2017-11-2

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣谈到祂会“在末日使（我们）复活”。我们的信德是天主会赋予灵魂一个全新的、更好的身体，也就是保禄所说的“属神的身体”。基督教徒、物理学家约翰·波金霍尔的感悟也许对我们有所帮助，他认为灵魂是人的“形态”或模式。天主记住这种“形态”，然后在复活时在更高的层次上重组该“形式”，就好像文章或图片的模式可被保存在电脑里，并以一种新的方式复制出来。

 

再看看今天福音中耶稣说的话：“凡父交给我的，必到我这里来；而到我这里来的，我必不把他抛弃于外…”当你为辞世亲友的灵魂祈祷时，让耶稣的话给你安慰吧。祂将使你的亲友复活。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus talks about how he will “raise [us] on the last day.” Our faith is that God will clothe the soul in a new and higher body, what Paul calls a “spiritual body.” Here we might rely on the musings of John Polkinghorne, the Christian physicist, who appreciates the soul as the “form” or pattern of the person. God remembers this “form,” and then reconstitutes it at a higher level during the resurrection, much as the pattern of an article or a photograph could be preserved in a computer’s memory and then reproduced in a new way.

 

Listen again to the words of Jesus in our Gospel today: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me.…” As you pray for the souls of your beloved dead, take comfort in those words. They will be raised again.