Heaven Is For the Body

Do you remember the movie “Heaven is for Real”? It came out about five years ago and was based upon a book by the same title. I never saw the movie or read the book, but I remember how they made some headlines when they debuted, especially in Christian circles. If you’re not familiar with the story you might be able to guess what it is about. A young boy becomes deathly ill. When he eventually recovers, he tells his family that during his illness he had an out of body experience and went to heaven where he met Jesus. His family is skeptical of his story until he shares details that he would have no way of knowing, such as about long deceased family members, and even about a sibling who his mother had miscarried years before. Eventually the family and others come to believe his story, and it strengthens their faith and brings them closer together.

These kinds of stories are not unfamiliar to us. Whatever we may believe about a particular one, it is interesting how powerful they can be. I’ve met people who have really had their faith reinforced by such stories, or who found a reason to hope and persevere in difficult and challenging situations because of them. I used to be surprised at this. I thought, “Isn’t heaven what we all hope for as Christians? Is it a surprise to find out heaven exists?” I came to realize though that it’s one thing to believe in heaven, but it’s something else entirely to have that belief become real, as something actually attainable.

We hear about just that kind of belief-made-real in today’s readings. In the first reading from the story of the Maccabees, seven brothers are able to endure torture and ultimately even death rather violate their religious faith because they have a firm hope in being justified by God in paradise. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks plainly to the Sadducees about the reality of the life to come – how it is different and far greater than what we experience here on earth. In both readings, what is notable is that this heavenly life is not a distant hope, a vague dream – it is a reality very near and present, and thus one worth sacrificing much to achieve.

Martyrdom of the Seven Maccabees (1863) by Antonio Ciseri

Notice though that in both readings what is being hoped for is something very different from how we often think of heaven. We typically envision heaven as a spiritual reality – disembodied souls, floating clouds, maybe some angels strumming harps. But that’s the Hollywood picture of heaven not the Christian one. If you look at the readings today, what is being hoped for is not heaven in that spiritual sense; in fact, the word "heaven" is used only one time. What is being hoped for instead is resurrection – the hope that the mortal body which passes aways will one day be raised up again.

Each Sunday, when we profess our faith in the Creed, we say: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Why do we say this? Because contrary to how some think today, our bodies matter. We are not just souls in material shells – we are human persons, composites of body and soul, as much corporeal as we are spiritual. When we die, our bodies pass away, and we pray that our souls will go to heaven. But for God to give us true redemption – for him to truly be, as Jesus says in the Gospel, “not God of the dead but of the living” – then that means that he will not only save our spirits, but will resurrect and transform our bodies as well. We believe that this will happen at the end of time, after the Lord comes again and delivers the Final Judgment, when all of the dead will be raised and will enter heaven (or hell) as body and soul once again.

Michelangelo, The Last Judgment [detail] (1541)

This may seem like an abstract theological point, but it actually has profound importance for how we live. If our bodies will be raised up – if our bodies are made for glory, to be in some way like the Resurrected Body of Christ, which sits at the Father’s right hand – then that must inform how we live now. And how we live now is always in and through our bodies. Christians, especially Catholics, often get criticism for being too focused on bodies and what we humans do with them. But the reality is our bodies are important – they have been given to us by God as the means by which we operate in the world, and they have been created not merely for this life but also for the glory of heaven.

There is nothing that we do that does not involve our bodies in some way, and if we are aiming for the glorified, eternal life of heaven, then how we use our bodies now matters. As you know, our faith teaches that there are all kinds of ways we can treat our bodies, or the bodies of others, that lead us away from eternal life. I know our minds gravitate to “sins of the flesh,” as we call them, so let’s name some of them: masturbation; pornography; sex before marriage; homosexual actions. We could also include other things related to what we believe about life and sexuality: cohabitation, artificial contraception, sterilization, and a number of other things. Because sex is intended by God as the physical expression of the spiritual bond we call marriage – a lifelong bond, called to be faithful and fruitful – then there are all kinds of things we can do with our bodies, some even that are very accepted by society at large, that are not in accord with God’s law.

There are other things, besides those related to the sixth commandment, which we can do with our bodies that are also bad for us, things like: violence and abuse, whether self-inflicted or, God forbid, inflicted on another; gluttony; drunkenness, intentional or otherwise; use of illicit drugs; vanity about our appearance or even our health; or alternatively, neglect for our proper health and well-being. We also know how there is a growing acceptance in our society of people who want to change their bodies or even the bodies of their children, sometimes to another gender, or to no gender, or even to make it appear non-human in some way. We have even seen the growing trend of not respecting the body at the end of life, often through the misguided notion of relieving oneself or another of the suffering that comes with illness and age. While some of these are complex things, and we don’t want to stigmatize any single person, especially if they suffer from some illness or addiction, we must say that these things are not good for us. They are not the way to treat our bodies in the manner that they have been created by God and made by him for resurrected life. 

What we need is to recover a healthy respect for our bodies and the moral significance they have, and believe that it matters how we use them. If we are not in actively awaiting and yearning for heaven, then we may become like the Sadducees: we can implicitly believe that this world is all there is, and so it is fine to seek pleasure and happiness in all these ways and more, in all sorts of things that do not align with how God has created us to be. Instead, we need to be more like the seven brothers in the first reading, who knew that what they did with their bodies was important, because their bodies were made for eternal life. It’s for that reason that they were willing in the end to let their bodies be tortured and even killed rather than lose the promise of resurrection. How willing are we to do the same? To live in our bodies well – to deny ourselves, at times, perhaps even to suffer death one day – rather than lose heavenly glory?

Friends, heaven is for real, as Jesus tells us clearly in the Gospel. May we always believe that to be true, not just as a distant hope but as a firm reality which awaits us. But let’s remember also that heaven is for the body. Our bodies – so familiar, so well known to us in their flaws and weaknesses – have been created for glory, for eternal life, if we use them well in this life. May we endure every trial, suffering, or self-denial necessary – in body and in spirit – to ensure that we receive one day what we profess today that we believe: “the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come.”