Cassian and Merton Part II: Dispensation Domini

Let's get back to the beginning of the conference [Chapter Two].  So then they ask this question:

"So then we asked this Blessed Daniel, why it was that as we sat in the cells we were sometimes filled with the utmost gladness of heart together with inexpressible delight and abundance of the holiest feelings so that I will not say speech but even feeling could not follow."  See, that is the concupiscentias spiritus, this is what we all desire and this is what we assume, this is the way it ought to be:  this is it!  And Cassian would that say that as well.  "And pure prayers were readily breathed, and the mind being filled with spiritual fruits, praying to God even in sleep could feel that its petitions rose lightly and powerfully to God."  See, that's the way we all want to be.  "and again, why is it that for no reason we were suddenly filled with the utmost grief, and weighed down with unreasonable depression, so that we not only felt as if we ourselves were overcome with such feelings, but also our cell grew dreadful, reading palled upon us, aye and our very prayers were offered up unsteadily and vaguely, and almost as if we were intoxicated".  Do you recognize the symptoms?  "so that while we were groaning and endeavouring to restore ourselves to our former disposition, our mind was unable to do this, and the more earnestly it sought to fix again its gaze upon God, so was it the more vehemently carried away to wandering thoughts by shifting aberrations and so utterly deprived of all spiritual fruits, as not to be capable of being roused from this deadly slumber even by the desire of the kingdom of heaven, or by the fear of hell".  So, in other words, they had their troubles.

So, there's the problem.  Well, now, the way Cassian treats this, or the way Abbot Daniel treats it, he tells them first the causes of this, the immediate causes, what promotes this sort of thing, and, then, by showing what this is for, he leads into this thing that we were just talking about, this concept of a balance, of a purity of heart, of a freedom, an enlightened freedom that stands in between these two things [carnal desires and spiritual desires].  The thing that he says, the thing that he makes clear, is that it is through suffering these things, through this question of being pulled this way and that you learn, by the grace of God, that you learn to maintain the balance in the middle.  So, therefore, what he is saying is that the purpose of trial is to purify our hearts and bring us to this balanced and enlightened condition.  I think this is very practical.

Then he goes into the three causes, these are these immediate causes, and one of them is negligence.  Obviously if my mind is slack I am going to be pulled in all directions.  Another is impunatio diaboli, an attack, . . . he pushes you in all directions.  Then, finally, dispensatio Domini, . . .the way God disposes, the way God provides.  Which of these is the most important?  The third one, so that's the one Cassian is going to study.  So the next time you find yourself dragged in all directions by concupiscentias carnes et spiritus  and so forth, realize that this is something that is part of God's plan for your purification.  That's what we were saying yesterday,  you have to take a constructive view of this, you have to work with this.  So God causes us to be tried, or God allows us to be tried.  This is a very good thing and we should be glad that God allows us to be tried because it has a very good purpose.  He causes, as they say, desolation in the spiritual life.  Everybody seems to recognize this phenomenon, everybody knows exactly what we are talking about. 

(This is from Conference IV of Saint John Cassian, Chapters 2 through 3)

 

It really is great to sit in one's cell and bliss out.  Been there, done that, but, then, all dries up.  Every time.  I like what Cassian says at the end of Chapter 4:  "For men are generally more careless about keeping whatever they think can be easily replaced."  I never thought I was careless yet it is a helpful way of looking at it because when the bliss comes I forget the source and that it is a gift.

Yes, the consolation of bliss once the spiritual journey is underway is rare.  Instead, we get "trials", day after day after day.  These trials "purify us" by helping us build up our "balance muscles".  Our temptations are to look for consolation rather than do the work of learning to balance our desires.

I think the path is through the Cross, the path of trials, because then as I follow that path I am purified.  I don't attempt to appease my appetite for spiritual fervor, I practice the charismatic and the contemplative in an integrated way because all the time that I am on that path I am suffering redemptively rather than straying into bondage.  JPII talks about "freeing freedom" and I think this is it, to stay on the path of the Cross, regardless of the source of the trials, as it frees me ("redeems me") to maintain this balance.  That's really what the covenant promises (and vows) help us to do, to practice suffering redemptively through voluntary trials.  We can then more and more integrate the apparent opposites and avoid the temptations to the fervor that tempts us to allow ourselves to get dragged off the path, and, thus we are ever more free to love.

Cassian and Merton Part 1: The Balance of Carnal and Spiritual Desires

Why are our thoughts so mobile?  Why can't we control them? . . . Well, yeah, it takes strength that we don't possess, [you] put it that way.  That is a tendency, there, to look at it as a strength that we do not have.  We don't have the power to control it [the distractions of our carnal desires].  I think Cassian looks at it in a slightly different way, though.  See, we think in terms of power, have I got the power to control these things?  Cassian looks at it, rather, from the point of view of balance.  He doesn't so much say that we don't have the power,  it's that we're not in the right "spot".   If we were balanced, properly, that is to say if our nature were not unbalanced, see that's the thing that we're human but we've got an unbalanced human nature.  If our nature were perfectly balanced, we would be able to control our thoughts with much less difficulty.  There would be much less distraction, there would always be some distraction but there would much less.  The explanation of that is this:  see, we say the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit, normally you would say that it is good to follow one of those sets of desires and bad to follow the other set of desires, what you have to do is follow the good ones and avoid the bad ones.  Which ones are the goods one and which ones are the bad ones?  . . . You shouldn't necessarily follow either, you should follow both in the proper degree.  What Cassian considers is not so much that here we are, completely passive, dragged in the direction of the "flesh" and hoping to be dragged in the direction of the spirit, it's kind of dependent on which way we get dragged.  On the contrary, in between, in the middle between flesh and spirit, see both of these are ardent natural desires.  We've got natural fleshly desires which are perfectly alright, they are good, except that they are a little bit disordered and we've got natural spiritual desires, which are also good.  In the middle, in between these two is placed our freedom and our intelligence.  What Cassian considers is that the important thing is to develop a balance and a stability of the freedom and the intelligence.  One is place in the middle and is able to choose.  Now this is pretty much the concept that the Greek Fathers have of human nature and the human struggle.  They consider the spiritual part of man, they call it the hegemonikum, that is to say the "driver", the controller, the one who is in command, the pilot.  In the depths of one's being there is this illuminated intelligence and freedom which is supposed to make choices and to choose wisely between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit.  One chooses enough of the desires of the flesh to maintain the natural, for example you have to eat, but you don't eat too much, you eat enough, so forth, to keep life going. . . . At the same time, one must also not go overboard in the desires of the spirit, either.  The great thing is to preserve the balance so that one is in command of both and uses both.

Salvation does not consist simply in being carried away by desires of the spirit--that's a very important point. We'll get back to that in a minute. What the implication of this is why are our thoughts so mobile and unstable?  The answer to that is not that we are constantly giving in to the desires of the flesh when we should give in to desires of the spirit but that we are sometimes pulled in the direction of the flesh and sometimes pulled in the direction of the spirit, so that we're swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to the other and, then, therefore, we're in perpetual motion.  Now, this is a very smart way of looking at this and it is the ancient, traditional way of looking at man in the monastic setting and it is the way monks ought to look at things.  It is completely impractical to go through life imagining that we are going to be constantly having spiritual desires whipped up to a white heat and that we are constantly going to be filled with intense conceptions of divine realities.  These come occasionally but that's not what perfection consists in.  Perfection consists in this enlightened freedom which maintains balance in the middle of the two and goes in the direction of God and goes in the direction of truth and love, by means of these things, which are given to us as mean[s].

Each time that I listen to Merton saying the above I think about how one can be monastic and "Charismatic" (in the practice of the Charismatic Renewal).  I find a conflict because I have so much experience of the Charismatic Renewal as very much focused on both "spiritual desires" and on the grace of the Holy Spirit to the exclusion of what I do in the spiritual journey.  I don't think, necessarily, that the monastic is opposed to "life in the Spirit".  I do think that one of the reasons that the renewal faded in the West is that it was focused on fervor, way too much on feelings, which led people away from the Spirit--they were dragged toward "carnal desires" through their emotionalism and "feel-good"ism.

This is why I like the written basis for BSC, which includes the integration of the charismatic and the contemplative through the Cross.  Unless we pass through the suffering (the "Passion") of the Cross of Jesus, through the doorway into the "kingdom of God", we get dragged one way or another.  In the case of the Charismatic Renewal, I think the active decadence of the "West" combined with the practical emphasis on arousing "feelings" left people drifting toward the corrupted appetites of the flesh, like eating one piece of a chocolate bar for the anti-oxidative effect but then wanting and eating another and another and, then, here is gluttony in full bloom.  On the other hand, the desire for spiritual fervor also left people out of balance and, thus, more susceptible to the eight demons.

So, I think the path is through the Cross, because then as I practice the charismatic and the contemplative on that path I stay balanced, I don't attempt to appease my appetite for fervor, as all the time that I am on that path I am suffering redemptively.  JPII talks about "freeing freedom" and I think this is it, to stay on the path of the Cross as it frees me ("redeems me") to maintain this balance.  That's really what the covenant promises (and vows) help us to do, to suffer redemptively so that we can stay balanced, that we can integrate the apparent opposites, and avoid the temptation to the fervor that unbalances us and, thus in the end, enslaves us.

Fiat voluntas tua

I have been listening to Thomas Merton's lectures, Ways of Prayer: A Desert Father's Wisdom, on the Conferences of Saint John Cassian.  Good stuff and lots of humor.  I had heard these cassettes forty years ago at Osage Monastery; their quality was poor and I found it hard to listen for long although I enjoyed them.  This new remastered version is much better!  The sound levels are much improved.

One thing that caught my ear was Merton's second lecture on Saint John Cassian's writing on how to pray, focusing on the Pater Nostra.  Then, of course, what is the next petition?  "Fiat voluntas tua".  Well that calls for a whole--incidentally, where is this in Tertullian? There it is, he's got it back here.  For some reason Tertullian has "Fiat voluntas tua" in front of "Adveniat regnum tuum".  He's just being original, or what?  Actually, he's got some very good things on this "Fiat voluntas tua".  And, what he gets down to is, obviously, what we all get down to sooner or later with "Fiat" is the question of accepting suffering.  But Tertullian says, the word of God is done praedicando, operando, sustinendo--by preaching, by working, by suffering.  So, praedicando, you can change that for confitendo confessio, bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel, which we do where--in choir, at least, and we do a chapter, occasionally, and we do it there.  Operando--by our works and virtue and so forth.  And then sustinendo, which is a significant word, it isn't just patienendo but sustinendo.  What's the difference between patienendo and sustinedo, Brother Basil? . . .  Persevering and bearing it, you see, accepting it.  You can suffer without accepting it. Sometimes we suffer and we don't want to suffer and we have to suffer anyway and there is nothing we can do about it.  But sustinendo means accepting it and bearing with it; courage, bravery, and so forth.  And so, he says, when we say "Fiat voluntas tua", he is saying we have to think this may mean the acceptance of suffering and we should accept suffering and we should accept, well, the frustration of our desires and of all these things which are implied in the idea of suffering.  And we have to accept that, to realize, of course, what goes with that, is the realization that whatever God wills for us is best, even though at the moment it may contradict our desires, nevertheless in the long run it is best, in the long run it does lead to salvation although it may take us off the road for the moment.

Kinda reminds me of the "Fiat" in the Annunciation, "The word “fiat” means an official decree or to give sanction to something. In Latin it means “let there be” or “let it happen/exist."  I never connected the "fiat" of the "Our Father" with the "Fiat" of Mary or, even, the "Fiat" of Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemene ("non mea voluntas sed tua fiat" Luke 22:42).  I believe this is one of the distinctive aspects of Christianity, that when we pray "thy will be done", when we are praying the "Fiat", we are accepting the suffering that comes from doing God's will.  This contrasts Christianity significantly with the Stoics and the Epicureans in regard to suffering, that we embrace the suffering that is part of the package deal of "thy will be done".

Asking for Love, Light, and, Knowledge of the Truth

How very pleasing to God is the willing desire to suffer for Him

"Very pleasing to Me, dearest daughter, is the willing desire to bear every pain and fatigue, even unto death, for the salvation of souls, for the more the soul endures,the more she [the soul] shows that she loves Me; loving Me she comes to know more of My truth, and the more she knows, the more pain and intolerable grief she feels at the offenses committed against Me. You asked Me to sustain you, and to punish the faults of others in you, and you did not remark that you were really asking for love, light, and knowledge of the truth, since I have already told you that, by the increase of love, grows grief and pain, wherefore he that grows in love grows in grief.  Therefore, I say to you all, that you should ask, and it will be given you, for I deny nothing to him who asks of Me in truth. Consider that the love of divine charity is so closely joined in the soul with perfect patience, that neither can leave the soul without the other.  For this reason (if the soul elect to love Me) she should elect to endure pains for Me in whatever mode or circumstance I may send them to her.  Patience cannot be proved in any other way than by suffering, and patience is united with love as has been said. Therefore bear yourselves with manly courage, for, unless you do so, you will not prove yourselves to be spouses of My Truth, and faithful children, nor of the company of those who relish the taste of My honor, and the salvation of souls.

The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena, Section 5, 1370 (translated by Algar Thorold, 1907)

Saint Catherine was born one year before the Black Death struck Siena in 1347 (on the feast of the Annuciation!).  She had a twin who died at birth; half of her 22 siblings died as children.  It is estimated that between 30 to 50 percent of the population died between 1348 to 1350.  The city had been as prosperous before the plague as Milan and Florence and never recovered from its effects.  She grew up in a world so different from mine that her life seems incomprehensible.

I've posted this section of her Dialogue because it relates to suffering redemptively.  So, was she masochistic, was she looking for pain to punish herself for whatever?  It is easy through post-Freudian eyes to view her that way, as compensating for the great pain in her family.  A close reading of her writings does not show a desire for pain but a desire for Love.  She lived intensely and attracted many "followers" and yet she spoke often of suffering as well.  Why?  Yes, fundamentally, coming to know the "truth" of Jesus is painful since the fire of Love burns.

I think there is more to her life, though.  Jesus tells her that while she is asking to suffer for the "salvation of others", she did not "remark" that she is really asking for "love, light, and knowledge of the truth".  This is her true desire and it is a desire for good, not for punishment.  I think, rather, that she is seeking to love others by suffering a grief that will help their receiving salvation.  I think this exposes a common misapprehension, that "offering up" my suffering and pain for others somehow magically fixes them. I think that such egocentric suffering is masochistic, in the end, because my suffering does nothing for them if I am not growing in Love and Patience ("a virtue which helps us, for the love of God, to calmly bear our tribulations and preserve serenity amid the sufferings of life. Patience tempers sorrow and staves off excessive anger and complaining"). 

I think hers is the larger frame of suffering with Jesus in the groaning of the birth pangs of the new creation, the kaine ktisis.  It is in my relationship with Jesus, with His Body, the Church, and with Him mystically, that my suffering affects others, that my suffering is redemptive.  The increase in love, light, and knowledge of the truth also brings grieving and sorrowing, not unexpectedly, as I perceive how my and others' acting without love hurts and causes suffering and pain.  So much grieving, so much sorrowing, not as ends in themself, just companions on the way to the new creation.

Resurrection of the Body (Part 2)

Paul writes about the resurrection in a number of places yet in 1 Corinthians 15 he does so in detail.

    It is the same with the resurrection of the dead:  the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit.

    If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment.  The first man, Adam, as scripture says, "became a living soul" [Gen 2:7]; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.  That is, first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit.  The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven.  As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven.  And we, who have been modeled on the earthly man, will be modeled on the heavenly man. 

Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 42-29. Jerusalem Bible

    It is especially in Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body (in the context of his assessment of the weakness, suffering and perishability of human existence) that Paul’s holistic conception of the human being becomes most apparent. Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body makes it most clearly evident that Paul considers the sōma to belong constitutively and inseparably to human being-and-living, both now and in the telos (goal, end).

    In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul identifies human being-living as experienced through a “psychic body” (sōma psychikon) or a “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon; 1 Cor. 15:44–45). English translations have consistently mistranslated 1 Cor. 15:44, making a contrast between a “physical” body and a “spiritual” body, importing a physical-spiritual dualism that is not Paul’s. In this text Paul contrasts two forms of bodily animation, one “psychic” (psychikon) and the other “pneumatic” (pneumatikon), as a way to strike a midpoint between the Hellenistic body-soul dualism of his audience (which rejected bodily resurrection, period) and a naïve physical resuscitation model of resurrection. The bottom line for Paul is that human existence in either condition—whether in the present age or the age to come—must be bodily (“embodied” sounds too dualistic), whatever the precise animation and whatever the precise “physical” character. That psychikon here does not refer especially to the “physical” feature of the current body is indicated by Paul’s supportive scriptural citation of Genesis 2:7 in 15:45, which draws attention to the first human as being made bodily into a psychē zōsa, translating the Hebrew, nephesh chayyah, “living being.” Even the subsequent distinction between the “earthly” body and the “heavenly” body (vv 47–49) is not one of physical versus spiritual (or material versus immaterial), since for Paul the heavenly is a kind of substance or form (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:39–41). Both kinds of bodily material require animation—and vice versa, both animations require bodily form—for there to be life. The only mode or form of human existence that there is, in either dimension, is bodily existence. 

    Paul’s exposition of the character of and transition between these two modes is also instructive. The two modes are characterized elsewhere as “body of humiliation” as opposed to a “body co-formed to the body of [Christ’s] glory” (Phil. 3:21), or as “bearing the image of the human of dust” compared to “bearing the image of the human of heaven” (the second Adam, 1 Cor. 15:47–49). The most crucial language of resurrection, then, is transformational language, emphasizing continuing within discontinuity. Paul says “we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52) and that our body will be “transformed” (metaschēmatizō; Phil. 3:21), such that it will be “co-formed” to that of the “image of God’s son” (symphytos, Rom. 6:5; symmorphos, Rom. 8:29; Phil. 3:21). Further, this is described as the “redemption of our body,” linked inseparably with the liberation of all creation (Rom. 8:18–25; Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:24–28). And so Paul can speak of this as a “glorification” (Rom. 8:17, 30; cf. 2 Cor. 4:17). Just as Paul does not speak of the replacement of all creation but of its transformation, Paul also speaks not of an exchange of bodies, even less an escape from bodies, but of the transformation of bodily life. And in continuity with Jewish resurrection hope, Paul understood resurrection not just as bodily but also as involving the restoration of a people within a transformed creation.  Paul on the Human Being as a “Psychic Body”: Neither Dualist nor Monist, Gordon Zerbe, 2008

    As Christians for whom Jesus is Lord and Savior, when we die do we go to that place, Heaven, and sit on clouds and praise God? Do we get a new body when we get to that place, one that is perfectly formed and without blemish?

    Paul doesn't seem to think so or say so.  Zerbe's article, which seems scholarly, makes the point that it is not the body which changes but what animates the body (soma)--the natural (sarx) or the spiritual (pneuma) in 1 Corinthians 15.  This is what happens when we are born {again, from above), we receive God's Holy Spirit into our self, our body and soul.  Now it is Christ who lives in me, the same body with the same soul.  The psyche does not go away, the body does not change:  the spirit gains supremacy.

John Paul II thinks of it this way

According to the words of 1 Corinthians, the man in whom concupiscence prevails over spirituality, that is, the "natural body" (1 Cor 15:44), is condemned to death; instead, he should rise as a "spiritual body," as the man in whom the spirit will gain a just supremacy over the body, spirituality over sensuality.  It is easy to understand that what Paul has in mind here is sensuality as the sum of the factors that constitute the limitation of human spirituality, that is, as a power that "binds" the spirit (not necessarily in the Platonic sense) by hindering its own power of knowing (seeing) the truth and also the power to will freely and to love in the truth.  However, what cannot be at issue here is the fundamental function of the senses that serves to liberate spirituality, namely, the simple power of know and loving that belongs to the psychosomatic compositum of the human subject.  Since the subject of discussion is the resurrection of the body, that is, of man in his authentic bodiliness, "spiritual body" should signify precisely the perfect sensitivity of the senses, their perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit in truth and in freedom.  The "natural body" which is the earthly antitheses of the "spiritual body," by contrast indicates sensuality as a force that often undermines man inasmuch as, by living "in the knowledge of good and evil," he is often urged or pushed, as it were, toward evil.

 

Man and Woman He Created Them, Audience 72, Section 4, February 10, 1982  John Paul II

The Resurrection of My Body (Part 1)

We were moving through our Bible study of 1 Corinthians 15 the other week and I was preparing I found the notorious verses forty-two through forty-nine. Here is the Jerusalem Bible translation:

    It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit.

    If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, "became a living soul" [Gen 2:7]; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. That is, first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit. The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven. As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven. And we, who have been modeled on the earthly man, will be modeled on the heavenly man.

Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 42-49. Jerusalem Bible.

I haven't thought much about the resurrection of my body.  Sure, it's one of those things we chant in the Nicene Creed that we believe as Christians.  And there's Pascha.  It's just that I don't think at all much about my body.  True, we are more seasoned now and the end is closer and I can rationalize about meteorites coming down any moment, so who knows when?  But reading this passage just confuses everything for me.  This translation is not common nowadays.  For example, the NRSVCE translation gives:

⁴² So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is^[a] from heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will^[b] also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Here verse forty-four contrasts a "physical body" with a "spiritual body" rather than an "embodiment" of the "soul"  with an "embodiment"of the "spirit".  Obviously, there is something obtuse here.  After all, we believe in the resurrection of the body at the Second Coming of Jesus, the parousia.  How do I find a way to understand what he is writing about?

Are We One or Two

    It is the same with the resurrection of the dead:  the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit   

    If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment.  The first man, Adam, as scripture says, "became a living soul" [Gen 2:7]; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.  That is, first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit.  The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven.  As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so are we in heaven.  And we, who have been modeled on the earthly man, will be modeled on the heavenly man.

Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 42-29. Jerusalem Bible

    It is especially in Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body (in the context of his assessment of the weakness, suffering and perishability of human existence) that Paul’s holistic conception of the human being becomes most apparent. Paul’s discussion of the resurrection of the body makes it most clearly evident that Paul considers the sōma to belong constitutively and inseparably to human being-and-living, both now and in the telos (goal, end).
     In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul identifies human being-living as experienced through a “psychic body” (sōma psychikon) or a “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon; 1 Cor. 15:44–45). English translations have consistently mistranslated 1 Cor. 15:44, making a contrast between a “physical” body and a “spiritual” body, importing a physical-spiritual dualism that is not Paul’s. In this text Paul contrasts two forms of bodily animation, one “psychic” (psychikon) and the other “pneumatic” (pneumatikon), as a way to strike a midpoint between the Hellenistic body-soul dualism of his audience (which rejected bodily resurrection, period) and a naïve physical resuscitation model of resurrection. The bottom line for Paul is that human existence in either condition—whether in the present age or the age to come—must be bodily (“embodied” sounds too dualistic), whatever the precise animation and whatever the precise “physical” character. That psychikon here does not refer especially to the “physical” feature of the current body is indicated by Paul’s supportive scriptural citation of Genesis 2:7 in 15:45, which draws attention to the first human as being made bodily into a psychē zōsa, translating the Hebrew, nephesh chayyah, “living being.” Even the subsequent distinction between the “earthly” body and the “heavenly” body (vv 47–49) is not one of physical versus spiritual (or material versus immaterial), since for Paul the heavenly is a kind of substance or form (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:39–41). ³¹ Both kinds of bodily material require animation—and vice versa, both animations require bodily form—for there to be life. The only mode or form of human existence that there is, in either dimension, is bodily existence.
    Paul’s exposition of the character of and transition between these two modes is also instructive. The two modes are characterized elsewhere as “body of humiliation” as opposed to a “body co-formed to the body of [Christ’s] glory” (Phil. 3:21), or as “bearing the image of the human of dust” compared to “bearing the image of the human of heaven” (the second Adam, 1 Cor. 15:47–49). The most crucial language of resurrection, then, is transformational language, emphasizing continuing within discontinuity. Paul says “we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51, 52) and that our body will be “transformed” (metaschēmatizō; Phil. 3:21), such that it will be “co-formed” to that of the “image of God’s son” (symphytos, Rom. 6:5; symmorphos, Rom. 8:29; Phil. 3:21). Further, this is described as the “redemption of our body,” linked inseparably with the liberation of all creation (Rom. 8:18–25; Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:24–28). And so Paul can speak of this as a “glorification” (Rom. 8:17, 30; cf. 2 Cor. 4:17). Just as Paul does not speak of the replacement of all creation but of its transformation, Paul also speaks not of an exchange of bodies, even less an escape from bodies, but of the transformation of bodily life. And in continuity with Jewish resurrection hope, Paul understood resurrection not just as bodily but also as involving the restoration of a people within a transformed creation.  Paul on the Human Being as a “Psychic Body”: Neither Dualist nor Monist, Gordon Zerbe, 2008

As Christians for whom Jesus is Lord and Savior, when we die do we go to that place, Heaven, and sit on clouds and praise God? Do we get a new body when we get to that place, one that is perfectly formed and without blemish?

Paul doesn't seem to think so or say so.  Zerbe's article, which seems scholarly, makes the point that it is not the body which changes but what animates the body (soma)--the natural (sarx) or the spiritual (pneuma) in 1 Corinthians 15.  This is what happens when we are born {again, from above), we receive God's Holy Spirit into our self, our body and soul.  Now it is Christ who lives in me, the same body with the same soul.  The psyche does not go away, the body does not change:  the spirit gains supremacy.

John Paul II thinks of it this way
According to the words of 1 Corinthians, the man in whom concupiscence prevails over spirituality, that is, the "natural body" (1 Cor 15:44), is condemned to death; instead, he should rise as a "spiritual body," as the man in whom the spirit will gain a just supremacy over the body, spirituality over sensuality.  It is easy to understand that what Paul has in mind here is sensuality as the sum of the factors that constitute the limitation of human spirituality, that is, as a power that "binds" the spirit (not necessarily in the Platonic sense) by hindering its own power of knowing (seeing) the truth and also the power to will freely and to love in the truth.  However, what cannot be at issue here is the fundamental function of the senses that serves to liberate spirituality, namely, the simple power of know and loving that belongs to the psychosomatic compositum of the human subject.  Since the subject of discussion is the resurrection of the body, that is, of man in his authentic bodiliness, "spiritual body" should signify precisely the perfect sensitivity of the senses, their perfect harmonization with the activity of the human spirit in truth and in freedom.  The "natural body" which is the earthly antitheses of the "spiritual body," by contrast indicates sensuality as a force that often undermines man inasmuch as, by living "in the knowledge of good and evil," he is often urged or pushed, as it were, toward evil.
Man and Woman He Created Them, Audience 72, Section 4, February 10, 1982

 

Alone with God

2.  This man, about whom the account of the first chapter [of Genesis] says that he has been created "in the image of God," is manifested in the second account as a subject of the covenant, that is, a subject constituted as a person, constituted according to the measure of "partner of the Absolute," inasmuch as he must consciously discern and choose between good and evil, between life and death.  The words of the first command of  God-Yahweh (Gen 2:16-17)[about what to eat], which speak directly about the submission and dependence of man-creature on his Creator, indirectly reveal precisely this level of humanity as subject of the covenant and "partner of the Absolute".   Man is alone:  this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself. ...
Man and Woman He Created Them, General Audience of October 24, 1949, John Paul II

6.  Suffering, and the consecration it demands, cannot be understood perfectly outside the context of baptism.  For baptism, in giving us our identity, gives us a divine vocation to find ourselves in Christ.  But both the grace and character of baptism give our soul a spiritual conformity to Christ in His sufferings.  For baptism is the application to our souls of the Passion of Christ.
     Baptism engrafts us into the mystical vine which is the body of Christ, and makes us live in His life and ripen like grapes on the trellis of His Cross.  It brings us into the communion of the saints whose life flows from the Passion of Jesus.  But every sacrament of union is also a sacrament of separation.  In making us members of one another, baptism also more clearly distinguishes us, not only from those who do not live in Christ, but also and even especially from one another.  For it gives us our person, incommunicable vocation to reproduce in our own lives the life and sufferings and charity of Christ in a way unknown to anyone else who has ever lived under the sun.
No Man is an Island, Chapter 5 "The Word of the Cross"  Thomas Merton, OCSO  1955 p. 82

In the theology of the body (Man and Woman He Created Them), JPII describes the "Original Solitude" of  Adam in Eden.  Man is a person, a partner of God through covenant, who discerns between good and evil in his appetite.  Until God creates Eve, Adam is alone with God.  In Baptism, we again enter into covenant with God and become part of the body of the Christ.  We are again alone with God but this time we are joined to other Christians through Christ.  This leaves us alone in our interiority, in our hearts.  When we suffer from evil it is because of how we fulfill our appetites.  If we satisfy the desires of God, we encounter good.  If we fulfill the desires of our "fallen" hearts, we encounter evil.  We suffer when we encounter this fruit of evil (ours or someone else's) and we suffer in our interiority.  We are alone except for God, for Jesus.  If we suffer in union with Jesus, we are not alone within our suffering, we are united with Jesus in His suffering.  And, we are united with Jesus in His resurrection .

Good by Accident

     The Christian must not only accept suffering:  he must make it holy.  Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.

     Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them.  Endurance alone is no consecration.  True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude.  We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

     Suffering is consecrated to God by faith--not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.  To accept suffering stoically, to receive the burden of fatal, unavoidable, and incomprehensible necessity and to bear it strongly, is no consecration.

     Some men believe in the power and the value of suffering.  But their belief is an illusion.  Suffering has no power and no value of its own.

     It is valuable only as a test of faith.  What if our faith fails in the test?  Is it good to suffer, then?  What if we enter into suffering with a strong faith in suffering, and then discover that suffering destroys us?

     To believe in suffering is pride:  but to suffer, believing in God, is humility.  For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good.  Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves.  But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good.  Suffering, then becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God.  It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are.  Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not out suffering but our selves

No Man Is an Island, Chapter Five,"The Word of the Cross", Thomas Merton 1955

This is a great summary of what makes suffering redemptively of great value in our spiritual transformation:  what is evil can contribute to our good if we seek God in our suffering and, thus, receive His mercy all the more.   We suffer because of our sarx, because of the evil that is within us and around us.  Yet 

To the suffering brother or sister Christ discloses and gradually reveals the horizons of the Kingdom of God: the horizons of a world converted to the Creator, of a world free from sin, a world being built on the saving power of love. And slowly but effectively, Christ leads into this world, into this Kingdom of the Father, suffering man, in a certain sense through the very heart of his suffering. For suffering cannot be transformed and changed by a grace from outside, but from within. And Christ through his own salvific suffering is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of his Spirit of truth, his consoling Spirit.

Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris, Section 26, Pope John Paul II  1984

Through our joining our suffering with the suffering of Christ in His Passion and Death, we are led into the Kingdom of God, into the royal nature (basileia) of God, because God is present in our human suffering.  To suffer redemptively is to seek God in the midst of our suffering and "to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God" within ourselves, within our hearts.  This is not easy.

Labor Pains

"[in Romans 8]  Paul wants to make clear, this side of the world to come, there are some things that have to happen, still.  And, one he says is that those who are sons are heirs.  Now, heirs of what?  Well I think, in light of Romans as a whole, heirs of the heavenly world to come, that through His death and resurrection Jesus has inaugurated, begun, a new world.  For Paul as a former Pharisee, as a Jew, ultimately I think as a Jew his hope is, as was the hope of many Pharisees, that there would be a resurrection of the just when a new heavens and a new earth would dawn in full. ... When Paul saw Jesus alive on the road to Damascus, it was not just a gamechanger for him personally, it was a gamechanger for the cosmos because that world is now inaugurated, it started right in the midst of human history. ... And, so, it changed everything for Paul and that's what he is saying we are heirs of.  And then he gives the proviso, provided that we suffer with Him in order that we might be glorified with Him.  And that is a comprehensive "provided"! ... He keeps going and further explains the rationale, he said that all creation now is groaning and he uses a term with rich significance for the faith of Israel, "labor pains", all of creation is in birth pangs.  There's a heritage, beginning in the book of Daniel and onward, in Jewish faith, not all of it but in certain segments of second temple Judaism, there was a hope that there would be a new heavens and a new earth dawns but only after a period of tribulation, great suffering.  Brant Pitre wrote his dissertation on this in the gospels, that the birth pangs are a great suffering before the dawning of a new world.  Brant shows that Jesus was inaugurating that, that He was the one going ahead as the son of Man.  Paul I think is cut from the same cloth, he is saying that this new world comes and has been inaugurated through Christ's suffering but here's the kicker:  all the rest of those who belong to Him continue to suffer and that constitutes the birth pangs of this new world.  And, so, through the suffering of the adopted children, this births the heavenly world to come.  So Paul can continue on and then say, the hidden purposes of God in predestination are to predestine all those to be conformed to the image of the Son, who is the first born of many brothers.  So He went and all the rest of the adopted son and daughters continue that work, and that work is through their sufferings, it's the birth pangs of bringing a new heavens and a new earth.  So our suffering is the necessary condition for birthing this new heavens and new earth. 

...What's interesting is that Ignatius of Antioch, in 110AD, doesn't seem to miss this kind of logic.  He doesn't use the language of birth pangs, to my remembrance, he talks about becoming the "wheat" of God, that he will offer himself up and he says that he's only begun to be a disciple and that he will only fully be a disciple when he is conformed to Christ crucified.  The trajectory of Ignatius' life was to be fully conformed to Christ crucified.  You can see this logic work itself out in many corners of the early church, that the call to full discipleship is the call to give themselves like the Master.  Whether or not they're thinking about say this book of Daniel and these other second temple texts that weren't necessarily canonical, they were living it.  That is, that they were looking to continue to birth this new world to come, which is why you could see this in the rise of the cult of the martyrs, that their deaths would be called their birth day.  And it's their birth into that world! "

Dr. John Kincaid, The Art of Catholic, podcast 99.

Let us lift up our hearts We lift them up to the Lord

"O my Jesus, in thanksgiving for Your many graces, I offer You my body and soul, intellect and will, and all the sentiments of my heart. Through the vows, I have given myself entirely to You; I have then nothing more than I can offer you.  Jesus said to me, My daughter, you have not offered Me that which is really yours. I probed deeply into myself and found that I love God with all the faculties of my soul and, unable to see what it was that I had not yet given to the Lord, I asked, “Jesus, tell me what it is, and I will give it to You at once with a generous heart.” Jesus said to me with kindness, “Daughter, give Me your misery, because it is your exclusive property”. At that moment, a ray of light illumined my soul, and I saw the whole abyss of my misery. In that same moment I nestled close to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with so much trust that even if I had the sins of all the damned weighing on my conscience, I would not have doubted God’s mercy  but, with a heart crushed to dust, I would have thrown myself into the abyss of Your mercy. I believe, O Jesus, that You would not reject me, but would absolve me through the hand of Your representative. (Diary of Saint Faustina, Entry 1318)

Perhaps the greatest self-emptying we can accomplish is to give our misery, our wretchedness to God.  We often find it useful to hold on to our suffering, as we can control other people as well as to justify our own actions through complaining, accusing, and judging based on our own pain .  This is really our most absolute trust in God, for if we give up our misery and wretchedness to Him, what do we have left that is ours? What power of our own do we have left to attempt to control others?