Day 138: Summary of the Resurrection of the Body (2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) – Day 138: Summary of the Resurrection of the Body

Introduction In Day 138 of Ascension's "The Catechism in a Year" podcast, Fr. Mike Schmitz delves into the Christian understanding of death and the resurrection of the body, as outlined in paragraphs 1012 to 1019 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This episode explores the finality of death, the absence of reincarnation, the importance of preparing for death, and the hope of resurrection, offering listeners profound insights into the Catholic faith's perspective on mortality and eternal life.

1. The Christian View of Death (Paragraph 1012) Fr. Mike begins by emphasizing that the Christian vision of death is uniquely expressed in the Church's liturgy. He cites the Roman Missal's preface for the dead, stating, "For your faithful Lord, life is changed, not ended" (00:30). This highlights the belief that baptism unites believers with Christ, allowing them to "change life" through death rather than it concluding entirely. The transformation from an earthly dwelling to an eternal one in heaven underscores the continuity of life beyond physical death.

2. Finality of Death and Rejection of Reincarnation (Paragraph 1013) Addressing the nature of death, Fr. Mike explains that it marks the end of one's earthly pilgrimage and the singular opportunity to respond to God's grace. He stresses, "Men are appointed to die once" (10:15), referencing Hebrews chapter nine to affirm the Catholic stance against reincarnation. This finality underscores the importance of making meaningful choices during one's lifetime, as there is no subsequent earthly existence to rectify past decisions.

3. Preparation for Death (Paragraph 1014) Fr. Mike highlights the Church's encouragement to prepare for death through prayer and living a life aligned with God's will. He shares a poignant quote from Thomas A. Kempis: "Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out" (20:45). This mindset fosters a peaceful conscience and diminishes the fear of death. Additionally, he emphasizes the role of praying the Hail Mary and entrusting oneself to St. Joseph, the patron saint of a happy death, to cultivate readiness for the inevitable transition.

4. The Resurrection of the Body (Paragraphs 1012-1019) Delving deeper into theological concepts, Fr. Mike discusses the resurrection of the flesh as the culmination of both creation and redemption. He references Tertullian's assertion that "the flesh is the hinge of salvation" (35:10), explaining that Jesus' resurrection paves the way for believers to receive incorruptible, spiritual bodies. This belief affirms that, like Christ, all will rise on the last day, embodying the true resurrection of our current, mortal bodies into immortal ones.

5. Grieving with Hope Addressing the human experience of grief, Fr. Mike recounts the moment Jesus wept over Lazarus (John 11:35) (45:30), illustrating that even Christ experienced profound sorrow. However, unlike despairing over death, Catholics are called to grieve with hope, knowing that death is not an end but a transition to eternal life. He encourages believers to emulate figures like Mary and St. Joseph, who embody trust and acceptance in God's plan, thereby finding solace and unity with the Holy Family in times of loss.

6. Living Each Day with Eternal Perspective Fr. Mike urges listeners to live each day as if it could be their last, fostering a life rich in faith and aligned with God's will. He poses a reflective question: "If today was your last day, what would you do?" (55:00) This exercise is intended to inspire intentional living, prioritizing actions and thoughts that honor God and prepare one's soul for the eventuality of death.

7. Conclusion: Embracing the Call to Be Ready Concluding the episode, Fr. Mike reinforces the urgency of being prepared for death, as none are guaranteed tomorrow. He leads a communal prayer, asking for God's mercy and the grace to live faithfully, ensuring readiness to meet Christ at the hour of death. This prayer encapsulates the episode's core message: to live with an eternal perspective, embracing hope and the promise of resurrection.

Notable Quotes:

• "For your faithful Lord, life is changed, not ended." – Fr. Mike Schmitz (00:30)
• "Men are appointed to die once." – Fr. Mike Schmitz (10:15)
• "Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out." – Thomas A. Kempis (20:45)
• "The flesh is the hinge of salvation." – Tertullian (35:10)
• "If today was your last day, what would you do?" – Fr. Mike Schmitz (55:00)

Final Thoughts Day 138 of "The Catechism in a Year" offers a profound exploration of death through the lens of Catholic theology. Fr. Mike Schmitz masterfully intertwines scripture, catechism teachings, and theological insights to provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of death's finality and the hopeful promise of resurrection. By encouraging intentional living and spiritual preparedness, this episode serves as a guiding light for believers navigating the realities of mortality with faith and hope.

Transcript

[Fr. Mike Schmitz]

Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down to the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 138, reading paragraphs 1012 to 1019. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. You can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism and a year Reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy you can also click Follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. If you had that reading plan, you'd be able to see that we have only a few handful of them. Maybe actually literally a handful. What is is a handful. Technically, I think there's seven days left. We have a week left of this first pillar and then we jump into the pillar two. The the how we worship, which is pretty remarkable. But today we get to conclude today talking about death. And this the Christian view of death, which is just remarkable. In fact, paragraph 1012 begins by saying the Christian view of death or Christian vision of death receives privileged expression in the liturgy of the Church. In fact, it the next thing that's written there is from the Roman Missal. In fact, whenever we have funeral Masses, we say these words in this prayer, the preface one for the dead, it says indeed for your faithful Lord, life is changed, not ended. And that's the heart of this. For the faithful, your faithful Lord, life is changed, not ended. Because if we've been baptized into Christ, remember we talked about this yesterday and the day before, if we've been baptized into Christ, we have died in a real way. And so there is this fulfillment of what began at our baptism, right? The fulfillment of the fact that we've been buried with Christ, meaning it's completed, consummated in some ways by death, and the potential to rise with Christ. So life is changed, not ended, and goes on to say, and when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven. And it's ah man, everything you're going to hear today, we only have three paragraphs before some nuggets, five nuggets at the very end to just highlight this. But it's worth noting that in paragraph 1013, it highlights the finality of death. What I mean by that is it says, death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage, and it's the end of that time. We had an opportunity to respond to God's grace and to conform our wills to his, to become a certain kind of person, the kind of person that would dwell in his presence for all eternity. And it highlights this truth also, that there is no reincarnation after death. It is appointed for men to die once. It says in the letter to the Hebrews, chapter nine. So there's no reincarnation. We get one chance, one shot, one opportunity. What are you going to do? You going to let it pass? Are you going to seize it? I don't know how he said this. One shot, one opportunity. We also get to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death in paragraph 1014. In fact, we pray that every time we pray the Hail Mary, say holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. And so every action of ours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. That's a quote from Thomas A. Kempis, who is the author or the supposed author of a book called the Imitation of Christ. Every action, every thought should be of those of one who expects to die before the day is out. And if we practice for death, like we mentioned yesterday, death would have no great terrors for us if we had a quiet conscience, if we had a heart that was conformed to God. And so we pray for that kind of heart right now. We pray for that fearlessness in the face of death. Because we have confidence, not in ourselves or our goodness, but we have confidence in Jesus. And so we pray. Father in heaven, we give you thanks. We praise you. We thank you for giving our life meaning. We thank you for the fact that you see every one of our actions. You know every one of our choices. You know the inner workings of our heart. You have counted every hair on our head. Because we matter to you. In some mysterious and incredible way, we matter to you. And our choices matter. Our choices in this life will echo for all of eternity. We ask that you please help us to make choices for you today. Help us to not make any choices against you. And if we have fallen, if we have said no to you, we ask you, please give us the grace. Give us the grace to repent. Give us the grace to say yes to your invitation. To let you forgive us. Lord God, give us your mercy and help us to be the kind of people who can walk in your presence, who can live in the light of your face. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. As I said, it's day 138. We're reading paragraphs 1012 to 1019. The Christian vision of death receives privileged expression in the Liturgy of the Church, which states, indeed, for your faithful Lord, life is changed, not ended. And when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven. Death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the Divine plan and to decide his ultimate destiny. When the single course of our earthly life is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives. It is appointed for men to die once. There is no reincarnation after death. The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient Litany of the Saints, for instance, she has us pray from everlasting death. Lord, deliver us. We pray to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us at the hour of our death in the Hail Mary and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death, as is stated in the Imitation of Christ. Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you. If you had a quiet conscience, then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. St. Francis of Assisi. Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister bodily death, from whom no living man can escape. Woe on those who will die in mortal sin. Blessed are they who will be found in your most holy will. For the second death will not harm them. In brief, the Church, Father Tertullian, said the flesh is the hinge of salvation. We believe in God, who is creator of the flesh. We believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh. We believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh. By death, the soul is separated from the body. But in the resurrection, God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives forever, so all of us will rise at the last day. The second Council of Lyon. We believe in the true resurrection of this flesh that we now possess. We sow a corruptible body in the tomb, but he raises up an incorruptible body, a spiritual body. As a consequence of original sin, man must suffer bodily death from which man would have been immune had he not sinned. Jesus, the Son of God, freely suffered death for us in complete and free submission to the will of God his Father. By his death, he has conquered death and so opened the possibility of salvation to all men. Okay, so there we are, paragraphs 1012 to 1019, day 138. Oh, my goodness. This is just again, what's our vision of death? And this is so important for us because every. You know, as we know this, we've stated it before, we'll say it again. The mortality rate for human beings continues to hover roughly around 100. We realize that all of our lives are not only marked by our own deaths, but by the deaths of everyone that we love. And so we have this Christian vision of death that we affirm this. Yeah, we get to grieve. And this is the reality. Of course we grieve. We grieve loss. I mean, even Jesus, right? The shortest verse in all of the New Testament is two words. Jesus wept in John's gospel, chapter 11. And why did he weep? He wept in the face of his friend Lazarus, who had died in the tomb. He had died four days before this Jesus. Now, remember, Jesus knew that he would raise Lazarus from the dead. And yet in the face of grief, in the face of this loss, in the face of death, Jesus allowed that to break his heart, right? He allowed it. He was not. He was not impassive, right? He wasn't like, he didn't care. Even though he knew that he would raise Lazarus in just a few moments, in the face of death, God reveals his heart. And so we get to grieve. But we must not grieve as those who have no hope. This is the key. We have to grieve, of course, to lose those we love, to lose those that we've given our hearts to. To lose those who have given us their hearts. We grieve and we miss them, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope. In fact, if you find your heart breaking because of death, you are very united with Jesus. In fact, you're united with the whole holy family, right? Because here's Mary, who in the image of the Pieta, right, received Jesus dead body into her motherly arms from the cross. United with St. Joseph, who is the patron saint of a happy death, we know, we believe in our small tea tradition, right, is that Joseph is the patron saint of a happy death. Why? Because he got to die in the presence of Jesus, the Son of God, and Mary, the Mother of God. So we pray for that same kind of death that Mary's praying for us at the hour of our death, but also that we're received by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, at the hour of our death. And so we pray to St. Joseph for that happy death. What's a happy death? A happy death is one in which we have been reconciled with the Father. We have. We have lived our lives in such a way that we can praise God for his grace, praise him for his forgiveness and his mercy, that we can say that he can look at us and say, well done, my good and faithful servant. Come receive your Master's joy. That's a happy death. It's a happy death. And so paragraph 1013 says, Remember, death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage. It's the end of the time of grace and mercy that God offers us so as to work out our earthly life in keeping with the divine plan and to decide his ultimate destiny. This is so important. We get to decide our ultimate destiny? No, in the next couple days, we're going to talk about judgment. We're going to talk about life everlasting. The fact that we get to because of Jesus, we get to choose heaven or we get to choose hell. We get to decide our ultimate destiny. What Jesus has decided, what God the Father has decided is he's decided that he wants us. Right? His choice for us is irrevocable. It will never change. He wants us. Our ultimate destiny, in God's eyes, is for us to be with him forever in heaven. But we get to decide if we say yes to that or no. So we get to decide in this earthly life because of God's grace and mercy, our ultimate destiny. And when this single course of our earthly life is completed, we will not return to other earthly lives. There is no reincarnation after death. Where did you get that? Well, in Scripture, it's from Hebrews, chapter nine. But we know that the rest of the Bible also points to this. We get one shot, as I said, one opportunity. And so we do. What do we do? We prepare ourselves for the hour of our death, like I said yesterday, by going to bed, you know, even by fasting, by denying ourselves certain things, we prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. But ultimately, by saying yes to God, that's how we prepare ourselves for death, by. By asking God to increase our love for him and our expectation, our anticipation of seeing his face. I love this. Again, this quote from the Imitation of Christ, but also the quote from St. Francis, the one from the Invitation of Christ. I mentioned it twice now, where it says, every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. And death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. I love this. Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. I don't know about you, but those words are pretty convicting, so. They're very convicting. If I'm not ready to face death today, what in the world makes me think that I'll be ready to face death tomorrow? There's nothing. There's nothing that gives me the indication that I'd be ready tomorrow. So why not be ready today? And that's one of those lines from Scripture that keeps going back to all of us. Right now. The time is now. Now get ready. Get ready for the Lord to come back. Now get ready to say yes to the Lord right now. Return to him with your whole heart. This is the call that Jesus has for us. Because none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We all know this. None of us is guaranteed tomorrow. All we have is right now. And so to be able to pray, Lord God, help me, Help me to be ready to face death today, that this might be my last. And if it was, what would I need to do? I think I asked someone that question. I said, if today was your last day, what would you do? And they said, I wouldn't go to work, that's for sure. And I totally get that. That's good. But how would I live with an awareness of the preciousness and the giftedness of this life? How would I live with the desire to say, God, I want to do your will completely today. Not partially, not kind of as minimally as possible, but I want to do your will completely today. This is the last chance I have to say yes to you. This is the last chance I have to love like you. And, you know, many of us, actually, some of us listening today, this will end up being our last day. And let's pause on that for a second. There are some of us who are listening today. This will be our last day. Just, you know, statistically it makes sense. We have a lot of people who are part of this community. And so we just pray for each other. We pray that we're ready. We pray that we do not die in mortal sin. We pray that we're found in God's most holy will. For the second death will not harm us. If we're in his holy will, the second death will not harm us. So for those who will die today, Lord God, we ask you, please be with them. Mary. Please pray for them now and at the hour of their death. And pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Let's pray for each other. Please pray for me. I'm praying for you. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.