CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 3a:

• The Incarnation
• Our Blessed Lady
• Our Lord Jesus Christ
  • 31. Our Lord's Body
  • 32. The Conception of Christ
  • 33. The Mode of Our Lord's Conception
  • 34. The Perfection of Our Lord Before His Birth
  • 35. The Nativity of Christ
  • 36. The Manifestation of the New-Born Christ
  • 37. Legal Observances Regarding the Christ Child
  • 38. The Baptism of St. John the Baptist
  • 39. The Baptizing of Christ by St. John the Baptist
  • 40. Our Lord's Life
  • 41. The Temptation in the Desert
  • 42. The Preaching of Christ
  • 43. The Miracles of Christ: In General
  • 44. Miracles of Christ: In Particular
  • 45. The Transfiguration
  • 46. The Passion of Christ
  • 47. The Effecting Cause of the Passion
  • 48. The Efficacy of the Passion of Christ
  • 49. Actual Effects of the Passion of Christ
  • 50. The Death of Our Lord
  • 51. The Burial of Our Lord
  • 52. The Descent Into Hell
  • 53. The Resurrection
  • 54. The Risen Christ
  • 55. The Manifestation of the Risen Christ
  • 56. Causal Power of the Resurrection
  • 57. The Ascension
  • 58. Our Lord at the Father's Right Hand
  • 59. Our Lord's Power as Judge
• The Sacraments in General
• Baptism
• Confirmation
• The Holy Eucharist
• Penance

54. The Risen Christ

1. Christ retained his own true body in and after theResurrection. Had this not been a true body, or had it not been thebody in which Christ suffered, the Resurrection would not have beenreal but only apparent.

2. The body of Christ was glorified in itsrising. The saints shall rise in bodily glory; Christ'sResurrection is the cause and the exemplar of their rising; hence,his body is much greater in glory thantheirs; our Lordmerited this glory by his Passion. Our Lord possessed in his soulthe glory of the beatific vision from the first moment of hisexistence as man; yet the glory of the beatific vision was divinelyprevented from overflowing into the body of Christ until after Hehad endured the Passion and Death for our salvation. But once thatwork for us was done, the glory of his soul inundated his body.

3. Flesh, blood, bones, and all the other constituents ofa human body were in the body of Christ as he rose in glory. It wasa complete and perfect body. Our Lord, speaking after hisResurrection to the disciples who thought he was a phantom, said:"A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me to have"(Luke 24:39).

4. Our Lord kept in his glorified body the marks of hiswounds: (a) as an everlasting testimony of his victory; (b) as aproof that he is the same Christ who suffered and was crucified;(c) as a constant and concrete plea on our behalf to the EternalFather; (d) as a means of upbraiding the reprobates on the lastday, showing them what he did for them, thus reminding them of whatthey had wickedly despised and rejected.

"A tree that is cultivated and guarded through the care of its owner produces its fruit at the expected time. "
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

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"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."
St Philip Neri

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"To do God's will -- this was the goal upon which the saints constantly fixed their gaze. They were fully persuaded that in this consists the entire perfection of the soul. "
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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