Published in the bulletin of Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Knoxville, TN, on the 2nd Sunday during Lent.
My dear Parishioners,
Peace! The fourth article of the Apostle’s Creed is “Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, He was crucified, He died, He was buried” There are ten (10) In Brief passages in the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding this article of the Creed. The following is a reflection on article 630.
When Jesus died on the Cross His body and soul were separated from each other, as happens whenever any of us die. What is unique about the death of Jesus is that His Divine Person remained present or ‘linked’ to both His body and soul. That Christ was buried assures us of the reality of His death. You don’t burry the living but the dead you do burry.
Unlike most who are buried, Christ’s body did not decay in the tomb. Christ’s body remained ‘incorrupt’ or as Sacred Scripture says ‘did not see corruption’ (cf. Acts 13:37). Joan Carroll Cruz wrote an entire book The Incorruptibles (1977, TAN) about various saints (102 of them) who, like the Lord before them, did not decay in the grave. Aristotle in his work On Generation and Corruption points out that in the world as we know it, decay is the ordinary course of events (320a4). The presence of the Eternal Son to the dead body of the Eternal Son made man (Jesus’ corpse) is what kept Christ’s body from decay in the tomb. Similarly, it is the power of God which preserves various saints from corporeal decay even as God’s grace is able to preserve us all from that spiritual rot we call sin.
Incorruption may be spoken of variously: to be without sin, to not decay. Believers recognize both that Jesus never sinned and His body did not decay. Some people do not believe in the life to come, the eternity of Heaven or Hell. These people believe in annihilation or that the soul ceases to exist upon death. The pagan Aristotle could recognize, however, that due to its immateriality, the soul is not bound to the laws of corruption (cf. On the Soul, 414a19). This is another way of speaking about the incorruption of Jesus’ soul (and our souls also). The soul continues to exist even after death, when body and soul are separated. In the case of Christ, His Divine Person was present not only to His body in the tomb but also to His soul even as it sojourned to ‘preach to those imprisoned’ and to free those who were held captive until such time as He opened the gates of Heaven by His death and resurrection (cf. Ephesians 4:8; 1 Peter 3:19; 4:6; Revelation 21:12-15, 21, 25).
Our salvation hinges not only on the humanity of Christ whose body was nailed to the Cross and laid lifelessly in the tomb, but also in His divinity which remained present to both His body and soul even as they were separated by death. May we always remain united to Christ.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr