food of the present
life. When the butterfly was a caterpillar, it devoured green leaves
with pleasure and avidity. They were its very life. But now that it
is changed into a beautiful butterfly, it lives on the honey and
exquisite perfume of flowers. If you offer it those same leaves that
it loved so much while a caterpillar, it scorns them, and refuses
even to touch them; for they are now unable, in its transformed
state, to give it any pleasure. So shall it be with us after the
resurrection. Our tastes shall be so refined that we shall scorn the
low animal pleasures which are fit only for our present corruptible
bodies. What a difference there is between the coarse green leaf
which is the food of the caterpillar, and the exquisite honey of the
blushing rose, which is the food of the butterfly! There is a still
greater difference between the creatures that now gratify our senses,
and those that are reserved in heaven to gratify our glorified senses
after the resurrection.

But there is still another slavery besides that of eating and
drinking, from which we shall be delivered by rising a spiritual
body. It is the slavery of sleep, which takes up nearly one-third of
our lives. We all know by experience, that it takes only a few hours
of heavy physical labor or assiduous mental application to exhaust
all our mental energies and bodily strength. And, whether we like it
or not, we must sleep six or seven hours, in order to regain our lost
strength, and to be ourselves again. How many saints have grieved
over this necessity of our nature! Often have they desired to spend
the nights in the contemplation of God; but in spite of their
endeavors, they were overpowered by sleep. The spirit, indeed, was
willing, but the flesh was weak.

This imperative necessity of our animal bodies will be totally
removed by rising a spiritual body. Spirits have no need of sleep;
their energies are never exhausted by the manifold acts which they
constantly perform. They live in the continual enjoyment of that
supernatural strength wherewith they were clothed the moment the
Vision of God flashed upon them. It is this wonderful strength which
will be poured out, as it were, over our bodies, at the resurrection.
For, as St. Paul says of our body: "It is sown in weakness, it shall
rise in power."* Hence, however intense may be the application of our
mental faculties or of our physical powers in heaven, we shall ever
remain strangers to the well