St. Thomas
Aquinas never completed the writing of his great work, the Summa Theologiae.
Rather, while he was in the middle of writing the third part of the Summa,
while he was celebrating mass on the feast of St. Nicholas, he had a mystical experience,
and after that, he refused to write any further. To this day, no one knows exactly why. We have
only a mysterious statement coming down to us from his lips. "Everything I have written is straw by
comparison to what has been revealed to me."
Some people have taken this in an anti-intellectual way,
to mean that St. Thomas dismissed all of his work or even condemned theology as such,
but that's not true. Since we know that as he was approaching death,
he offered an oral commentary on the Song of Songs. Rather, we should understand his statement
to mean that the promise of theology had been fulfilled, a lifetime of theological contemplation
and study of God and his revelation led St. Thomas to a place in his own spiritual life
where he could enter into a more profound union with God and enjoy the light of God in a higher
and better way.
Although the Summa was much less, by comparison, than such abundance of divine light,
it was not simply worthless or bad. And so, after St. Thomas passed away, his assistants finished
the Summa for him by using some of his older writings to answer the questions he would have
taken up if he had finished, and this part of the Summa is called the supplement.
One topic treated extensively in the supplement is that of the last things,
death, particular judgment, purgatory, heaven, hell, and the final judgment of the human race.
It is a vast treatment of questions, but among
the last things, the topic that receives the most treatment is that of the condition and properties
of human beings who are glorified, that is, living in heaven after the final judgment of the world
and the resurrection of the body. What will such a life be like? Of course, it says in Scripture
that no eye has seen and no ear has heard what God has prepared for those who love him, but the same
Scripture also tells us a lot about the glorified body of Jesus Christ after his resurrection.
And in Philippians 3:21, Scripture also tells
us that God will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. So St. Thomas reasons,
"We can gather something of the condition and qualities of human bodily life in heaven
by studying the resurrection life of Jesus, as depicted in Scripture." Following this approach,
St. Thomas speaks of several qualities that fully embodied, glorified human beings will
enjoy in heaven.
First of all, the glorified body will be whole and complete without any defect
of human nature. There'll be no missing limbs, disfigurations or any physical defects,
the body will rise again, perfect. They will be male and female, since that is the natural order,
and it pleases God to save the natural order, and their bodies will be those of a youthful age,
just at the age when childhood growth ceases, but before any decline of aging sets in. They will
also be impassable or incapable of suffering, they will have a certain subtlety and agility,
meaning that the body and its movements will be perfectly subject to the soul.
And the bodies of the glorified will
be clear or brilliant, they will radiate a kind of spiritual light. Now, if we ask why the glorified
bodies have these qualities, the answer draws on and summarizes many teachings of St. Thomas.
Let us recall that the soul is the form of the body or makes the body to be what it is.
The loss of the grace of original justice has effected the manner in which the soul
forms the body in this life. For example, we are mortal and our passions are unruly,
when God gives grace to people through Baptism, his grace is poured into the soul, but it
overflows to some extent into our bodies.
For example, grace gives someone the virtues of temperance and fortitude, and these virtues
form and shape our physical appetites, and so, our bodies, but grace only begins to affect
and reform our bodies in this life, and the overflow is limited. What happens at death is that
the soul separates from the body, if at the moment of death, the person lives in grace and charity,
the person goes towards God, but first the process of purgatory purifies the soul of any and all
residual inclinations towards evil still lingering in the soul, and all debt of punishment still owed
for sins committed in this life is fulfilled.
Having passed through the purging of all residual evil in one's soul, the graceful soul finally
sees God, and the very sight of God is heaven, the beatific vision, the happy sight of the one
whose divine happiness is now ours to enjoy forever. After the final judgment and the
resurrection of the body, when God raises our bodies from the dustbin of history,
our souls will again be the form of our bodies, but this time around, unlike what it was in the
days of our years in time, in eternity, our souls will be perfect, our souls will be purged of all
evil, and grace will overflow from the soul to the body and form the body completely.
It is the overflow of grace from the soul to
the body that will make the bodies of the saints so splendorous indeed. Every act of love and
repentance we make during our days and time will shine forth in our bodies for all eternity.
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