The Ascension of Jesus into heaven sheds light on these questions; because amazingly enough, with the Ascension we learn that the Second Person of the Trinity is now forever not only divine but also human. The theologian James Alison puts it this way:

It is I think important to hold on to this, since there is a tendency, … to imagine that Jesus may well have been human up until his death, but from the resurrection onwards, he reverted to being God, and eventually, like a helium balloon, couldn’t be held to the earth any longer, and floated back to heaven where he belonged.
(Knowing Jesus)

The Son remains human, just as he remains “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” And one reason why it is so crucial to our faith that Jesus’ resurrection was more than spiritual is that it reveals an astonishing fact concerning us “poor banished children of Eve” (exsules filii Hevae).

It did not take long for the early Christians to become aware that, with the Resurrection of Jesus, God was bestowing glory, not just on Jesus himself, but also on humanity as a whole — and on each of us individually.

In the Eucharistic prayer on the Feast of the Ascension, we hear:

In union with the whole Church we celebrate that day when your only Son, Our Lord, took his place with you and raised our frail human nature to glory.

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…” (1 Corinthians 15:17).

In the magnificent fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul struggles to explain the inexplicable when he speaks of the “spiritual body” — soma pneumatikon.  We know that the resurrected body of Jesus was not just a resuscitated body, brought back to this life with all its limitations.  The gospels show us that his body was now mysteriously different.  But though it was not like the bodies we know, in some wondrous sense it was and is a body.  The Word became flesh and remained flesh.  Every time we receive communion, we say Amen to that resurrected “spiritual body” of Christ.

That the Resurrection was in some incomprehensible way physical is not merely incidental to our faith.  For one thing, it means that if Christ was raised and healed in his whole being, not just spiritually, we also are saved from death and healed in our entirety. As the visible wounds of the resurrected Jesus indicate, every bit of our humanity, every part of our life’s story is valuable to God. We are welcomed into the divine life with our joys and our wounds – wounds that are to be healed and glorified, like those of Jesus.  All is now part of the new life of Jesus.  Our whole human nature is being raised to glory with Jesus, and nothing about us is excluded from the divine love and life.

Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’
(John 20:26-7)

 

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain…

There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
(1 Corinthians 15:35-37; 40-44)

God calls, not just at the moment of death, but through our day-to-day lives.

Anima Christi – 9

(1. Soul of Christ, sanctify me.)

(2. Body of Christ, save me.)

(3. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.)

(4. Water from the side of Christ, wash me.)

(5. Passion of Christ, strengthen me.)

(6. Within thy Wounds, hide me.)

(7. Let Me Never Be Separated from Thee.)

(8. From the Wicked Foe Defend Me.)

(9. At the hour of my death, call me.)

(10. That I May Praise Thee Forever.)

- – - – -

At the hour of my death, call me
and bid me come to Thee.
In hora mortis meae voca me,
et iube me venire ad te.

There is a book by Alfred McBride, which seems to be out of print now, called Remaining Faithful (or perhaps it is called Staying Faithful, which is the only similar title I can find by Father McBride).

In this book he speaks of a woman who founded a Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., ministering to poor black people who had traveled north from the rural South to find work.  Called Bishop Jones, she had a radio show on Sunday mornings.  Here is a passage from a sermon given on Palm Sunday:

Children, remember how hard it was when you worked on the farm.  At the end of the day your back was sore.  Your arms ached.  Your head throbbed.  But then you heard your mother come out on the porch and say, ‘Come on in.  It’s time to eat.’  And as you sat and ate, your aches and pains melted away and peace filled your heart.

Now next Thursday is Holy Thursday.  Christ will come out on the church porch and say, ‘Come on in and eat.’  And when you do he will take away the ache in your heart and the sorrow in your soul.  He will fill you with love and peace and forgiveness.

And an even greater day will come, the day of your death.  Then Christ will come out on the heavenly porch and say, ‘Children, come in and eat.  I have an eternal banquet ready for you.  Welcome home.’

God is leading us where we want to be – to our heart’s desire.  We are being led to God.  God is leading us home.

What a wonderful prayer – “bid me come to Thee.”

According to Pope John Paul II:

This is the prayer of Christian hope, which in no way detracts from the joy of the present, while entrusting the future to God’s gracious and loving care.

“Iube me venire ad te!” [Bid me come to Thee]: this is the deepest yearning of the human heart, even in those who are not conscious of it.

Grant, O Lord of life, that we may be ever vividly aware of this and that we may savor every season of our lives as a gift filled with promise for the future.

(Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Elderly, October 1999)

At the hour of my death, call me
and bid me come to Thee.
In hora mortis meae voca me,
et iube me venire ad te.

- – - – -

“Call Me” image by Rose Hoover, rc

“Peace,” she replies. “Or perhaps joy.”

After a moment she asks him, “What about your own word for life?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

No, she probably wouldn’t.  The word he is thinking of is “futility.”

Josh, you may remember, is the ex-Christian with whom I correspond from time to time. He admits that a certain amount of happiness is found in life, as well as a certain amount of pain and sorrow.  But at the end, he concludes, it all means nothing.

While he has lost the sense of any meaning to life, Josh has found purpose in his current crusade against Christianity. He has become what we might call a dysvangelist (or more etymologically correct, a “dysangelist”), one who proclaims, not Good News, but bad or disordered news. His co-religionists include the band of in-your-face “new atheists” whose books are hot sellers these days. Josh is less eloquent than they, but no less fervent.

Josh’s mission, however, appears to give him no joy. It is one thing to spend a Saturday afternoon in what we consider meaningless activity. It is quite another to live a life of futility. Something deep in us insists that life has meaning, and the refusal of this basic instinct has the effect of throwing our minds and hearts out of kilter – of untuning, so to speak, the strings of life.

Here are two quotations, one reflecting a psychological approach to meaning, and the other a uniquely Christian insight:

As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy … through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy

Every Eucharist is a celebration of our trust that in Christ meaning will triumph in ways that we cannot guess or anticipate. Vaclav Havel, playwright and previous President of the Czech Republic, defined it thus: ‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’”

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? (New York: Burns and Oates, 2006), 17.

For the enemy has pursued me,
crushing my life to the ground,
making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

Answer me quickly, O Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

(Psalm 143:3-4, 7-8)