beautiful persons may be very wicked,
while deformed ones may be very holy. Not so after the resurrection.
Perfect personal beauty, accompanied with a heavenly splendor, being
one of the rewards in store for the children of God, will then denote
sanctity in the just. The more holy they have been in this life, the
more beautiful and conformable to the glorious body of Jesus they
shall be.

Now, Christian reader, do you wish to possess faultless personal
beauty in your heavenly home? Do you desire, not only to increase
your own blessedness, but to be even an ornament in the kingdom of
your Father? No doubt you do. Well, you have the means in your hands.
Lead a holy life, a life of purity and perfect charity. Endeavor to
reproduce in yourself the virtues which Jesus taught and practised;
and when the angel's trumpet calls the dead to life, your body, which
must first be sown in dishonor, shall rise in that degree of beauty
which you have deserved by the holiness of your life.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE RISEN BODY.

Having seen the personal beauty and splendor in which the just will
rise on the last day, we shall now examine some other attributes of
the glorified body. St. Paul tells us: "It is sown an animal body, it
shall rise a spiritual body."*

* 1 Cor. xv. 44.

Rising a spiritual body does not mean that the bodies of the just
shall be changed into spirits. Our bodies, which are material by
nature, must remain so forever. They must rise in conformity to the
glorious body of Jesus Christ, "who will reform the body of our
lowness made like to the body of His glory." And what kind of a body
had Jesus Christ, when he arose triumphant over death and hell? It
was certainly His own material body of real flesh and blood, and not
a spirit. When he appeared to his apostles, as St. Luke tells us,
"they, being troubled and affrighted, supposed that they saw a
spirit. And He said to them, Why are you troubled, and why do these
thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I
myself; handle and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you
see me have."* Assuredly, here is a true body of flesh and blood and
bone, and not a spiritual one--in the sense that matter does or can
become a spirit. It is the very same body in which He suffered such
terrible tortures and agonies during his bitter passion.

* Luke xxiv.

So shall we rise on the last day, in our own material body of flesh
and