321. Youth and age in Heaven
321. YOUTH AND AGE IN HEAVEN
Will our resurrection bodies be young or old? Will my body be the body of an older man compared with my son’s body, and at the same time the body of a young man compared with my father’s body? If we will have perfect bodies, will they all be equally young?
Whether all will rise again of the same age?
It is written (Eph 4:13): Until we meet . . . unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. Now Christ rose again of youthful age, which begins about the age of thirty years, as Augustine says. Therefore others also will rise again of a youthful age. . . .
I answer that, Man will rise again without any defect in human nature, because as God founded human nature without a defect, even so will He restore it without defect. Now human nature has a twofold defect. First, because it has not yet attained to its ultimate perfection. Secondly, because it has already gone back from its ultimate perfection. The first defect is found in children, the second in the aged; and consequently in each of these human nature will be brought by the resurrection to the state of its ultimate perfection, which is in the youthful age, at which the movement of growth terminates and from which the movement of decrease begins.
Objection 1. It would seem that all will not rise again of the same age, namely the youthful. Because God will take nothing pertaining to man’s perfection from those who rise again, especially from the blessed. Now age pertains to the perfection of man, since old age is the age that demands reverence. Therefore the old will not rise again of a youthful age.
Reply to Objection 1. Old age calls for reverence not on account of the state of the body . . . but on account of the soul’s wisdom. . . . Wherefore in the elect there will remain the reverence due to old age on account of the fullness of divine wisdom which will be in them, but the defect of old age will not be in them (S81,1).
The question is not as trivial as it seems, since time is hardly trivial, and one essential difference between life now and life after death is the kind of time we will experience. Whatever “eternity” means, it means more than merely “endless time”.
St. Thomas’ answer to the question is more modest than it seems. We know little with certainty about Heaven, but we know that all is perfect there. Insofar as a healthy body of thirty or thirty—three is more perfect than an undeveloped body of three or an aging body of 103, a youthful body is our best concrete image for the body we will have in Heaven. It lacks the two kinds of defects St. Thomas mentions which come from our present time experience: the not yet perfect or the no longer perfect. In Heaven all the “not yets” will have already arrived and all the “no longers” will no longer be lost. In Heaven nothing good is lost, and therefore somehow all the goods lost to our experience on earth by being past (“no longer”) or future (“not yet”) will be present. The blessed will have simultaneously, in the present, all the perfections of childhood, youth, and age without any of their imperfections. Those born blind will see all the beauties they missed on earth, and the infant who died in the womb will feel all the joys of the life he missed outside the womb. How? God only knows, but God knows.
People (especially children) who catch a glimpse of the blessed in Heaven by near—death experiences, out-of-body experiences, or mystical experiences often say things like this: “When I saw Grandma in Heaven she was an old lady and a young woman and a little girl at the same time.” The Heavenly body will not be thirty years old at the expense of being three or 103.
There may be a very practical application in this world of this otherworldly truth. We can love and appreciate more than the good we have now, we can love and appreciate also the good things that we or others have no longer (the lost joys and innocences of youth) or not yet (the peaceful wisdom of old age); and insofar as we do this, we come closer to bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.