Welcome to TOB Tuesdays Refreshed.  Over the next few months we will revisit Katrina’s past blogs followed by Jack Henz’* reflection.

A Cup of Tea and Spiritualization by Katrina J. Zeno, MTS

Last week, we jumped into the deep end of Christianity by reflecting on the resurrection of your body. This week, I want to continue swimming in these deep waters so as to become more comfortable with their depth as well as delving into our eternal state in heaven.

For many people, thoughts of heaven consist primarily of clouds, harps, pearly gates, resting in peace, and joy-filled family reunions. These may be consoling images, but they don’t provide convincing motivation for living our life here and now. Imagine a 16-year-old boy, who is being pressured for sex by his girlfriend, thinking, “Hmmm…I really shouldn’t have sex with her because then I’ll lose my personalized cloud and harp in heaven.”

It’s not going to happen. And yet, every choice we make on this earth should be impacted by our ultimate end or purpose. We do this regularly in business. The popular saying, “Begin with the end in mind,” exhorts us to have a visionary plan and strategic goals to guide our business decisions. Many parents do the same thing – they enroll their kids in club soccer, service clubs, and after-school tutoring by age 12 (or even 8!) in order to achieve the strategic end of an Ivy-League education.

The Church, too, adopts this same line of thinking in regard to our ultimate end. In a rather unknown but extremely valuable document from 1983 entitled, Educational Guidance in Human Love, (subtitled, “Outlines for Sex Education”) the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education began its exhortation with these words: “True education aims at the formation of the human person with respect to his ultimate goal.” (emphasis added)

However, as we noted in last week’s blog, our ultimate goal and eternal happiness can’t be a soul divorced from the body. Here’s the direct quote from TOB Audience 66:6 that inspired last week’s reflection: “In fact, the truth about the resurrection clearly affirms that man’s eschatological perfection and happiness cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated (according to Plato, liberated) from the body, but must be understood as the definitively and perfectly ‘integrated’ state of man brought about by such a union of the soul with the body…”

Christ’s bodily resurrection testifies that the ultimate end of the body is not disincarnation but spiritualization and divinization

Plato, not Jesus Christ, taught death as the liberating removal of the body so the soul can return to its “true nature.” On the contrary, Christ’s bodily resurrection testifies that the ultimate end of the body is not disincarnation but spiritualization and divinization. Or, to cite the full verse from St. Paul that we touched on last week, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

There’s my favorite word again – gift! The gift of God to us, to our embodied human nature, is not only the immortality of the soul but the eventual immortality of our unique and unrepeatable body through spiritualization and divinization. What, then, does this heavenly process of spiritualization and divinization consist of?

First of all, we need to remind ourselves that in eternity there is no time. This is incredibly difficult for us to grasp since we exist only in time during this lifetime. In other words, we experience life as a series of sequential moments. When you “took the time” to read this blog, you knew you would have to dedicate 5 or so minutes to reading it. Why? Because you can’t take it all in at once. You have to read word by word by word, all the way to the end. It’s impossible to experience the reality of my blog – or a boxing match, movie, conversation, housecleaning, or fixing the darn car – all at once, but only as a series of sequential moments, one after the other.

In rare moments, though, we experience “losing track of time” when our whole being is engaged and absorbed in the reality at hand – catching up with a dear friend after 20 years of being out of touch; reading a captivating book for hours; adoration before the Eucharistic where time just seems to “disappear.” These are glimpses or “first fruits” of eternity where we no longer experience being time-bound but somehow liberated from the squeezing limitations of sequential existence.

What’s my point? A lag time exists between the separation of the soul from the body and Christ’s Second Coming and therefore an odd gap occurs between death and the resurrection of the body. But since eternity is the absence – or perhaps better, the fullness – of time, then souls in heaven aren’t looking at their watches, impatiently awaiting the resurrection of their bodies. Eternity is an eternal “now,” a reality vastly different from our experience in this earthly life (see TOB A68:2).

I apologize for what might seem like a L O N G detour into time and eternity. Every once in a while, I think it’s helpful to remember that our human intelligence doesn’t know everything, both on earth and in heaven. Scientists are baffled as to why bumble bees can fly because it seems to defy the laws of physics. Light acts as both a wave and a particle, which seems empirically illogical. It’s hard to comprehend how a human person could be a human person without a body in heaven – this goes against the “laws” of human personhood. These situations remind us that we don’t know everything (thank goodness!) and to walk humbly in a sense of mystery and reverence for what we do not yet know.

Now let’s go back to the two-step process of spiritualization and divinization.

I love St. John Paul II’s description of spiritualization in TOB A67:1, where he writes, “In the resurrection, the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit: man will no longer experience the opposition between what is spiritual and bodily in him.” Can you imagine this? Can you imagine your body and spirit as well as your intellect, will, emotions, imagination, desires, passions, and eros all united in a perfect dance of love that is effortless, creative, spontaneous, and life-giving? How liberating! How intoxicating to experience your body and soul as the two perfect lovers they were always created to be!

Can you imagine this? Can you imagine your body and spirit as well as your intellect, will, emotions, imagination, desires, passions, and eros all united in a perfect dance of love that is effortless, creative, spontaneous, and life-giving? How liberating!

But, and this caught my attention, spiritualization is not the definitive “victory” of the spirit over the body, as if the spirit finally gains the upper hand over our unruly flesh. Rather, St. JPII says, the spirit will “fully permeate the body and the powers of the spirit will permeate the energies of the body” (A67:1).

My favorite image for spiritualization is a tea bag steeped in a clear glass of hot water. The clear water (the body) has been “permeated” by the tea (the spirit) so that the tea (the spirit) is uniformly dispersed throughout the water (the body). Just as the water is saturated by the tea, so, too, the body will be saturated by the spirit. Are they two or are they one? The answer is “both!” The water remains water – it hasn’t been turned into concrete or mud – all the while it is intimately united to the tea. The body remains the body – it hasn’t been turned into a point of light or an angel – all the while it is intimately united to the powers of the spirit.

However, spiritualization is only step one. It is the necessary prelude to the main event: divinization! The body is spiritualized so it can be fully divinized. But we’ll come back to that next week. In the meantime, I hope this week you will ponder incessantly the spiritualization of your body and how it might feel for the powers of the spirit/Spirit to fully saturate your whole being/body and motivate your actions 100% of the time. And remember…you are a gift!

© Katrina J. Zeno, MTS

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Jack Henz’ Reflection:  “Heating up our Spiritualization”

Saturday morning before sunrise, with a cup of coffee steaming in my hand, I opened the porch door and the fresh scent of rain rushed in with the cool air. Armed with my hot coffee and a hoodie, I plopped into my favorite rocker to reflect on Katrina’s blog on tea and spiritualization. The clock showed 5:45AM. Ah, plenty of time before “life” stirred in our home. The sound of rain drops hitting the ground made me pull the hoodie closer. Time to reflect.

Next thing I knew, I was flying in the rain clouds over my Arizona home. I could see Phoenix below as I spread my arms like wings. In and out of the clouds I went, but I wasn’t cold or wet. Below, Phoenix faded and towering mountains loomed ahead. Suddenly, I was descending out of the clouds onto a Colorado ski run – Andy’s Encore – at Copper Mountain!

The air rushed by my ski mask as powder snow sprayed into the air with each familiar turn. Andy’s Encore snakes its way downhill over two miles of moderate to steep slopes, lumpy moguls, and tree-lined runs all covered in thick Colorado powder. What a run I was having! Soon the resort town loomed ahead.

Inexplicably, the dream transitioned to the desert near my home. I was walking and hurrying to meet someone. The sky was dark and cloudy. Raindrops, big ones, started to fall. Could I beat the cloudburst?

Outside it was pouring rain as I awoke in my rocker. I had fallen asleep and had entered into this incredible dream. The clock showed a few minutes after 6. Wait, how could I have “flown” to Colorado, skied down a slope, and returned to Arizona in …. 10-15 minutes instead of a dozen hours?

While my body slept, my brain and spirit took me on a timeless adventure. I didn’t know how to explain the vivid colors I “saw,” the clouds, snow, and ski slopes I “felt,” or the thrill of flying in and out of the clouds I “experienced.” All I knew for sure was that my body, except for the part of me that was dreaming, was detached from the sensations I experienced as I slept. I guess you could say I had an “out of body” experience that was fully embodied!

As I slept, my body and its vivid sensations weren’t completely divorced from my spirit as they will be at death. Humbly, I can’t imagine what the total separation between body and soul will be like due to death.

As I slept, my body and its vivid sensations weren’t completely divorced from my spirit as they will be at death. Humbly, I can’t imagine what the total separation between body and soul will be like due to death.  

Later my wife, Karen, decided to make some sun tea for a post-Mass breakfast with friends. She filled a pitcher with water, placed a half dozen tea bags in it, and placed it on a ledge to let the sun work its magic. Her actions fed right into helping me with my reflection on the spiritualization of our body/spirit soulmates.

When I read Katrina’s analogy of hot water (body) and tea (the spirit) to describe the spirit permeating the body, it immediately resonated with me. But something was missing in the analogy: the role of heat. Hot water hastens the permeation of the tea into the water. Karen’s sun tea relied on the sun to warm the water using basically the same principle. Why is heat important?

In the Old Testament, heat and fire were used to purify metals or objects designated for sacred vessels and worship. In the Church and saints’ writings, references to the heat and fire of purgatory purifying our spirit of sin and the stain of original sin abound. Perhaps the preparation of our spirit needs to be “hastened” by the “heat” of purgatory for its eternal embodiment so that the body-spirit re-union is facilitated. Maybe there are unknown stages in this purification process that somehow need the body and spirit to be separated before Jesus’ Second Coming and the resurrection of our own bodies. The process of preparing our personhood for the glorious re-union of our body and spirit is a mystery worthy of reflection.

The process of preparing our personhood for the glorious re-union of our body and spirit is a mystery worthy of reflection.

Thoughts of our final spiritualization provided quite a mental backdrop for the amazing dream my imagination gifted to me. My dreams rarely offer me a “opportunity to fly” or ski on familiar Colorado ski slopes or to experience a kind of vivid embodiment where all engines are “go” and working in glorious, flawless harmony. I have to say, it gave me a tantalizing taste of our eternal spiritualization, almost better than Karen’s sun tea.

©by Jack Henz

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*Jack Henz is a retired meteorologist and a graduate of the Diocese of Phoenix ‘s Kino Catechetical Institute. Together with his wife Karen, he is a passionate catechist concerning all things Catholic, especially the Theology of the Body.