The Risen Christ

Christ retained his own true body in and after the Resurrection. Had this not been a true body, or had it not been the body in which Christ suffered, the Resurrection would not have been real but only apparent.

The body of Christ was glorified in its rising. The saints shall rise in bodily glory; Christ’s Resurrection is the cause and the exemplar of their rising; hence,his body is much greater in glory than theirs; our Lordmerited this glory by his Passion. Our Lord possessed in his soul the glory of the beatific vision from the first moment of his existence as man; yet the glory of the beatific vision was divinelyprevented from overflowing into the body of Christ until after He had endured the Passion and Death for our salvation. But once that work for us was done, the glory of his soul inundated his body.

Flesh, blood, bones, and all the other constituents ofa human body were in the body of Christ as he rose in glory. It wasa complete and perfect body. Our Lord, speaking after his Resurrection to the disciples who thought he was a phantom, said:“A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me to have”(Luke 24:39).

Our Lord kept in his glorified body the marks of his wounds: (a) as an everlasting testimony of his victory; (b) as a proof that he is the same Christ who suffered and was crucified;(c) as a constant and concrete plea on our behalf to the Eternal Father; (d) as a means of upbraiding the reprobates on the last day, showing them what he did for them, thus reminding them of what they had wickedly despised and rejected.