The body carries the splendor of creation. All creation is beautiful revealing the hand of God in bringing it about. Yet the organic nature of the human body reveals God’s mind. The organic connection that exists among the different organs of our body is amazing, something that I gave no importance to in my youth but now I stand in awe before it. One wonders at how food, after it has been digested becomes a part of your hair, your eyes, your chest. How come one can become a Plato or an Einstein when he originally comes from very simple parents? One thinks of the flesh we have on our bodies; we communicate through it at the rational and other levels. It would not have been rational had it not been “reasoned” by someone. So it is in the place of being contemplated by the one who “reasoned” it. Concerning the creation, God says “it is good” in the book of Genesis, but concerning Man It says that God made him in His image and likeness. When God beholds Man, He says: “And God looked at what He made and saw that it was very good”. God was fascinated only with Man, apart from the other creatures, as the only one to dialogue with Him.
This flesh is of the earth despite its charm. And this earthliness overpowers all what the body has to the point of preventing it from the “light” that was there in the beginning. We are of the light as much as we are of the earth, and they (earth and light) play together at times and at others they oppose each other. Based on his flesh (body) Man can see the power of God and His majesty and His tenderness. God’s mysteries will be revealed to us when we turn to Him with all our heart and strength and when we communicate with each other with all our heart and strength; as such you cannot see God unless you see His goodness in His good creatures.
This seeing does not take place among people at the intellectual level but in an organic way when we embrace each other; we become one with the other because we are linked to each other with hidden “golden threads” until the unity of all humans will be revealed when the Kingdom of Heaven shall descend upon us.
Beauty and ugliness are both from God and each is a jargon. The ugly person will not alienate himself if you learn his language, that is if you go beyond what you see and get to view him in God. Man is not in the charm of his face but the charm of his unity with others and in the freedom of the image of God in him. It is a great mystery that your being is so not in yourself and your responsibilities, but in the humane dealing you have with others. To be one with and distinct from others simultaneously puts away the bondage resulting either from being closed on oneself or from being totally dissolved in others. As such we have here a human being who is in unity with himself and with the community at the same time.
The keys of life and death are in God’s hands. All humans are mortal and taste death. The human body is prone to death in its makeup. The body cells do not live forever. And in our understanding, “anyone who has died has been set free from sin.” Romans 6: 7. In that sense, death is mercy; and in the Christian understanding, it is a meeting with the Lord. And everyone is in God’s grip hoping to be resurrected. And death is the first encounter with God in what we call paradise in the hope of beholding the Divine Light in Heaven at the end of time.
At the end of time, the bodies of humans will be called for the Resurrection through the Holy Spirit who by His grace gathers the soul to the body on the last day. In that sense one can say that the body is already resurrected after death even though the dynamism it had has ceased.
The Sanctity of the body prevents us from cremating it. We hope for the continuity between the body and the person it belongs to though such continuity appears to be unfastened. The body is anointed with Chrism after baptism. This is why the cemetery used to be close to the church building where the living feel one, in the hope of the resurrection, with those who have departed. (They all share the same anointing through the Sacrament of Chrismation.)
From this perspective, the Church is not drawn to the idea of separation between the soul and the body, but she draws all to the mercy of God. The corruption that the body goes through is a chance for its encounter with the Lord. There are those who fear death and those who do not. What is important is that one should be ready for his departure from this existence and to get to that of Peace. We promise those who depart from us with prayer and the comfort of what the Scriptures say. And in Europe many institutions have been founded to take care of those who are terminally ill and prepare them for death; I wish there were in every family of the faithful those who are close in taking care of the sick with kind and good words. The priest can carry this mission if he learns what he can say beyond the said and written prayers.
The above mentioned care implies the belief that with death we come to the end of our earthly life and that the body is honorable and that it receives the Sacrament of Unction; that implies that we believe that the human being is one before death and after it dismissing the belief that we are made of a soul that remains and of a material body that disappears. The body in our understanding is an integral part of the human being not inferior to the soul in the reality of this existence and the one to come.
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As I reflect on this divine view of the body, I carry Gaza in my heart. All those who have been killed there are with God. Why do they pluck out the infants? The death of those who fight is justifiable. But how can a people who have the Prophets that called for justice accept the death of women and the elderly who are unarmed? Why this destruction which reminds us of the end of the world? What is the benefit of killing hundreds of the people of Gaza? All these are bodies which injustice and oppression have made into sacrifices at the altar of God.
The issue is not one of reconciliation. What is required is to stop the killing of armless people. And if a truce takes place, then the language of peace would be in effect. The Palestinians should be left in Gaza, the land they love that has been theirs for ages, to build their society around the olive trees, the orange trees and their waters, thus participating with the current civilization of the world.
Stop this “bath” of blood. The people being killed were not of the German nation whose leader burned the Jews in the most brutal ways. Why should the one whose ancestors were victims in Aushwitz transform every town in the Gaza strip to another Aushwitz?
Peace be on those who stand steadfast in Gaza. Our brothers there are called to glo
ry. And may we use all the means we have to realize that glory.
Translated by Riad Moufarrij
Original Text: “الجسد” –An Nahar- 17.01.2009
