Corpus Christi – June 11, 2023

Homilies

Corpus Christi – June 11, 2023

CorpChristiA23.    Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  “Moses said to the people: ‘Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journey in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.”   He fed them with a manna that was food unknown to them and proved not to be so agreeable to them but nonetheless filled their hunger.The Lord provides but does it in his own way.The Lord bends us to his will so to make us in his way because he alone knows what is best for us.

John 6:51-58.  John 1:14a says: “and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”  The Word is Jesus, that is, that God’s divine love was expressed or spoken among us in the human form of God made man.  The flesh of the sacrifices offered up in the temple in Jerusalem were offered up to God but also at times consumed as a sign of unity with the divine.  Jesus offers up his flesh, his body, as a sacrifice for us in atonement for our sins.  We consume his sacrificial body as a sign of our unity with the divine.  He is the food of our spiritual life without whom we are spiritually dead even though humanly alive.  He “is the bread that came down from heaven.”

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.  The Liturgy or Mass we celebrate takes part in the drinking of the blood of Christ and the eating of the body of Christ.  So what we are made of is the Person of Christ himself.  We are no longer just flesh and fluid of the earth but children born of the divine by the One who now is our life.

Corpus Christi – 2020

CorpChristiA20.   Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  Moses continued on to say to the Israelite People: The Lord “therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”  God fed his people then; he feeds us now.  “God let them be afflicted with hunger” “so as to test them by affliction and find out whether or not it was their intention to keep his commandments.”  The Lord tested them or let them fall into temptation so that when they were facing difficulties whom or what they would depend on to help them, their God or some substitute such as a golden calf.  To whom or to what did they really put their faith in or believe in?  Moses goes on to say they must remember it was the Lord who brought them out of slavery, who saved then from the saraph serpents, who saved them from starvation with the manna.

John 6:51-58.   “Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  “ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”  Science studies the material things of the earth.  Biology recognizes human beings as one of the animals of this material world.  When Jesus spoke of life, he was talking of the life that is beyond the life of this world, spiritual life.  To believe that there are spiritual beings,who are in this world here and now who are invisible, was beyond and is beyond what is acceptable to many.  To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus means that he gives his very self to us to nourish and sustain our spiritual life.  HE REMAINS IN US AND WE REMAIN IN HIM.  An animal onlly has earthly life; as material and spiritual beings, we have both earthly and spiritual life in us because Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in us and are life for us.We have Jesus’ flesh and blood as the source of that spiritual life. As the Lord tested the faith of the Israelites, likewise the Lord tests us with the challenge to believe in his invisible yet genuinely true presence in us.  Many people find that belief to be silly, absurd and insane.  The challenge to be alive spiritually and to grow in an inner spiritual life daily drawn from the divine presence within us requires that we must always be going to the Lord to live in him a life that is well beyond our natural instincts.  Without God’s indwelling and nourishing us, we are only animals of this earth.  “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  Our God created us out of a love for us that desires that we share in his love eternally.  The family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the saints is our family.  He has always had a place for us there, not just a grave for us here.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.  Ours is “a participation in the blood of Christ” and “a participation in the body of Christ.”  That is a participation in the sanctity of heaven while we are still here amidst the worldliness of earth.  The oneness of the loaf that is Christ himself that we share makes us one body, one people in him.

Corpus Christi – 2017

CorpusA.Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  “Moses said to the people: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.  He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger.”  The peoples who left Egypt had been there four hundred and thirty years (Ex 12:41).  Their faith as a Hebrew people suffered because their circumstances were so difficult.  Besides the Hebrews, “A crowd of mixed ancestry also went up with them,” (Ex. 12:38) which is to say, those leaving Egypt where not all committed to the Jewish faith.  The forty years in the desert was to form or reform them as God’s People whose intention it was “to keep his commandments” and so be God’s faithful People “that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”  It was by their commitment to God’s Will and not by their prosperity and human achievements that they were to have eternal happiness.  The first reading goes on to recall how God cared for his people by giving them the material things they needed when they needed them.

John 6:51-58.  Jesus tells the Jewish crowds, “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  They found this quite repulsive, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat.”  Despite the fact that they reacted so negatively, he makes his first statement even more explicit, saying in a strong formal way to note how important this statement is, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Of course the life Jesus is referring to is the spiritual life that is forever.  If that were not enough, he repeats explicitly this same statement twice more and implicitly yet twice more.  Jesus makes no attempt to clarify as to how the Eucharist really works but seems to want to challenge their faith.  Believe or leave!  Their negative reaction is deepened so much more that “many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” (Jn. 6:66)  It seems to me that Jesus is saying tohis followers that they should follow him out of faith and not because of miracles, how good he makes them feel or what he says makes so much sense.  All those things are good but what really matters is the faith in Jesus that sustains us in the good times and the bad and that never falters no matter what.  As Yahweh formed his People in the forty years in the desert so Jesus is forming his followers during his public ministry.  “Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?  Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’” (Jn. 6:67-70)  As with the Israelites and Jesus’ disciples, the life time of each one of us is a journey when we are being tested or pushed daily to choose Christ as our life.  Do we daily in the good times and the bad grow in faith in God or not?

“Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  Here I think Jesus is speaking of the Father dwelling in him in his humanness and so likewise Jesus lives in us and graces us with his divine life so that our earthly selves are enliven with a heavenly, spiritual share of God’s life in which, as the second reading says, we participate, which is then a part of us.  Jesus’ body and blood, he himself, integrates himself into our being.  Then we are far more than we would be if we were just our earthly selves.  Jesus said, “For my flesh is true food and my blood true drink.”  Faith is living a life dependent on God’s life within us.  Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”  (Gal. 2:19b-20)  Matthew 10:39 says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  To live our lives in ourselves without Jesus is spiritual death.  To live our lives in Christ, in his personal active presence within us, is spiritual life, life forever.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17.   Paul is saying that the Eucharist is a union or communion of ourselves with Christ who draws us together with him in union with all who participate.  The many members of the celebrating community are made one through our participation in the one Christ, in his body and blood.  “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you arein me and I in you,” (John 14:20) united to Jesus, we are put in communion or in a community with one an

other.

 

Most Holy Trinity – June 4, 2023

TrinityA23.   Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.  As the Lord passed before Moses, “Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.”  Along with Moses we recognize the Lord as the Almighty, “merciful and gracious God.”  We submit ourselves to his glorious reign over us.

John 3:16-18.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  God expresses his might not to obliterate and crush but to raise up and an enrich.  Our God, who can do whatever he wills, wills only the best for all of his creatures.  However, those who reject his love render themselves worthless and condemned.

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.    As the Trinity is three persons bound together to be one God by love, so should we be bound together by our God-infused love for one another.  Let us live in the love that is God who gave his only Son that we may be love as God is love.

Most Holy Trinity – 2020

TrinA20.   Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.   Moses goes up to the top of the mountain and the Lord comes down to the top of the mountain.  Through Moses man reaches up to God to come into contact with the God who reaches down to man.  In reaching down to us the Lord manifests himself as God who not only is infinitely good in every way but especially infinitely loving and caring.  He so loves his people that, even though they had just worshipped the golden calf, his mercy is infinitely greater than their sin.  He takes them back as his own.

John 3:16-18.   “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  The Son, while still retaining his divinity, became fully human so that he could offer himself up as a sacrifice on the cross to wash away our sins with his blood.  Only the infinite God could himself satisfy the infinite God to redeem us from our offenses.  However, in order to receive our redemption we must, as Moses went up the mountain, go up to God by putting our whole being into his hands by believing in his Son as our only source of eternal life.

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.   “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  The Christian Corinthians had been a community of many factions who did not get along.  Paul is calling upon them to live in the unity of the triune God, one God yet three persons, the unity in which infinite love is the binding force.  Our home one day in heaven is to live in God whose love is so immeasurable that there is plenty room for billions of saints.

Most Holy Trinity – 2017

TrinA.  Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9.  Our God is, at one and the same time, all-powerful and all-loving and kind.  With Moses we too bow down to the ground and worship him.  As he took the Hebrew people as his own and went along in their company, so he does with us.  How good it is to have the God who is love as our God!

John 3:16-18.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.  In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) We are God’s creatures, created by him to be loved by him and by receiving his love, to becoming loving as he is loving.  However at times, all too often, we become self-centered, loving ourselves as though what has been given to us is ours by our very nature and is not God-given, in other words, I choose to believe it is I who makes me good and not God.  We can so easily say to ourselves ‘look at me, at what I have done on my own, independent of any source outside of me.’  I can so readily deny that I am God-dependent but believe self-dependent and so I can think that love is not to be shared but to be horded.  The truth is, on the other hand, that God loves me so that I might bring his love to others.  “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.” (1 John 4:11)  To believe in God means to have a pervading consciousness of being God-dependent.  Not to believe in God means to think that I, of and in myself apart from God, have everything I need.  In others words the crucifixion was to no effect for me because I see myself as totally self-sufficient.  I have condemned myself for my lack of belief in God as the source of my goodness and all goodness.  “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:18)

2 Corinthians 13:11-13.  Paul blesses the Corinthians calling upon them to live in the presence of the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  He tells them to make their community like a home that God is proud to live in and feel at home in.  “Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

 

 

 

Pentecost – May 28, 2023

PentA23.   Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11.   “Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”  The Holy Spirit both enabled them to communicate miraculously and also impelled and ignited them to move the Jewish pilgrims to accept Jesus as the Messiah.  They were on fire with the missionary zeal of the Lord.

John 20:19-23.  Jesus appeared to his disciples, commissioning them to go out and seek others to be believers in him. Then he breathed the Holy Spirit into them to be the life-giving force in them to enable others to live in the holiness of God by forgiving them their sins.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13.  “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  Only the Spirit can breathe into us God’s life so that we can do God’s work.  The Holy Spirit is God living within us from our Baptism and Confirmation who enables us to live the spiritual life in our material bodies.  Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we cannot live that spiritual life that is infinitely beyond the physical, material life that all the other animals of this world live.

Psalm 104.     “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”  Holy Spirit, fill us with God’s spiritual life.  Jesus said in John 3:4-7:   “None can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.  Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’” That birth is the life that the Spirit who dwells within us gives us.

Pentecost – 2020

PentA20.    Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11.  At “the time for Pentecost” “suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind.” “There appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” “Now there were devout Jews from every nation,” who spoke many different languages.  “They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,” “We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.”  One God yet three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  How often have we heard of the Holy Spirit who is the One given to us for our daily sanctification by the Trinity?    Only saints are allowed in heaven; the Holy Spirit enables us to become saints, if we only cooperate with him daily.  Nothing is impossible for God.  The Holy Spirit accomplishes whatever he wishes since He is truly God but God will never force holiness upon us.    We ourselves must choose to die daily to our own self-centered tendencies so as to belong to the beneficent Will and Love of God.  The Spirit enabled the Apostles to speak miraculously.  If we belong to the Spirit, he will miraculously enable us to be holy, despite the devil, our own natural desires and the ways of the world around us.

John 20:19-23.   The first day of week after the crucifixion was Easter Sunday, the same day that John the Evangelist, the author of this Sunday’ gospel, marks as Pentecost, thus differing from the other three gospels writers.  Perhaps it is only that his recall of events was different, leaving our humanness as the reason for the discrepancy.  Nevertheless, John speaks of the locked doors and the fear of the apostles in contrast to the divine capacity of Jesus to pass through locked doors and to bring peace to the fear-filled disciples.  He shows the disciples his hands and his side that had been pierced as proof that he is the risen Jesus and not a ghost or an impostor.  Then Jesus commissions them to go as he had gone out to convert the people.  Next he immediately empowers the disciples by giving them the Holy Spirit so to enable them to accomplish the commission he has just given them.  He next gives them the power to open the gates of heaven through the forgiveness of sins or to keep the gates shut to those whose sins are retained.  Now the gates are opened by a life lived in Christ or retained locked by a life that shuts out Christ.  The power that Jesus had exercised to open locked doors or to keep them shut is given to the disciples and their successors.  The Holy Spirit works through the Church, the followers of Christ, to enable us through the centuries to become holy and so to enter into heaven.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13.  “Brothers and sisters: No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (Please also read Matthew 16:15-16)  In other words, God enables us to declare the truth.  I personally believe that God and only God is the source of ALL goodness.  Even when a person is agnostic or hates God, if they do any good that is truly good, God is the root source of that goodness that they have just done without them knowing that it was God who enabled them to do good. There can be no goodness in this universe unless that good work has God as the one who empowered it to be.  “There are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.  To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  When we live in union with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit often uses us as his visible instrument in this world to do his work.  If what we do is good, the radical or root source of that goodness is the Spirit who is working through us.  “We were all given to drink of one Spirit.”   The Spirit pours himself into us, the vessels who choose to be open to him, so that the life and gifts we have are from him to build the Church.  In as much as we have chosen to be the instruments of the Spirit without whom we could do nothing good, we deserve a small portion of the credit.  However, by far the credit belongs to the Spirit.

Pentecost – 2017

PentA.   In Judaism on Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.  The word Shavuot means weeks, and the festival of Shavuot marks the completion of the seven-week counting period between Passover and Shavuot. (Wikipedia under Shavuot)  For Christians, Passover becomes Easter when we pass from slavery to our sinfulness to freedom because we have been redeemed by Christ death on the Cross.  For Christians Shavuot, which is also the feast of harvest of barley & wheat, is Pentecost or the giving of the Holy Spirit who is our living, i.e. not written, guide and enabling force in the spiritual life, and the harvesting of Jesus’ work with his Apostles.

Genesis 11:1-9 & Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11.  I wish to look at the first readings for the Vigil and the Feast of Pentecost together because it seems to me that they meant to be contrasting and in that sense complementary as left to right arms.  In the Genesis reading the people already speak the same language but God confuses their language because their unity of language was being used to try to accomplish things without God; whereas in the Acts reading, they are being united in the one Holy Spirit by understanding each in one’s own language “of the mighty acts of God.”  God brings about unity with God as the center but without God there is only division and chaos.  If we try to reach to the sky on our own, no good will come of it; but being united with God who comes down from the sky to earth, all is well.

In Genesis 1:1-2 “a mighty wind swept over the waters” as a sign that God creative powers were about to work.  In the Acts reading with the coming of the Spirit he appears “like a strong driving wind.”  The Spirit comes as “tongues of fire” that gave the Apostles an intensity of desire to speak “of the mighty acts of God.”

John7:37-39 & John 20:19-23.  The reading of the Vigil states that there had been “no Spirit yet;” nevertheless, Luke’s Gospel speaks of the Spirit working long before Pentecost (Lk. 1:35, 41; 2: 25-26; 3: 22; 4:1, 14).  I believe John’s gospel means to say that the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, that was to give the spiritual gifts necessary to initiate the Church after Jesus had been glorified in the Ascension, was to arrive at the proper time later.  Jesus “exclaimed, ‘Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.  As the Scripture says: Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me.’  He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.”  The ‘rivers of living water’ that are to flow from the Christian believers perhaps are the graced workings of the Holy Spirit who dwell within them.  In John’s Gospel the Holy Spirit is given on Easter Sunday (first of the week).  Jesus said, “’Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”  With Jesus present to them physically as he walked the surface of the earth, God’s grace or life flow into them externally.  When Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit, the breathe of God’s spiritual life was within them.  They no longer needed the external, physical presence of Jesus as a source of God’s grace or spiritual life.

Jesus said, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  He was also ordaining them as priests (Grk. presbyteroi) so that the Church then had the power to forgive sins so to renew spiritual life within the faithful.  Spiritual life was what Jesus had come to bring, the gift that gives eternally.  Miracles, that give or renew physical life, are only  a sign that Jesus and the Church, Body of Christ, (that exists physically after Jesus had left the world physically when he ascended into heaven)  have the power to give the spiritual life that is for all eternity.  With the forgiveness of sins, the spiritual life of each one of the members of the Church is reborn and renewed and so the Church has the Spirit’s life as its driving force.

On Easter Sunday, Jesus said, “Peace be with you” to give a type of resurrection to the Apostles who had locked themselves “for fear of the Jews” in the upper room which had become a sort of tomb for them.

Romans 8:22-27.  The lifelong labor or struggle for holiness leads us to a groaning because we cannot just go out and do it and it’s done.  Rather it is a never-ending- till- death struggle because the opposition does not give up until we have breathed our last breathe and are in the firm grip of the Lord, adopted into heaven as his son and daughters.  The Holy Spirit groans along with us in our struggle, interceding for us “with inexpressible groanings.”  It is like the groaning of those who are in a tug-of-war, or pushing on something or pulling on something we cannot move.  We do not want to give up but, no matter how hard we try, we cannot get the job done.  The forces that oppose the Lord never give up because they know, that as long as we have free will, they still have the chance to turn the tide.  Nevertheless, we will have the victory as long as we stay united to the Spirit who never ceases to intercede “for the holy ones according to God’s will.”

“As we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” Paul writes.  I have always heard of redemption of our souls but as a whole person, our bodies need to be redeemed too.  Paul wrote,  “He will change our lowly bodies to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.” (Philippians 3:21)  Paul continues, “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.”  Paul is encouraging Jesus’ followers to endure through difficulties.  “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weigh of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4: 17-18)

 

1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13.  Paul wrote, “None can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said to St. Peter who had professed to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,”  “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 16:16-17)  We can nothing good, unless we are graced by God to do it, even if we deny the existence of God or do not even know or care that there is a God.

The Church is a community of believers who receive many, differing gifts so that, as a whole its tasks work a unified result.  There are many parts of the whole body but all the parts are to work together for the benefit of the whole entity.  There is one Spirit to work together through all the baptized to achieve God’s will.  “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  God’s gifts, God’s will differs for each individual, but we work as a cohesive whole and so we, though many, are one.  “We were all given to drink of the one Spirit;” but, if we do not, we will die on the vine and be fruitless.

Ascension – May 21, 2023

AscenA23.  Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11.    The Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s second volume of Christian history.  After Jesus’ resurrection, he spent forty days with his apostles and then ascended up to heaven, promising them to send the Holy Spirit soon.  The Holy Spirit would empower them to be witnesses of the ongoing saving action of Jesus in the entire world.  Angels came to move the apostles on to the work to which Jesus had sent them.

Matthew 28:16-20.   Jesus commissions his Apostles and with them all his followers/disciples to, in turn, make others into becoming obedient followers of Christ.  The action of enabling others to become disciples of Christ is baptism, which is a spiritual birth that enables us to become children of God the Father, reborn by water and the Spirit. (John 3:1-16)  In being obedient followers of Christ, Jesus assures us that he, though invisibly so, is with us until one day he returns, as the angels asserted, as he was once here.  It is not enough to be baptized and go our own individual way.  Jesus calls upon us as we go through life on our way to heaven to bring others along with us to heaven.  As Jesus’ divine life worked in his human flesh, so he empowers us with his presence within us to enable sinners to become saints.

Ephesians 1:17-23.  “May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him.”  Through daily spiritually living with God the Father whose love for us enables us to see him with “the eyes of our hearts,” we experience “the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe” in him.  We live by the grace of his divinity that he shares with us as members of his “church, which is his body,” the fullness of Jesus who fills us life.  While still on earth with an earthly body, Jesus shared with us something of himself “who fills all things in every way.”  “We were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9b) who enables us to live spiritually with him, even while our lives here depend on our earthly bodies.