In the course of the general audience of 2 December the Holy Father took up again the theme of the resurrection of the body in the context of his catechesis on theological anthropology.  

"When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25). Christ utters these words, which have a key-meaning for the theology of the body, after having affirmed, in the conversation with the Sadducees, that the resurrection is in conformity with the power of the living God. All three Synoptic Gospels report the same statement, except that Luke's version is different in some details from that of Matthew and Mark. Essential for them all is the fact that, in the future resurrection, human beings, after having reacquired their bodies in the fullness of the perfection characteristic of the image and likeness of God—after having reacquired them in their masculinity and femininity—"neither marry nor are given in marriage". Luke expresses the same idea in chapter 20:34-35, in the following words: "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage".

Definitive fulfilment of mankind

2. As can be seen from these words, marriage, that union in which, according to the Book of Genesis, "a man cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:25) —the union characteristic of man right from the "beginning"—belongs exclusively to "this age". Marriage and procreation do not constitute, on the other hand, the eschatological future of man. In the resurrection they lose, so to speak, their raison d’Ãtre. "That age", of which Luke speaks (20:35), means the definitive fulfilment of mankind, the quantitative closing of that circle of beings, who were created in the image and likeness of God, in order that, multiplying through the conjugal "unity in the body" of men and women, they might subdue the earth. "That age" is not the world of the earth, but the world of God, who, as we know from the first Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, will fill it entirely, becoming "everything to everyone" (1 Cor 15:28).

3. At the same time "that age", which according to revelation is "the kingdom of God", is also the definitive and eternal "homeland" of man (cf. Phil 3:20), it is the "Father's house" (Jn 14:2). "That age", as man's new homeland, emerges definitively from the present world, which is temporal subjected to death, that is, to the destruction of the body (cf. Gen 3:19: "to dust you shall return")— through the resurrection. The resurrection, according to Christ's words reported by the Synoptic Gospels, means not only the recovery of corporeity and the re?establishment of human life in its integrity, by means of the union of the body with the soul, but also a completely new state of human life itself.

We find the confirmation of this new state of the body in the resurrection of Christ (cf. Rom 6:5-11). The words reported by the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:30; Mk 12:25; Lk 20:34-35) will ring out then (that is, after Christ's resurrection) to those who had heard them, I would say almost with a new probative force, and at the same time they will acquire the character of a convincing promise.  For the present, however, we will dwell on these words in their "prepaschal" phase, referring only to the situation in which they were spoken. There is no doubt that already in the answer given to the Sadducees, Christ reveals the new condition of the human body in the resurrection, and he does so precisely by proposing a reference and a comparison with the condition in which man had participated since the "beginning".

Renewed in resurrection

4. The words: "they neither marry nor are given in marriage" seem to affirm at the same time that human bodies, recovered and at the same time renewed in the resurrection, will keep their masculine or feminine peculiarity and that the sense of being a male or a female in the body will be constituted and understood in "that age" in a different way from what it had been "from the beginning" and then in the whole dimension of earthly existence. The words of Genesis: "A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:24), constituted right from the beginning that condition and relationship of masculinity and femininity, extended also to the body, which must rightly be defined "conjugal" and at the same time "procreative" and "generative". It is connected, in fact, with the blessing of fertility, pronounced be God (Elohim) when he created man "male and female" (Gen 1:27). The words spoken by Christ about the resurrection enable us to deduce that the dimension of masculinity and femininity—that is, being male and female in the body—will again be constituted together with the resurrection of the body in "that age".

Like the angels

5. Is it possible to say something more detailed on this subject? Beyond all doubt, Christ's words reported by the Synoptic Gospels (especially in the version of Luke 20:27-40) authorize us to do so. We read there, in fact, that "those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead... cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God" (Matthew and Mark report only that "they are like angels in heaven"). This statement makes it possible above all to deduce a spiritualization of man according to a different dimension from that of earthly life (and even different from that of the "beginning" itself). It is obvious that it is not a question here of transforming man's nature into that of the angels, that is, a purely spiritual one. The context indicates clearly that man will keep in "that age" his own human psychosomatic nature. If it were otherwise, it would be meaningless to speak of the resurrection.

The resurrection means the restoring to the real life of human corporeity, which was subjected to death in its temporal phase. In the expression of Luke (20:36) just quoted (and in that of Matthew 22:30 and Mark 12:25), it is certainly a question of human, that is, psychosomatic nature. The comparison with heavenly beings, used in the context, is no novelty in the Bible. Among others, already in a psalm, exalting man as the work of the Creator, it is said: "thou hast made him little less than the angels" (Ps 8:5). It must be supposed that in the resurrection this similarity will become greater: not through a disincarnation of man, but by means of another kind (we could also say another degree) of spiritualization of his somatic nature—that is, by means of another "system of forces" within man. The resurrection means a new submission of the body to the spirit.

Plato and St Thomas

6. Before beginning to develop this subject, it should be recalled that the truth about the resurrection had a key-meaning for the formation of the whole of theological anthropology, which could be considered simply as ''anthropology of the resurrection". As a result of reflection on the resurrection, Thomas Aquinas neglected in his metaphysical (and at the same time theological) anthropology Plato's philosophical conception on the relationship between the soul and the body and drew closer to the conception of Aristotle (1). The resurrection, in fact, bears witness, at least indirectly, that the body, in the composite being of man as a whole, is not only connected temporarily with the soul (as its earthly "prison", as Plato believed) (2), but that together with the soul it constitutes the unity and integrity of the human being. Aristotle taught precisely that (3), unlike Plato. If St Thomas accepted Aristotle's conception in his anthropology, he did so taking into consideration the truth about the resurrection. The truth about the resurrection clearly affirms, in fact, that the eschatological perfection and happiness of man cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated (according to Plato: liberated) from the body, but it must be understood as the state of man definitively and perfectly "integrated" through such a union of the soul and the body, which qualifies and definitively ensures this perfect integrity.

Let us interrupt at this point our reflection on the words spoken by Christ about the resurrection. The great wealth of contents enclosed in these words induces us to take them up again in further considerations.

Special greetings

Finally, I address the young, the newly-weds and the sick.

This time I wish to greet them together to emphasize the necessity of that brotherly love which must reign in the Church among the various members and the various groups.

Expectation of the Lord sustains our prayer in this period of Advent. The Christian is a man who is waiting for Christ, but this attitude of his is not passive nor disinterested with regard to the world. Let us walk, therefore, towards the Lord with joyful hearts, without sparing ourselves! You, young people, entrust your hopes to him with confidence; you, spouses, your Christian love and the commitment of faithful, mutual donation; you, beloved sick, offer him the fine, glittering gold of your suffering which, in union with his, is grace, salvation, and joy for the whole community of the faithful. 

I willingly bless you all.

Notes

1) Cf. e.g.: "Habet autem anima alium modum essendi cum unitur corpori, et cum fuerit a corpore separata, manente tamen eadem animae natura; non ita quod uniri corpori sit ei accidentale, sed per rationem suae naturae corpori unitur…" (St Thomas, Sum. Theol. 1a, q. 89, a. 1). 

"Si autem hoc non est ex natura animae, sed per accidens hoc convenit ei ex eo quod corpori alligatur, sicut Platonici posuerunt… remoto impedimento corporis, rediret anima ad suam naturam… Sed, secundum hoc, non esset anima corpori unita propter melius animae…; sed hoc esset solum propter melius corporis: quod est irrationabile, cum materia sit propter formam, et non e converso…" (Ibidem).

"Secundum se convenit animae corpori uniri… Anima humana manet in suo esse cum fuerit a corpore separata, habens aptitudinem et inclinationem naturalem ad corporis unionem" (Ibidem, 1a. q. 76, a. 1 ad 6).

2) To men soma estin hemin sema (Platone, Gorgias 493 A; cf. also Phaedo 66B; Cratylus 400C).

3) Aristotle, De anima, II, 412a, 19-22; cf. also Metaph. 1029 b 11; 1030 b 14.