IV.The Sanctum Dispatch
He Took His Body With Him
Ascension Sunday — why the Catholic doctrine of the Resurrection is a doctrine for men.
Brother,
Today the Church marks the Ascension of the Lord — transferred to Sunday in most American dioceses from the fortieth day of Easter, which fell on Thursday this week. Forty days after Resurrection morning, the Risen Christ walked His apostles out to a hill near Bethany, lifted His hands in blessing, and ascended.
Most modern preaching on this Sunday is soft. Jesus went to heaven. He is with the Father. He is preparing a place.
All of that is true. None of it is the load-bearing claim.
The load-bearing claim of the Ascension is this: He took His body with Him.
One Reflection
When the Lord stepped through the door of His tomb on Easter morning, He did not leave His body behind. The Resurrection is not a metaphor. It is not a spiritual reawakening of His followers. It is the same physical Body that was scourged at the pillar, nailed to the cross, pierced at the side — raised, glorified, but the same body.
Thomas put his finger into the wound. The marks were still there. The Risen Christ ate fish on the shore of Galilee. He walked. He cooked. He spoke His friends' names. And then on the fortieth day, He took that body — the body that bore the marks of His fight — up to the right hand of the Father.
The Catechism, paragraph 659, calls this the definitive entry of Jesus' humanity into God's heavenly domain. Paragraph 663: Christ's body was glorified at the moment of his Resurrection, as proved by the new and supernatural properties it subsequently and permanently enjoys.
A glorified body. Not a discarded one. Not a body left in the tomb while the soul ascended. His body.
Brother, this is not a footnote of Catholic teaching. This is the architecture of it.
Because if Christ took His body to heaven, then the body matters. Yours matters. The body that worked the shift you just finished. The body that buried your father. The body that held your wife on the worst day of her life. The body that age is starting to slow and that the scars on it still remember.
Saint Paul says it plain in First Corinthians, chapter fifteen, verses forty-two through forty-four. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. The body you live in is seed. Christ's Resurrection is the proof that the seed becomes harvest. The Catholic doctrine is not that you escape your body at death and float somewhere as pure spirit. The Catholic doctrine is that the body you carry now will rise. Glorified. Made fit for heaven. But the same body. Yours.
This is why the Church has never disposed of the bodies of her saints as if they were trash. This is why we keep relics. This is why we kneel at the bones of martyrs. This is why every Sunday at every Mass we say, in the Creed — I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Most Catholic men say that line every Sunday. Most have never sat with what it means.
Christ took His body with Him. He took the body of a Jewish carpenter who walked the dusty roads of Galilee. He took the body of a man who had been beaten and pierced and laid in a tomb. He took the body of a man who, when He stood up on the third day, still bore the wounds of His vocation.
And He took it home.
One Discipline
Pray the Nicene Creed slowly this week — once, deliberately, by yourself, in a quiet room. Not the auto-pilot Sunday version. The real one.
When you get to the line I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come — stop. Hold the silence for ten seconds. Let it land.
The Creed is the shortest summary of Catholic doctrine the Church has. The Resurrection of the body sits at the end of it for a reason. It is the last word — the answer to every philosopher who ever said the body was a prison. The Catholic answer is that the body is a vocation, and the vocation has an inheritance.
One Action
Memorial Day is one week from tomorrow. The bodies of the men who died in service are buried under crosses in cemeteries from Normandy to Arlington to the small parish graveyard in the town where you grew up. The doctrine of bodily Resurrection says those bodies will rise.
Visit a Catholic cemetery this week. If you cannot — call to mind, by name, three deceased men in your family or community. Say the Latin words the Church has prayed for the dead for sixteen hundred years, slowly enough for them to hear it:
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them.
Add a Hail Mary for each man by name. Five minutes. That is all it takes.
Coming Tuesday on the channel: What the Catechism Actually Says About Just War. The Catholic doctrine on when a man may fight, when he must not, and what is owed to the enemy when the cannons fire. Sixteen hundred years of doctrine — Augustine, Aquinas, the Catechism in your hand. The episode the world will tell you the Church does not have. She has it.
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Christ Jesus, ascended in glory, pray for us.
Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven, pray for us.
Saint Stephen, first martyr who saw the Risen Lord at the right hand of the Father, pray for us.
In Christ, ascended and glorified,
Will
Founder, 1765 Sanctum Co.
P.S. Reply to this email with one line: the name of one deceased Catholic man you will pray for this week. I read every reply, and on Memorial Day morning I will pray a decade of the Rosary for every name received. The communion of saints runs both directions, brother. Let's run it together.
For God. For country. For the fight.
In Christ, ascended and glorified,
Will
Founder, 1765 Sanctum Co.