Death and the Resurrection (with Dr. Scott Hahn)

dr han you're very welcome to colloquy oh it's great to be with you thanks for the invitation of course thank you for coming on so i've been reading your latest book hope to die which is incredible by the way and it was released during the middle of this pandemic how did that timing make you feel well i thought the timing was going to be nice because here's a book on the christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body coming out just in time for easter 2020 or so i thought because it was when i was editing the final page proofs at the end of february that in conversations with doctors and epidemiologists i became aware of the fact that this was really kind of a train wreck in slow motion so i i actually made a call to stop the presses to rewrite the last chapter because i had a sense that i had my timing but god clearly had his and the sense of providence became even bigger as i quickly rewrote the last chapter and sent it back to the press just in time for it to come out really at the climax of the pandemic when practically the whole world entered into a solidarity in suffering the likes of which i've never known in 62 years of life and i look back on history i can't see anything quite analogous to this but not just the world with all inhabited nations but especially catholics i think also we're aware of this solidarity and suffering being deprived of the sacraments not being able to even attend mass it was sort of like who saw this coming well the lord and so i had a sense that my book had one particular purpose in my mind but a much bigger purpose in god's timing and so i thank him and testify to his genius not mine for all of this and can you talk to us a little bit about the name because hope to die it kind of makes you stop and think because we as catholics we don't necessarily hope to die but there is hope and death so can you talk to us about that that's right so i'm thinking especially what saint paul tells the philippians for me to live is christ to die is gain wait rewind back it up what was that for you to live is christ i get it for you to die is gain okay in terms of heaven but really in terms of everything and so what i believe we need to have is not just a stoic willingness to die while we keep a stiff upper lip and we resign ourselves to it because that's what the stoics did in antiquity and they were known for being able to face death with a certain detachment but in the first two centuries of christianity even the stoics stood back in awe in admiration in almost uncomprehending shock at how what they called the galileans faced death and accepted it with a sort of joy that went beyond resignation or detachment because what christ had done to death was to transform it from the loss of life to the gift of life you can see that not only on good friday when he's dying for the human race but most especially when you look at it in light of holy thursday because what he's doing on holy thursday is not just celebrating his last passover he's fulfilling it as the lamb of god and he's doing that by instituting the eucharist as the passover the new covenant it's more than ritual it's more than rhetoric there was a reality behind the words that he spoke when he declared to these disciples take this and eat of it this is my body what and likewise with the cup this is the cup of my blood the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins you don't just make things up in the middle of a sacred ritual like the passover but there he did and it was the only way they could understand the next day because on good friday he didn't lose his life like everybody else who had died by crucifixion by any other means he made his life a gift of love so he wasn't the victim of roman violence at calvary he was the victim of divine mercy on holy thursday and so i began to recognize that our hope was recreated in a way that goes beyond our wildest dreams precisely when jesus turned death into prayer into liturgy into sacrifice where he put on display for the whole world a love that is stronger than death a love that is stronger than betrayal and anguish and pain and sorrow a love that turns death into an expression of self-giving love and suddenly i realized like the whole world that christ has transformed death into the passage to the glorious inheritance that exceeds the promised land that the israelites had after the first passover and i really believe that these are sort of you know the articles of faith that we hear about whenever we profess the apostles creed but sometimes we don't pray it too much but we ponder too little because once you begin to look more closely more carefully more contemplatively at the articles of the creed you realize this is worth living for but this is worth dying for this gives us hope to die i believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting is not just quantitative time oh it'll go on forever it's a qualitative eternity whereby we enter into the life of god because god entered into the life of man it's almost too good to be true because it does exceed the highest hopes of even the holiest hebrews the patriarchs of the prophets but there you have it it's what we profess and it's what we rediscover especially as we face suffering illness and inevitably our own death and the death of our loved ones and you can tell i have strong feelings about this but it goes far beyond just writing a book and trying to transmit the message because this to me is the only thing that makes sense out of everything especially suffering and death so hope to die of course comes from that little childhood did he cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye i actually referred to that in a much earlier book i wrote called swear to god because the idea of swearing an oath as you do with cross my heart swearing an oath is when you invoke the holy name of god for our father to give us all that we need and to make up for all that we lack and i really believe that if we could see death through the eyes of our guardian angels we'd realize why they're jealous as pure spirits without mortal bodies they can't die but once you crack the code and you realize that it's the inner logic of god's love that caused him to allow death to transform us into life-giving lovers it's like okay wait tamp this down this is almost too much except it's not in any way hyperbole it's not just rhetoric you know oh it's the overzealous rhetoric of some converts you know no you know as i as i'm fond of saying that when we get to heaven if we were to get the cd of this conversation and play it back you'd realize he was right his words fell short they fell flat on their face the first billion years of eternity will go by like a minute and it will make the happiest day of life look miserable in comparison but it will also make this suffering that we endure the very means by which god the father chisels you know he he sort of sculpts the granite of our hardness and makes us into saints and if we could just see it for a moment we'd realize why jesus didn't just carry a cross for us but he bestows crosses on us because it really is what transforms us into christ's image it conforms us to christ there's a lot to that name thank you for sharing us layers and layers indeed so as i was reading the book hope to die i got to a couple of chapters in the middle that i thought were particularly captivating and they talked about the eucharist leading us to eternal life talked about the resurrection of our bodies and what life will be like in heaven i just thought that was so so good and i actually read those parts over and over again and got so much from it each time um but just first of all on the resurrection of our bodies you say that there are two types the physical and the spiritual can you talk to us about those right okay two big moves that i try to make in this book first of all to distinguish the two kinds of life and death and then the second big move is to focus upon the eucharist as what is more than a restoration of a physical body so first of all we see in the beginning at creation in genesis 2 verses 7 to 17 in the span of 10 verses god breathes into our first father's nostrils the breath of life and so the first breath that man draws is more than air or oxygen the way the animals around him are doing it's air but it's more it's the breath of god it's the spirit of god which is not just human life but divine not just temporal and terrestrial but truly eternal and celestial why is that so important because 10 verses later god tells them you can eat from all of the trees but one and if you eat the forbidden fruit the day you eat of it you'll surely die well again why is that significant because the turn the page the next chapter they eat and they don't drop dead well wait a minute was god just issuing an idol threat he could have said the day you eat of it you'll deserve to die you'll be sentenced to die you'll begin to die but no he said the day you eat of it you'll surely die well the mystery of faith is such that we realize that if there is human life that is physical and natural but there's also divine life that is spiritual and supernatural then there are also consequently two forms of death one is physical death a bullet to the brain or a snakebite would do but the other kind spiritual death can only occur if you give consent to what is called mortal sin or literally in first john 5 17 what we translate as mortal sin in the greek is a sin unto death thanatos the same word used in genesis 2 17. so the day they ate they committed mortal sin they committed spiritual suicide they preserved their own natural human life and skins but they forfeited divine life which isn't like less of a death but far more this is not a figure of speech or a metaphor the death that our first parents experienced was the deepest and darkest death of all and that is divine death or what the catechism calls the death of the soul the extinguishing of the light and the life of the holy spirit and it's like wow so what we call original sin in the catholic tradition is not what i believed as a presbyterian or a calvinist that infants are born totally depraved of course we're not born guilty and depraved but we are born totally deprived of divine life we have human life but divinely we're dead and even if your parents are canonizable saints like saint teresa lazu they still needed to baptize her and once they baptized her or once we were baptized what paul describes in romans 6 is a resurrection unto divine life that if you've been baptized you have been raised with christ and that means that we are raised to life that is divine that is a resurrection that surpasses what lazarus got after four days from jesus because he just simply got his body back and so if we can grasp the mystery of faith to mean that we have been given back the very divine eternal supernatural life that our first parents forfeited we can see why christ is described by saint paul as the new adam and mary is the new eve but we can also see how the gift of life that's natural is sacred but the gift of life that is supernatural is even more sacred both forms of life are valuable but this one is even more valuable but it's also more vulnerable because you don't need a bullet to the brain to lose this life we can repeat our first parent's original sin when we basically commit a mortal sin this sort of spiritual suicide that is so stupid and self-destructive and this is what we need the light of faith to illuminate and once you do i think you can see that not only does christ assume our nature to give us his he assumes mortal life but he does so for the purpose of imparting immortal life and i think the eucharist is ultimately the hinge on which all of salvation history turns from the old to the new but also from natural life to truly supernatural and divine life because when he is resurrected his body wasn't just resuscitated like lazarus's his innocence was vindicated his prophecies were fulfilled you know it truly is a wonderful miracle and a historical event but more to the point there is a sacred mystery because our humanity which he assumed is suddenly divinized it isn't just resuscitated it is transfigured and by the power of the holy spirit it is made communicable it is made edible so that when we receive holy communion what we're receiving is not simply the body blood soul and divinity of christ it's the resurrected ascended transfigured divinized body blood soul and divinity of christ the resurrection is ordered to the eucharist because the eucharist is the resurrected body of christ and this is how he sets in the motion this chain of transformations to fulfill what he had promised his disciples like one year earlier when he said he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood i will raise him up on the last day and so when we receive his resurrected body it isn't like an ordinary meal where we just assimilate ham and eggs or burger and fries to our bodies so that one day later it's gone it's just us no when he gives himself to us when we receive holy communion his immortal resurrected body basically assimilates our mortal flesh to himself again to set an emotion what will bring about our share in his own glorious resurrection and at one level it's like come on this is a little exaggerated at another level it's simply the sum total of the 12 articles of the creed that we call the apostles creed it isn't just a string of pearls there really is something that ends up being the hope diamonds you might say where you're looking at something that is bigger and brighter and of greater value than anything on the whole planet and that's what it means for us to be catholics to profess the faith to receive holy communion i'm reminded of about five or six weeks ago when my daughter after going two months without mass said to me dad i have never realized how much i take mass for granted and then she also went on to say i have never realized i've never hungered so much for holy communion i mean what consolation that brings to a father's heart but you know what a truth she was echoing that was shared by millions of catholics around the world and so i believe you know i'm reminded of that song back in the 70s by joni mitchell big yellow taxi you don't know what you've got till it's gone and so when the eucharist is taken away and then restored i do believe that it is the opportunity for us to kind of seize this sacred moment and make more out of this than ever before and to make up for lost time in the process absolutely i absolutely love all of that and i think that was definitely one of my favorite parts of the book because you're talking about how the eucharist gives us eternal life and i think it's catholics those are words we hear a lot but sometimes we don't actually really think about what they mean so i just love that you did that so clearly and so well so thank you for that something else that you say about the eucharist i thought was really really good you say the eucharist is far more unbelievable than we let ourselves believe what do you mean by that well i mean my my son jeremiah was just ordained a transitional deacon three weeks ago for the diocese of steubenville and in one year lord willing he'll be made a priest and you know it's one thing for him to be my son you know one of five sons and i've got a daughter it's another thing for him to be made a son of god through the water of baptism where he is rebirthed he is regenerated he is resurrected to divine life and then to see him receive holy communion along with the rest of the family he is maturing and growing up into christ like life but for him to be ordained a priest for anyone to be ordained a priest you know well it's just standard practice for us as catholics right you know but i mean a mortal man takes earthly matter like bread and wine and speaks a few words and claims to transform that earthly matter into the body blood soul and divinity of the god man the second person of the holy trinity you know excuse me press pause please because that is unbelievable and strictly by philosophical scientific and logical standards it is it isn't contrary to logic it just goes so far beyond logic and science and philosophy that on what basis we believe it except for the supernaturally infused gift to faith you know and so we walk by faith and not by sight because wait a minute you're telling me that that wafer is now christ and the christ is the son of god and that he's resurrected and that you can't see him and not see the father so there is the son but the father and the holy spirit along with that the communion of saints and all of that in one wafer you know i think we almost need to de-familiarize ourselves with all of the things that we've said all of our lives that we believe in order to realize how unbelievable they are on the one hand we might find it easier to relate to unbelievers instead of looking at them and saying what's wrong with you we'll look at ourselves and say god how in the world did you make it possible for me to accept this amazing sacred mystery of your body blood soul and divinity you know and then we're not only going to want to protect that gift of faith more than anything else because it's more precious than everything else we're also going to be able to enter into a critical sympathy with unbelievers where we can share in honesty and humility the fact that we didn't believe for a while and then we came to believe or we did believe and then we kind of shook it off and realized wait a second we are being asked to believe the unbelievable you know it's too good to be true unless it is the truth and it is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us god believe this and to take you at your word and to share this because if god can get through to a juvenile delinquent at the age of 14 like me or he can get through to an anti-catholic in his mid-20s like me then he could get through to anybody and i suspect he wants to but he also prefers to use us to reach others so that we can be honest i have in my bible the saying that when i'm sharing christ in the eucharist with any other sinner i am just one beggar telling another beggar where i found the bread of life wonderful and can you talk to us about the final transubstantiation that you talk about in your book it's something that you say it isn't official church teaching or anything like that but it's what you think will happen at the end of time that's right yeah i think good question katie i mean i do want to underscore the fact that you just mentioned that this is my opinion that this is speculative but it kind of connects my own discovery of the mass and the holy eucharist and christ's real presence that i wrote about some 20 years ago in a book called the lamb's supper the masses heaven and earth where i experienced the catholic mass for the first time as a protestant open to the bible and to the tradition and to figuring out what if anything is real in the mass and that's when i had a kind of eureka moment where at the words of consecration all my doubts just drained out and when the host was elevated i could just hear myself whispering in the back pew my lord and my god that isn't bread that's you and i want to trace that book to hope to die and the reason is because i found that in the mass you had a perfect match for what i had been reading for many years in the book of revelation the apocalypse you have the amen the alleluia the gloria you have the agnes day lamb of god lamb of god lamb of god 28 times in 22 chapters and nobody had ever explained to me why you've got vestments in candles you've got books you've got you know all sorts of liturgical things that i completely overlooked until i went to mass and then i realized that god's will is done on earth as it is in heaven more perfectly in the mass and that's what i wrote about in the lamb's supper to show that in effect you have the eucharistic liturgy on earth as it is described and witnessed by john in heaven so what well you'll see why the early church fathers understood that the eucharistic liturgy unites heaven on earth all of the angels and the saints and the martyrs who've gone before us who survived death and have entered into glory did so in part because of the blessed sacrament the eucharistic liturgy the mass and so what gets the church through 20 centuries of persecution affliction unbelief is the fact that christ is in our midst that we are united to him so if christ sends the spirit down upon the apostles and their successors to empower mortal men like them to transform earthly matter like bread and wine into christ's body blood soul and divinity into his resurrected humanity what could christ himself do and so 24 7 throughout the ages of the church the mass is celebrated and it really is the conveyor belt of salvation history and why we're not looking back on salvation history as though it's over and done in the first century it's not it's still going on but just as they handed over the physical body to his enemies so the mystical body of christ the church is being handed over to his enemies even in our own days so what will get us through the holy spirit and what will be the instrument the holy eucharist and so at the end of time the eschaton when you have the the general judgment and the general resurrection what will be the the convergence of events well it won't be pretty any more than good friday was only this time it'll be the mystical body of christ and so if you recognize that christ is the only one we should rightly call the high priest in heaven working through the spirit to empower earthly priests to transform earthly matter into his body then i can imagine at the climax of history as the body of christ is undergoing this affliction the christ will speak as the high priest from heaven and he's not gonna take off the gloves and say hey no more mr nice guy it's payback i would rather prefer to see jesus saying this is my body and suddenly instead of just simply transubstantiating bread and wine upon the altars he's going to transubstantiate all of the dust from all of the tombs of all of the bodies of all of the faithful of all of the ages they're going to suddenly be transformed into his glorified body and at the same moment he's going to give to us the consequence of the holy eucharist he's going to give us a share in his own glorified resurrected body when we get our resurrected bodies back which will be the culmination of all of the masses of all of the ages of history but then the veil is pulled back the curtain is pulled and we'll see what the high priest in heaven our lord jesus christ can do to perfect to consummate history and to show us that the eucharist was indeed the piston the main spring of history even though to the world it just seems so lame i know that's just a hypothesis but it sounds very credible and i guess we'll just have to wait and see that's right it'll probably end up being much better exactly that's that's the thing um so then in chapter eight you start talking about something that i think a lot of people are very curious about and very interested in a lot of catholics anyway and that is our resurrected bodies and you note that we don't know a ton about them but that there are certain things we do know so what age we think they'll be what they'll be able to do things like that what can you tell us okay just by way of summary what i want to do without wasting words is to show that there are three conditions that all resurrected bodies will share because all humans will be resurrected we hear from jesus in john 5 that there is a resurrection under life and glory but there's also a resurrection unto death and shame and even they will have resurrected bodies to undergo affliction and so what are the three common conditions well the first one is identity we're going to be the same person we're going to get our same body now how will that be if our bodies were incinerated or if our bodies blew up well god the creator and god the redeemer are one and the same and so is he created out of nothing so he will also glorify our bodies and saint paul describes the mystery that the body is like a seed planted into the soil and what is sown is mortal and corruptable but is raised immortal and incorruptible just like jesus said about his own body being a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying in order to bear much fruit that's how the son of man would be glorified he told them in john 12. and so you have the identity of the body likewise you also have the this idea of integrity that if you lost an arm you'll have the arm back and you also have this idea of quality that your body is going to be at its peak if you died at 90 you won't be 90 when you get your body back the medieval speculated that the peak would be around 33 years when you're at your prime because that's when our lord died as well as the perfection of humanity that's speculation but in any case those are the conditions that all bodies will share and so it's your own body it's male or female it's also whole if you loft a limb you get it back and all of the rest but there are four properties this is my favorite part of the chapter that are only applicable to the bodies that are resurrected under glory the first one is impassability because of course we will not be able to suffer or die or get sick from cloven or anything else and so we're going to be at our peak we're going to be healthy we're going to be unable to die we're also going to be unable to sin because we're going to be unable to do anything but love perfectly it isn't the loss of freedom but the total perfection of freedom the second element is subtlety and subtlety speaks of the brilliance the lightness the glory the radiance of the body where you're going to look and realize that the most beautiful model on earth would be ugly in comparison to the lowest and the meanest saint with the resurrected bodies in heaven and once again this is not like overstating it it's going to understate things once we see it so impassable and likewise subtle the third property is agility and that bespeaks the mobility the power the energy of our resurrected bodies because we're no longer going to have to sleep we're no longer going to have to take a nap or have a meal and so those properties you know impassable and then subtle and then agile you know if i wanted to get to ireland i'd have to book a flight and land in dublin you have to pick me up and you know after a few days or weeks we would see each other but angels aren't like that because if they think dublin or if they think england they're there we're not like that because we have bodies but our bodies now are going to be utterly subject to our souls now if i want to pull an all-nighter my body says not so fast you're too tired but in heaven forever our bodies are going to be utterly subject to our souls and so if i think dublin you know i'm gonna be there and that is like unimaginable but it really follows from the miracle of the resurrection impassable subtle agile and in some ways my favorite of all is clarity clarity just shows us that we're going to know each other and ourselves perfectly and we're also going to be perfected you're going to meet up with somebody and have a friendship and he's going to end up being a friend like you never had on earth and likewise if your spouse is there you don't lose track of your loved ones your love is perfected the communion that you shared with family members and friends is deepened it is purified and not just for a little bit or not just for a few but for all of us and so what i lead up to is to show us that heaven after a billion trillion years is not just going to be a staring contest where we're looking at god and just admiring him from afar or from up close depending on how good we were no we're going to be looking at god knowing god as god knows god loving god as god loves god but realizing that god is truly an abba father in love with us more than we ever loved ourselves or our loved ones i believe in god the father almighty and we're going to have a chance our father i'm sure will give us a chance to share with one another our stories and we're going to realize how much we overlapped i didn't realize you were on that bus i didn't realize you were born in the same hospital i didn't realize that you know we went back to the reunion and we're sitting next to each other you know but it'll be a whole lot better than that because what this what this aspect is going to show us is that all of our lives are like stories that were scripted from on high but they aren't just stories there is one story and god a father who knows all things who has scripted all things is going to show us that we are not only his sons and daughters we are brothers and sisters the likes of which you never had no matter how awesome your siblings were on earth and so a trillion years will fly by like about a minute or so of earthly life you know and the happiest day on earth is going to seem like misery compared to what we experience all the time forever in heaven this is not just the opposite of boredom this is ecstasy and intimacy this is what god an almighty father has longed for from the beginning this ain't plan b i love it and i think that's especially good because so many people myself included i'm like okay we get to heaven we have a resurrected body then what like heaven sounds like it could be boring after you know thousands millions billions of years but i think you put it so well there and you put it so well in your book how we'll be telling our stories to each other and just how yeah heaven is not going to be boring in fact it's going to surpass our greatest expectations there aren't going to be small soft chubby cherubim with harps on clouds but i mean the clouds show us the lightness the hearts show us that there will be music and harmony the likes of which we can't even imagine on earth but it does look a little boring even you know the children who look at those kinds of pictures but it's meant to evoke the hope that will lead us to something indescribably better and i guess it's something we can't fully understand now we're so limited as human beings not even close just time into space we just can't even fathom it so before we wrap up dr scott han i have to ask you about cremation because it's something that comes up in your book and i know it's not a main topic in the book and you say that you don't want to add another item to the culture wars but for someone out there who knows that the church allows cremation but they don't know how they personally feel about it what would you say okay so three things first of all i don't mean to make people feel guilty because there is no reason to feel guilty because the church permits it it allows it but it's a concession the church approves and encourages and recommends the sacred burial practices that would put you in holy ground and though it permits cremation it it also requires that the cremains not be put up on the mantle or scattered in the water but put in holy ground i was asked to come and speak in manhattan on the cremation and i don't know why to this day i agreed but i did and so as the day got closer i wondered what am i going to say the second thing i would say about this cremation issue is only when you take a gigantic step back and look at the body through the eyes of god do you realize that it wasn't just special in the beginning before sin it is special indeed back then because it's an essential part of what it means to be human it's an essential part of human nature it isn't just a disposable curtain that we can't wait to get rid of once we empty the contents no the the body is the visible expression of the invisible soul it's almost like a sacrament which is a visible sign of an invisible reality and so even after the fall the body is something that is beautiful and good and at one level i think our culture gets it but not really because our body is something that is mostly ambivalent to the majority of people why because we love it we hate it we love it we indulge it too much and then it gets fat or sick and faces death and we resent it and so then we show contempt for it like the pagans did in antiquity but god assumed a mortal body to use his own mortal body as the instrument the leverage in order to raise us up to his own glorious love a love that is life-giving and so cremation was practiced in antiquity by the pagans it was almost completely undone stopped universally the sacred burial customs of judaism in the old testament christianity and the new covered the globe practically until enemies of the catholic church emerged in the 17 and 1800s the french revolutionaries the philosophs the masons from 1717 on the neo-druid druidic occult and all of these things by the 1870s and 80s everybody woke up and realized that cremation was used as an as a weapon to attack the catholic faith not just in words but in deeds to subvert the faith of ordinary faithful in the belief of the resurrection of the body and so in 1886 the pope condemned it and basically said if you do this knowing the church is teaching you are excommunicated but by 1963 it was no longer an anti-catholic gesture the way it had been in the 1800s and so it's permitted it's conceded but the third and final point that i would want to make is a principle of fittingness that if god gave us bodies that were good and holy and we violated them and desecrated them but if god stooped down anyway and assumed our human nature even the mortal body to show us what love means and how a love is stronger than death and death becomes a prayer a gift of self then what is the most fitting response to the fact that god gave us bodies that were good god assumed that body and used it to redeem us you know at one level i would say it's just really unnatural to cremate a body you know kimberly's body as she gets old and she gets weak if she faces death would i consider cremation no my mom and my dad asked me to i asked them for the opportunity to explain why i would resist that and when i was done explaining reluctantly they conceded but one of the things that i said was mom your body was my home for nine months my brother and my sister live there too it isn't just like a box that is thrown away and for kimberly to have born our six kids and for that body to be a symbol a living sign a living sacrament of love of sacrifice of tenderness of intimacy why would i want to turn around and burn her body that's the most unfitting response to the well we've had 40 years of married life so far and i had no idea you could have this kind of friendship with a woman and now i thank god but i also want to honor my bride and not just in life but also in death you know we realize that we're going to leave this life behind and we ought to be generous and sacrificial you know as one person put it you're not a fool to give up what you can't keep in order to gain what you can never lose but here's the point if you're going to move out of a house the last thing you're you're going to do is not to torch it no the fact is you've lived there and so you can be grateful and even though we're going to lose this body in the ground it'll be planted mortal and corrupt but it will be raised incorruptible and immortal let's show god we believe let's show our kids and our grandkids because actions speak louder than words and just like weddings and birds sow funerals are great teachable moments where we can communicate the fullness of the faith in jesus death and resurrection and show us that show our kids and our loved ones that we fully believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting and it's not just something we say it's also something that we do so finally if there was one lesson you wanted someone to walk away from your book with what would it be well obviously the sanctity of human life is the key to unlock the door to god's mercy today we pray for it all the time but not just the sanctity of human life but the greater sanctity of divine life it has greater value but it's also more vulnerable one of my favorite quotes in this book hope to die the christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body is from a bishop in the sixth century in toledo spain saint julian in his prognosticum says the following and this is the takeaway everyone fears the death of the flesh however few fear the death of the soul mortal sin we're destined to die and yet humanity struggles to avoid dying and yet we're destined to eternal life and yet we do not labor to avoid sinning when we struggle to avoid death ultimately we labor in vain in fact the most we obtain is that death is delayed but not avoided if rather we refrain from sinning all of our toil would cease and indeed we shall live forever if only we could incite people ourselves included to be lovers of eternal life at least as much as they are lovers of this life that passes away but this death that we fear despite all of our resistance will yet be ours to possess so let's make the most of life but let's also make the most of death so that our death can really be a gift of life back to christ in return for him giving his life to us and transforming death into this power that is stronger than anguish that is stronger than morbidity and everything else as well well dr han thank you so much for your time today thank you for coming on our show thank you for writing this book which has helped me so much and i'm sure it's going to help a lot of other people as well and just thank you for everything you've done for the church we're really so blessed to have you well you're most welcome katie but i also want to say thank you not only for your upcoming marriage but your openness to life and above all this amazing apostolate and the opportunity to share this colloquy together because i'll be honest i think i enjoyed it much more than you and i suspect perhaps more than everybody else put together i doubt it i doubt it thank you again and if anyone wants to go buy your book they can do so at the same at st paul center dot com correct that's right yeah the st paul center is sort of what kimberly and i started 20 years ago to leave our kids and our 19 grandkids and everybody else that we share this life and god's family with a legacy of life transforming bible study to read the bible from the heart of the church there are resources for beginner intermediate advanced our goal is biblical literacy for catholic lay people to hear it in the liturgy and biblical fluency for our clergy and our teachers especially to improve the power of the homily for better preaching and for life conversion for transformation st paul center dot com perfect thank you again dr han you're welcome god bless you katie you

Channel: Called to More

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Length: 41min 10sec (2470 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020