Amazing Encounters in the Resurrection
Amazing Encounters in the Resurrection¹
I congratulate you, my brothers and my sons, on the glorious Feast of the Resurrection, asking for our beloved country peace and security, and asking for the whole world a rising from its financial fall and all its painful consequences in all lands…
And after, we have become accustomed every year to speak about the general resurrection, and what it contains of meanings and thoughts and meditations, knowing the great importance of the resurrection of the dead, without which human beings would resemble animals and insects and creeping things whose life ends with death and then annihilation… But humans are distinguished in that they have another life after death, whose beginning is the resurrection through which they enter into the eternal life that does not end.
And of the blessings of the resurrection is that it opens the door to many amazing and glorious encounters that could never possibly happen without the resurrection…
The first of these encounters: the encounter of two who were inseparable and accompanying each other for their whole lifetime, not separated for a single moment. Rather they were in an amazing unity and an indescribable integration… And by these two I mean: the spirit and the body in every human being. And in the unity they lived, their feelings were merged. If the spirit rejoiced, the body smiled or laughed and exulted. And if the spirit was sad, the body became depressed or cried. And if the spirit entered into the realm of prayer, the body knelt or prostrated or stood in reverence, and so on from the aspects of participation in all feelings and emotions which they call in the world of medicine “psychosomatic.” Truly each of them was for the other a lifelong partner.
These two inseparable friends were separated by death. The spirit ascended upward, and the body descended downward and was buried. The spirit remained alive and did not die. As for the body, it decomposed and turned into dust. And hundreds or thousands of years passed over the complete separation between the spirit and the body.
And finally, by the resurrection the body rose, and God sent the spirit to unite with the body, and without doubt it found it different in some respects from what it was before. For God does not raise a body with the defects it had. So the blind person does not rise blind, but rises with good sight. And the lame and crippled do not rise as they were, but with sound legs. And likewise the rest of the disabled do not rise with any disability. And also the deformed one is granted by the Lord in the resurrection beauty. And those whose limbs were amputated in accidents or surgeries… and were given prosthetic limbs, all those rise with natural sound limbs…
Here, a question stands before us: How will the spirit recognize its body so as to unite with it after that long estrangement and the many changes? No doubt that is another miracle! Does it return to an amazing memory of the spirit? Or is it a grace of knowledge granted to it?!
What is important is that every spirit unites with its body. Then they stand together before the just God on the fearful Day of Judgment, or the day of the general judgment, to present an account of all they did during their earthly life, whether good or evil in which they both participated. And after God’s judgment upon them is issued, they go together to their eternal destiny…
This is the first encounter in the resurrection. And what about the second encounter? It is the encounter of loved ones together, and relatives and acquaintances and friends… among them the encounter of the family which lost a beloved by death. And years passed for them in sorrow and weeping over him. Then comes the encounter with him in the general resurrection… It is the encounter of widows with husbands, or the encounter of orphans with fathers and mothers…
And here I place a rare example: A man died leaving his wife pregnant, so she gave birth after her husband’s death to a son who never saw his father at all, nor knows his appearance. How will this one recognize his father at the time of the resurrection?!
Another example is the recognition through the chain of genealogies: that a person recognizes his grandfather, and his grandfather’s father, and the grandfather of his grandfather, and the grandfather of the grandfather of his grandfather, to the end of the chain?! Who will introduce the family to its origins…?
Then if the bodies will rise spiritual, non-material, as we believe, how will the process of recognition or introduction be?
A third encounter is the encounter of people generally, each with the other. Knowing that the encounter in eternal bliss will be only for the righteous with the righteous. As for sinners, they will be cast outside into the darkness, far from the light of God and the light of His angels and His saints…
And here some questions come to my mind, among them:
A righteous mother had two sons: one righteous who went to heaven and she saw him with her, and the other son was not worthy to enter heaven, so his mother did not see him and will not see him… What will be her feeling and her emotion toward him, knowing that the place of eternal bliss has fled from it sorrow and sadness and sighing? It is a place of complete perpetual joy. So will that mother who lost one of her sons in eternity be granted by God to forget him completely as though he had not been born? Or will her emotions be all focused on God and on righteousness and the righteous, such that that son never crosses her mind?!
Another example: A righteous person died murdered. And his murderer regretted with all his heart the killing, and repented a true repentance, and God accepted his repentance, and he went to heaven. And the murderer and the murdered met together in the abode of bliss. How will their feeling be, when in eternity there exist absolutely no wrong feelings? Surely they will meet with all affection and love and joy. But of what kind will that affection and that joy be?
The fourth type of encounter in the other world will be the encounter of peoples and nations and races, of the righteous from every place. From the Aryan race to the Negro race, and between them the races according to the divisions of anthropology: white peoples and black and yellow in their degrees and kinds… a great multitude that cannot be counted.
I do not know how they will recognize each other? Or will God—blessed be His name—classify them rank by rank, and group by group, according to the degrees of their faith and the degrees of their spirituality and the degrees of their knowledge, and all are righteous and accepted… But is it possible for all to meet with all? Or is this impossible? Here my mind stands puzzled, not knowing how to answer. And in the words of the poet: “Wise is he who says: I do not know.”
And here a story comes to my mind of a brother who sent to a saintly elder hermit during his last days saying to him: “Allow me, my father, to visit you now and see you before you depart to your high level in eternity where someone weak like me cannot approach.” Does this mean that the degrees of the righteous are in levels, each higher than the other, and mingling is not available to all!? Rather they see them from afar without mixing with them or disturbing what they are in of spiritual enjoyment in eternity!
If this is the case, then how is it possible for the righteous to have the fifth encounter, which is the encounter with the angels, who themselves are in degrees each higher than the other?! Or is it that in the other life there is fellowship with the angels without this meaning full integration? Or is there integration since the number of angels is uncountable? So their abundant numbers may integrate with the righteous humans, beginning with the martyrs and prophets and apostles and all the saints whose encounter with the righteous will be a kind of encounters in eternity…
Finally, it seems to me that I have touched upon subjects higher than the level of my human understanding. And it is enough to say that in eternity we will have many encounters whose types we have spoken about. But the essence of these encounters and their nature is among the matters not revealed to us, and it is not fitting for us to plunge into their depths…
In conclusion, I wish you every good. And every year you are in blessing and grace, praying for our beloved head of state, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, that the Lord may grant him special strength to support him in his struggle for preserving peace in our country and its surroundings.
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Al-Ahram newspaper on 19-4-2009 AD
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