My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

What happens when we die? This question was the topic of my presentation for "Theology on Tap" at the Knights of Columbus Hall at Lake Springfield on Oct. 29. The answer to this question is given by the Word of God as revealed to us in the Holy Bible and handed down authoritatively by Sacred Tradition in the Catholic Church. God's revelation has been definitively revealed to us in Jesus Christ, so we should not expect or be looking for something new or different to be revealed to us.

Some people seem to think that when we die and our souls are separated from our bodies, we become angels. That's not accurate since angels are spiritual beings who never had a physical body and never will have a body. Angels are created by God with intelligence and free will. God gave them the freedom to love or reject him forever. They made this choice once and for all eternity. So those who chose to follow God will be angels forever. Those who rejected God are fallen angels, which we call devils or demons, and will remain as such for all eternity. Human beings, in contrast, have the freedom until the moment of death to repent from sins and accept Christ's salvation.

Most people learned the basic lesson in religion class that when we die, our immortal souls are separated from our mortal bodies, and the souls of the damned will go to hell if they die in the state of mortal sin and the souls of the saved will be raised to heaven if they die in the state of grace, unless some additional purification in purgatory is needed. End of story, right?

Wrong! How soon we forget the Creed! The Nicene Creed, which we profess at Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, concludes with the declaration, "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." Similarly, the last line of the Apostles' Creed says, "I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." The references here to the "resurrection of the dead" and the "resurrection of the body" refer not to Jesus (since we profess his death and resurrection earlier in the Creed), but to us, to the resurrection of our bodies! The separation of the soul from the body of the deceased is only temporary. We don't live for all eternity as pure spirits, but we await the resurrection of our bodies when Jesus comes again and body and soul will be reunited! All the dead will rise, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #998).

What will the resurrected bodies of the just be like? St. Paul answers this question in his letter to the Philippians: "He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself" (Phil 3:19).

St. John the Evangelist wrote similarly, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be like. But we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is" (1 John 3:2). So we get hints of what our glorified bodies will be like by looking at what Christ's glorified body was like after his resurrection.

Thus, St. John writes in his Gospel that the resurrected Lord appeared to his disciples behind locked doors (John 20:19). A week later, Jesus appeared to his disciples again. This time Thomas was with them. Although the doors were again locked, Jesus stood in their midst and invited Thomas to touch his wounds (John 20:24-25). So the glorified body of Jesus was not bound by space and had visible wounds, although our Lord no longer suffered pain from them. Our glorified bodies at the resurrection of the dead will share these qualities of Christ's glorified body. In our glorified bodies, there will never be pain, sickness, suffering, disability or death. What there will be is unending joy — spiritual but also physical and sensual. The reality in heaven is never-ending, uninterrupted happiness!

During this month of November, as we pray for the repose of the souls in purgatory, it is good for all of us to contemplate what happens when we die, and reaffirm our faith in the second coming of Christ, when he will raise up the glorified bodies of the just to the joys of eternal life.

May God give us this grace. Amen.