Catechism for Adults: XIII

Extract

The triumph of Christ for St Paul was most clearly shown in the resurrection. Being dead, he was buried and the third day rose again. The risen Christ was seen and St Paul lists the occasions (i Cor. 15). The resurrection is the supreme point of the triumph of God’s grace in the world, for it demonstrates that the flesh is redeemed. This does not merely mean that the corporeal, the quantitative element in man, is redeemed. It means a conquest of all that is alien from God in man’s hfe.

It is, of course, true that body, the whole sphere of sensation and imagination, becomes through Christ an instrument of salvation. Each sacrament is an occasion of the redemption of the whole man, and in each sacrament the physical and sensory is the sign of God’s action. Body is, therefore, not something inimical to the action of grace; far from being a poison or the instrument of corruption, it is of its nature made for God. The flesh as alien to God means something more complex. It is the whole man closed to God, feeding on his own resources. Man as independent of God and hence the victim of his illusions. Man the idol maker, cut off from the Creator, yet still creative. The symbol of his creation is no longer marriage: union with the ground of existence, hfe in the garden of controlled fertility: the symbol is adultery, the burning of the child, the jumping and slashing before the altars of Baal—creation and fertility run riot, become malignant because of sin.

This is overthrown by Christ: body is no longer evil flesh, but the carrier of resurrection. Because the Son condescends, subjects his body to the powers of evil, he redeems flesh. In the flesh the victory is won by the Word made flesh.