spoke of St Anselm's uh recollections on the qualities of the resurrected body or the glorified body and he spoke about three attributes we we talked on beauty velocity and strength and today we're we're going to talk about two more but to refer back to St Anselm one clarification he said that our bodies will be like angels but key here they are not angels so let's not make a mistake to think that our glorified body is going to be exactly like an angel or that we get turned into an angel that's not true or that we earn our wings you often hear people say that right that's right his his point is just simply that we will share some attributes some characteristics that the angels have St Anselm's next attribute of the glorified body unpaired freedom now what is freedom i think sometimes our kids would like to be more free and when they understand freedom they're thinking we don't necessarily always have to listen to mom and dad and we get to do what we want i think we take that infile understanding of freedom sometimes right into the adult life that freedom is the ability to do whatever we want that we're not constrained by any authority that's over us and that's a secular understanding of freedom for some but true godly freedom is this it's not the ability to do whatever you want freedom is the ability to do what you ought so with this in mind let's listen to what St ans psalm says about unpaired freedom of the glorified body there shall be no enclosure which is able to detain us nor any restraint which is able to obstruct us in a similar way the body of the Lord after his resurrection could not be held by the tomb after his rising from the dead he was able to pass through walls and close doors with perfect freedom and as St paul testifies "Our own bodies shall be conformed to his." How great and utterly unfettered then shall be the liberty and freedom in which we shall rejoice within the celestial paradise your thoughts on that uh you know what i think I like I know you've always talked about like how excited you are about like being able to move freely and through walls and stuff that's never been like you know super attractive to me like not like something that I wanted i'm just excited that it will be in heaven okay you know and whatever it is will be and I'm just happy with it right right so I I like to think about this so we touched a little bit on this yesterday we talked about the velocity of the body how quickly the body could travel but now St an's psalm says now the body not only will be able to travel quickly but freely there'll be no constraint and this then really touches on something that I think a lot about at the end of time when the universe is renewed there's a new heaven and a new earth everything comes into perfect order with God that means the entire universe will be renewed and restored into what God initially willed it to be i think we'll be able to travel that and see it now some might are a little maybe a little bit confused by this what do you mean the the world and this universe will be transformed well this is what the catechism says paragraph 10:42 the universe itself will be renewed at that time together with the human race the universe itself which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him will be perfectly reestablished in Christ so at the end of time when we receive the glorified body our body will need a space and the church's teaching teaches us that the this universe this physical universe will exist in some way now we don't know exactly what that's going to be like but I think it's worth thinking about what's the best our imagination can can do with what we got so this entire physical universe if we have a body that can move at will at the speed that's faster than light like an angel but we could just go anywhere in this world just by the thought to see its beauty isn't think about the travel uh industry and how much money people spend in travel and they want to see this and this and this and if you have a bucket list don't you put all those places that you want to see and honestly some of those things are just out of reach because it's not affordable but we want to see those places because it's beautiful and the beauty is a shadow of the creator because the creator doesn't make something that's more beautiful than him so when we look at the created universe and all that's beautiful we should know now that these are shadows of the beauty of God now in the universe like we can imagine plunging to the depths of the ocean and seeing the coral reefs or sailing to the top of Mount Everest if there is going to be a Mount Everest i I I think this will be I'm excited about it yeah I can tell mhm but then if you could forward this after a while after a while you've seen it all you've seen it all at least on this earth but what about the entire universe scientists estimate so many Earthlike planets out there do they have plants on them do they have trees do they have water i don't know but I just like to think that this physical universe could be explored simply by will simply by thinking to go to that place assuming that this is all in conformity with God okay and then I'm thinking wow if you can explore all of this and this is just a shadow of the beauty of God think about how quickly you could go somewhere you don't want to be for example on the top of Mount Everest trip and then fall down right that might hurt which leads to St Snselm's next quality of the glorified body St Anselm calls this the perfect well-being don't we all want to be healthy to be have a a well-being with our physical body wow it's not by accident god has created us with this desire for a reason now St Anselm talks about this regarding the glorified body what may be said which is better or more true than that which the psalmist declares that the well-being of the just comes from the Lord and to those to whom the Lord gives this gift of well-being what illness or infirmity could possibly prevail against them so thought on this one Michelle well it'll be so wonderful to just never be sick you know I've been sick here for like 5 days and I never get sick that's true so it's just you don't you almost have perfect well-being

you're sick it's a blessing i'm always grateful that I don't get sick because everyone around me usually gets sick and then I can take care of them but um I just have to hold grab on to this cross and just receive it with joy well thanks for doing the video today anyway perfect well-being St Anselm struggles with that a little bit because he says that simply being without pain or without sickness is only part of perfect well-being but it's not the complete picture for example uh we don't know sometimes we're sick unless our body is tested so then he's like well then that's not perfect well-being for example you don't know you have a toothache sometimes until you're true so in the moment you're not in pain but if your body then has a weakness that if you chew you would feel pain well then that's not perfect well-being so see he's like this is a difficult thing to test because we don't know if we're in perfect well-being just with our physical bodies and then you go on to the function of the body we may think that we are functioning really well but could it also be better now we have some human experiences that really highlight this point now Janelle something happened to you oh yes okay so um a number of years ago I got hearing aids and I remember the very first time Ken and I went for a walk we w went for a walk around this pond and I had them in my ears and I just could not believe all the different sounds I was hearing i was like "Do you hear that?" And I was like "What is that noise?" That's like "What is that noise what is that what is that?" like I couldn't even make out exactly where all these noises were coming from or what was making the noise and there there was all different kinds of birds and you know um just it was mostly the wildlife around us that was making the noise and I just could not believe the detail in the sound yeah so for us who have normal hearing uh walking around a marshy area in the evening you have a symphony of song birds to those who have a hearing have hearing loss they don't hear that but walking around without hearing aids you think you have perfect well-being until you get some sort of enhancement now think about that with all the senses think think about uh perfect vision really what is perfect vision is it really 2020 imagine seeing at 20 ft what most can't see beyond 8 in rare lab tests Dr dennis Levi discovered individuals with vision that sharp 28 vision and with 25 vision as a human limit it's a glimpse into just how extraordinary the body can be at its peak so what we're talking about is perfect well-being perfect well-being of this function of the eyes of the taste buds of the ears of the senses of sight of of and all of this being preserved from de being diminished for for example you get uh sand in your eyes and your eyes start to water well then that's not perfect well-being imagine having eyes that are never hurt by sand in them i mean we could go on and on in every aspect of life what does it mean to have perfect well-being of mind to be able to understand things but more importantly to be able to see insights into God and to contemplate him with a clear mind that's not shadowed by our fallen nature our wounds our sinful inclinations i mean this will be the greatest joy that beatific vision to behold him then having all this physical blessings accompanying it as well i I I just think heaven is much more than jumping from cloud to cloud in the sky with a harp in the hand the present fragile condition which we describe as health yet which is still liable to pain cannot be compared to the state of well-being which the Lord has promised us in the future as scripture declares "God shall wash away every tear from their eyes and there shall be no mourning or weeping nor any pain for the previous things have passed away this well-being will be completely unassalable and secure so maybe you're watching this and you look at your body and it's broken it's got pain you're suffering with a chronic disease or chronic pain or it's not functioning in the way that you want it to function or your intellectual ability seems to be stunted sometimes like why do I always struggle with this and in the fall fallen world our bodies suffer the effects of original sin and and we suffer but this is the hope there's something better the glorified body while we behold the beatific vision this is our hope this is what we are striving for heaven this earth as it is is not our home is union with Christ so share with us below what stood out to you and why and let's end with a prayer