Our heavenly bodies?

returntosender · Oct 15, 2021

What do you think our bodies will look like in heaven?
Will we resemble our earth selves or...
Biblically we are supposed to have earthly bodies but lately I have been thinking of a more spiritual entity. Maybe even floating like an angel.
What do you think of when you think of your heavenly body?
There is no sexual activity so our bodies wouldn't need those parts.
Also, when we live on Earth for a thousands years we will need our earthly bodies again, right?

Citizen of the Kingdom · Oct 15, 2021

I think it’s like the coat of many colours that the Father is weaving, a mess looking at the tapestry from here but luminescent and many faceted like God. A prism set free!

from earths perspective it’s just black and white.

Bob Crowley · Oct 17, 2021

Some Catholic saints claimed to have had visions of heaven. There's some descriptions here.

Heaven as Described by the Saints

I've lifted a couple of paragraphs -

St. Thomas Aquinas describes five characteristics of the glorified body. In the first place, the glorified body is incapable of physical pain or death. Secondly, there will be no imperfections in the body but a new form of beauty. It will still be one’s very own body, but restored and glorified. Thirdly, glorified bodies possess subtility, by which the body is under command of the soul; it can pass through walls, for instance (see Jn: 20-19). The fourth power of the glorified body is agility, which enables the body to travel immediately to any distance at the “wink of an eye,” as Thomas puts it. Heaven is not static; a new body implies movement and functionality.

Finally, the glorified body “will shine like the sun.” (Mt 13:43) Theologians call this “brightness”; it will be a sharing of Jesus’ transfiguration experience on Mt.Tabor. When St. Peter exclaimed at the Transfiguration, “Lord, it is good that we are here,” the Greek adjective for “good” here, kalon, means “beautiful.” Glorified souls and bodies are fully alive to beauty.

On the business of "agility" when the body can travel immediately to any distance at the wink of an eye, I've often claimed that the night my father died he appeared in my room. When he first "materialised" near the door, he seemed to have a look of surprise on his face. I think he'd been told to apologise for the way he'd treated me, and no sooner had he been told than he immediately found himself in my room, despite not knowing where I lived (I didn't want him to know - I couldn't stand him). Hence the look of surprise. That's what I think anyway.

The spiritual agency that sent him just "thought" it, and he arrived. Mind you he hadn't received a glorified body, and I don't think he ever will as I think he's in Hell.

An experience of St. John Bosco bears this out as he saw one of his former students, St. Dominic Savio, in a type of flowery meadow after the latter had died; “None of the plants we know,” says St. John, “could ever give you an idea of those flowers, although there was a resemblance of sorts. The very grass, the flowers, the trees, and the fruit- all were of singular and magnificent beauty.” St. John asked to see some of the supernatural light. St. Dominic told him, “No one can see it until he has come to see God as He is. The faintest ray of that light would instantly strike one dead, because the human senses are not sturdy enough to endure it.”

The light of God would appear to be overwhelming. This puzzles me, as I wonder what stops us from seeing Him now, since He's all around and through us. What is the barrier that blocks our perception of God and what does it consist of? I have a theory about space-time, but that's my personal opinion, partly due to a certain peculiar experience.

Zen mystics, whom I believe do get some intimations of the spiritual world, seem to mention a "voidness". There's a strange supernatural word out there, in which God's light is so powerful that it would kill us if we were exposed to it for a second, yet mystics (including some saints) get visions which leave them unscathed, and mystics from other traditions sense a "voidness" or "emptiness".

As for our glorified bodies, I'll wait till I get there (hopefully!). I'm hard of hearing, so I hope that gets fixed at least. I might even be able to recognise what notes the heavenly choir are singing!

Citizen of the Kingdom · Oct 17, 2021

The luminosity is perhaps what the Adams lost at the fall., why they needed covering. It was seen as whiter than white at the transformation on the hill. Another further revelation of glory unseen previously except perhaps in the view of Moses’ face, which scripture says is still unseen by many. The move thru which preservation of the original is progressing perhaps.

returntosender · Oct 17, 2021

Bob Crowley said:
Some Catholic saints claimed to have had visions of heaven. There's some descriptions here.

Heaven as Described by the Saints

I've lifted a couple of paragraphs -

On the business of "agility" when the body can travel immediately to any distance at the wink of an eye, I've often claimed that the night my father died he appeared in my room. When he first "materialised" near the door, he seemed to have a look of surprise on his face. I think he'd been told to apologise for the way he'd treated me, and no sooner had he been told than he immediately found himself in my room, despite not knowing where I lived (I didn't want him to know - I couldn't stand him). Hence the look of surprise. That's what I think anyway.

The spiritual agency that sent him just "thought" it, and he arrived. Mind you he hadn't received a glorified body, and I don't think he ever will as I think he's in Hell.

The light of God would appear to be overwhelming. This puzzles me, as I wonder what stops us from seeing Him now, since He's all around and through us. What is the barrier that blocks our perception of God and what does it consist of? I have a theory about space-time, but that's my personal opinion, partly due to a certain peculiar experience.

Zen mystics, whom I believe do get some intimations of the spiritual world, seem to mention a "voidness". There's a strange supernatural word out there, in which God's light is so powerful that it would kill us if we were exposed to it for a second, yet mystics (including some saints) get visions which leave them unscathed, and mystics from other traditions sense a "voidness" or "emptiness".

As for our glorified bodies, I'll wait till I get there (hopefully!). I'm hard of hearing, so I hope that gets fixed at least. I might even be able to recognise what notes the heavenly choir are singing!

I usually don't read the long ones but I really enjoyed your post,
Thank you

I wish there were more responding.

Mark Quayle · Oct 17, 2021

returntosender said:
I usually don't read the long ones but I really enjoyed your post,
Thank you
I wish there were more responding.

There may be many like me, watching this thread, not sure how to approach your question. We have had many threads on this site that touch on this subject from different angles, so this is by far not the first.

This is one subject that is hard to answer, maybe mostly because the way "we shall be changed" is so extreme and un-characteristic of this temporal mentality of ours, that description —in fact, concept itself— falls short of the truth, the understanding we know we lack.

We know that it is these bodies, (yet made whole and glorified, changed, the old way of things done away with, and now become what we were made for from the beginning, and that, by the mere fact of seeing him as he is), that we will still possess. And there are monstrously large hints as to what it means to be a member of the Bride of Christ, the Church, the Body of Christ, the Children of God, the Dwelling Place of God, One with God, with him as our very sustenance and substance, each individual precious to him as an individual and as part of the whole.

The other theme that immediately comes to me, that like the first, I don't know how to incorporate it into an answer to your question, is the idea of the fact that Heaven, or the Spiritual Place I think of as God's economy of operation, is not patterned off of the things we consider Real, here on this temporal economy of operation. Rather it is just the other way around. What we call reality, is a passing vapor, compared to that which is to come.

Jaxxi · Nov 2, 2021

returntosender said:
What do you think our bodies will look like in heaven?
Will we resemble our earth selves or...
Biblically we are supposed to have earthly bodies but lately I have been thinking of a more spiritual entity. Maybe even floating like an angel.
What do you think of when you think of your heavenly body?
There is no sexual activity so our bodies wouldn't need those parts.
Also, when we live on Earth for a thousands years we will need our earthly bodies again, right?

Very very similar to the ones we have in our dreams.

returntosender · Nov 2, 2021

Jaxxi said:
Very very similar to the ones we have in our dreams.

And what is that? I don't think I have ever dreamt about heaven. Nice to see you posting Jaxxi.

returntosender · Nov 2, 2021

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Our heavenly bodies?

returntosender

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Citizen of the Kingdom

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Bob Crowley

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Citizen of the Kingdom

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returntosender

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Mark Quayle

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Jaxxi

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