The Impassibility of Risen Bodies

To be impassible is to be immune to suffering and change.

The bodies of the just will not be capable of suffering any pain whatever, nor will they ever undergo substantial change. The bodies of the damned will endure pains in hell, and hence arenot impassible; yet these bodies will not undergo substantial change. St. Paul (I Cor. 15:42) says: “It [the body] is sownin corruption, it shall rise in in-corruption.”

Impassibility in the risen bodies of the just does not mean numbness or insensibility. It means immunity to what is contrary to human nature and painful to it. The risen body will have sensation (that is, its senses will operate and bring in sense-findings or sense-knowledge), and it will have movement;these things belong to the perfection of the body.

The senses of the risen bodies of the just will find inthe overflow of glory, which comes upon them from the soul, their complete and enduring perfection. The senses will be perfectly andsatisfyingly in operation, and they will possess their objects, and not merely tend to these objects, or be in a state of readiness to perceive them.