The dream of immortality – The Manila Times

IT is undas with the tremendous difference that we cannot troop to the cemeteries like we used to, to reverence the resting places of our loved ones and for the attendant merriment that made November 2 some kind of a carnival day rather than a somber remembering of the dead, because of the lingering threat of Covid that has sent many of those we knew and loved prematurely to the cemetery!

The Catholic Church instituted the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed in the belief that though dead, they still form part of the Church that community assembled by Jesus Christ, made heirs to the promise of the Resurrection. So, in traditional catechism books, there were distinguished the "church militant" that referred to us who are still on our pilgrim way, the "church triumphant" that has reached the prized goal the Vision of God and the company of the blessed and the "church suffering," those being prepared for participation in the joys of heaven and that needed our prayers and suffrages. (In Catholic theology, a suffrage is a good deed cast, like a ballot, in favor of someone.) November 1, All Saints' (All Hallows hence Halloween!), was the day of the church triumphant; November 2, All Souls', invited prayers for the church suffering. Of course, the Catholic doctrine of "purgatory" has been one of the hotly contested teachings of the Church but all Christians find it meaningful and praiseworthy to pray for the dead! There is no sect I know that has absolutely no rite of farewell or commendation!

Cemeteries and memorial parks exist largely because of belief that the dead somehow live on. How they do is a matter of philosophical position and theological orientation. And this is more than just belief that their "memory" lives on or that their "cause" is alive and well. Rather, it is the belief that death has not brought about the annihilation of those we love. Of course, it is true as Gabriel Marcel, the French existentialist philosopher, taught decades ago that love always says of the loved one: "You shall not die," and clearly, a very powerful motive for belief in "immortality" is love which is not to say that it has no better philosophical foundation than wishful thinking! In this vein, there was pointed out, very usefully, the difference between "body-object" and "body-subject." It is not a gratuitous distinction nor a worthless a priori postulation. People see me and my body statistics body mass index, height, physiological processes, anatomical proportions may be the object of study. This is the body as an object. But the body as subject is the body as I live it, the body that lies at the boundary of being and having that body that I identify myself with of which none can have an experience but myself. And while at death, we know what happens to the body-object that gives us no reason at all to decide that the body-subject has receded into inexistence. To do this would be to eliminate the clear, experienceable difference between the body as "thing" and the body as "me" or "mine!"

In Thomas Aquinas and many medieval thinkers, the soul exhibited subsistent activity activity apparently not dependent on any bodily organ. Thought was the sterling example. While it is true that somehow that which is thought must have been sensed antecedently to arrive at an understanding and not merely a sense experience of what a thing is, and to affirm that it is, or is not so were, to Aquinas and his tribe, achievements of the mind that were independent of the body. The mind, or the intellect, was taken to be one of the "faculties" of the soul the will being the other. Now, it was reasoned, if the mind is capable of subsistent activity, the soul, of which it is a power, must likewise be subsistent and must be capable of existing even in a state of separation from its material co-principle. Peter Geach has recently restated this argument in contemporary terms.

Another concept of immortality comes from the process notion of the "consequent nature" of God. If I am affected, transformed, constituted by events in my immediate past, the same thing should be true of God who is the nontemporal actual entity. In other words, God prehends everything and everyone. While process thinkers thought this true of every actual entity prehending entities in its immediate past and in turn co-constituting the entity that succeeds it there is something more in respect to the consequent nature of God. Why is it that after some time, the memory of those we loved intensely and mourned for disconsolately seems to fade? Why is it that after several years, we no longer hear the sound of their voices, nor remember the wrinkles on their faces, nor the smiles that made us smile? Their memory "fades." And the answer is clear: Because our memories are imperfect, short, fickle. But God, being God, his memory is perfect; the integration within the Divine life of the lives of those we loved is perfect and none of the immediacy of their personal lives is lost.

For the Christian, the axis of faith is actually the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without the Resurrection, Christianity does not make much sense, not even as an ethical theory. The core proclamation of the early Church was: He is Risen and the reason that everything that Jesus did and preached, taught and laid down, has eternal meaning and value is because he was raised not the other way round! In fact, the criterion of apostolic succession when the remaining apostles had to choose a successor for Judas Iscariot was that he had to be a witness to the Risen Lord. And that, too, was Paul's life-changing experience on the Road to Damascus. Not only is this the faith that has sustained Christians through persecution and martyrdom, kept them afloat for centuries through the vicissitudes and trials of life. It is also what has allowed the Church to endure despite everything that its detractors and foes can point to as its historical faults and failings. Its proclamation has never ceased to draw the attention of the world and to sustain the hopes of humankind: "He is Risen."

May the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen!

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The dream of immortality - The Manila Times