It is obvious that the resurrection cannot apply to the soul, for the simple reason that to resurrect means to rise again, and the soul cannot rise again, for it cannot fall: it is immortal and must live for ever. When, then, we profess in the Apostles Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, we can only suppose that the body will at some future time be rejoined to the soul, and that both together will be lifted up to the enjoyment or punishment ordained. This doctrine, therefore, implies two distinct things - first that my body will decay, and secondly that it will one day rise again: one that it will cease to be, another that it will again take on existence. For the first there is no need to produce any evi dence. It is, indeed, the lament of the poets that the fair and beautiful body, fearfully and wonderfully made, with all its intricate machinery and its marvellous faculties, is destined, despite every care and every cure, to pass back one day into the same earth from which it sprang. That body which gives the zest to life and makes life itself worth the living; that tired frame that with its long drawn-out agony makes life a tiresome existence; the body, whether young, hardened into perfect manhood, or worn out with the ravages of time and work - back to the earth it must go. The poets lament, and those in suffering, perhaps, hasten themselves unauthorizedly to that consummation, but towards it we all are tending. What shall we call this sojourn of ours - here a living death or a dying life? asks one of the Fathers of the Church. Does it very much matter? the result is the same. Yet to this also we must add as Christians that death does not end all. The body goes, but it will as surely return; it dies, but it will live again.
How, then, can this be done? How can that mortal frame that mingles with the earth till it becomes part of some other organism than itself, once more put on the vesture of human life, be quickened into a new human existence? Change seems to be so essentially its nature that it is difficult to conceive any relation between it and the wonderful everlasting life which is described to us as unceasing, yet always present. But the difficulties in the way of this resurrection are more than a mere incongruity of imagination; for the body itself is changing all through life - is it not within seven years wholly renewed? If, then, in life this change takes place continuously, so that we end with a material body that is altogether different from the body with which we started, how can it be possible for us to suppose that after death the body that we had can be brought back to us? for when put into the grave the material flesh and bone passes into all sorts of other forms of life, mingling with the grass and the flowers that wave over the place where all that was mortal was interred. Struck, therefore, with the note of change that runs through all material creation, its growth and its decay, we wonder how it is possible for the body to be clothed with immortality. How, we ask, can the same body after centuries come back into life?
Saint Thomas makes reply that we speak of the same body, despite its endless changes, just as we speak of the Thames or of London, though as we speak the water of the river has all changed, and the inhabitants of the city are passing out from it. The change is not in either case sudden, but gradual, and this justifies our use of the same name for that which is always in a state of flux. But the real point, that the second objection more nearly touches, is that it is the soul that makes the body ours. According to the teaching of Saint Thomas, it is the soul which gives the body its right to be considered human at all, since of itself it is a dead and inert thing, like the corpse is when the soul has gone out from it. Life and all that life includes is due to the indwelling of the spirit; hence my body is mine simply because my soul inhabits it. Consequently when we talk about the resurrection of the body, Saint Thomas says expressly that we are not to mean that the identical particles of matter constitute the newly risen body, but that whatever material substance becomes informed by my soul, becomes itself at once my body. From this I learn that just as I may not deny the existence of spiritual beings though I cannot see them, so neither may I deny the holiness of the body, even though I do see it. Both make me man, and neither of itself can wholly constitute me. Nor should I be led away by the seeming mysticism of those who would make out the body to be a mere symbol of other things; it is to be reverenced for what it is in itself. It is the creature of God as surely as is the soul, so ennobled, indeed, by the Incarnation that the fair flesh of the Son of God, marked with the prints of nails and spear and scourge, redeemed me, pleads for me, and can be worshipped. The coming dignity of my body should incline me to the utmost care for it, realizing that one day I shall put on immortality, and that with my own bodily eyes I shall see my Saviour.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.