Ash Wednesday is a ritual of truth. The priest makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of everyone on the queue. He tells each one: “For you are dirt and to dirt you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Simply said: Man is a corruptible being.
Dust will reclaim man
Ash Wednesday is the start of the Lenten Season. An ancient tradition of prayer, penance and reflection, it ends on Easter Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead. It is a day of great hope, too—that man will rise with Him on the day of reckoning.
Among early Christians, those who had committed grave sins perform public penance. Sack clothes are worn by penitents, who parade themselves in public places rubbing their bodies with ashes.
The ashes are made from the palms fronds used in the previous year’s Palm Sunday. They burned into ashes and sprinkled with water. Sometimes scented incense is mixed. The ash signifies grief, penance and humility.
Holy Mother Church teaches that after death, each person stands before God, sans possessions, titles and honors, and only one’s good deeds will be honored. And dust will reclaim man.
When rigor mortis begins
Theologians say that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. The heart may have stopped beating but the soul is still present. So persons declared clinically dead can sometimes be revived by artificial respiration. Thus, the Church allows priests to give conditional absolution and conditional anointing of the sick, two hours after apparent death.
When blood congeals and rigor mortis—the stiffening of muscles—begin, the soul definitely has left the body, according to Leo J. Trese in The Faith Explained.
Even while those near the bedside are “crossing the hands on the breast and gently closing the sightless eyes, the soul has been judged and knows its eternal fate”—its particular judgment.
Theologians speculate that “God illumines the soul, sees it as God sees it—sees what its fate is in accordance with the infinite justice of God.”
Physical and forensic anthropologists attest that with rigor mortis, bacteria within the body takes the lead, maggots or flesh eaters emerge, which consume in a week 60 percent of the human body. If buried in a watery or damp place, putrefication or the process of decay is twice as fast. And, so the body—pampered with food and other wordly things—is helpless and decays.
Doctrinal divinity
Revelation asserts that “no man can be born pure and clean,…that whatever born of the flesh is carnal and corrupt.”
So corruption of the body—changed from its original state—will defy health, beauty and all medical pursuits to preserve life.
The tabernacle of the body called unique will in God’s time be carried to a grave. The corruption of nature is universal and encompassing. Man, in his entirety, “all powers and faculties of his soul” will decay.
The Doctrinal Divinity on the corruption of human nature had been decreed by someone who always existed, with no beginning and limit, “whose very nature it is to exist,” and whose thoughts and decrees are incomprehensible.
God, who is infinitely perfect, loving and merciful, has completed the public revelation of Himself to man. The reason, so every man can fulfil his destiny—be with Him forever and ever in paradise.
Although God gifted man with free will, the sights and sounds of a materialistic culture are so difficult to resist. Desires for pleasure is simply too much to disregard. Is it a wonder man is awash with sins?
But, as often as man repents, God forgives. And because He is a perfect spirit, He also is infinitely just.
“His mercy cannot defeat His justice if we refuse Him the love, which is the purpose of our being,” Trese underscores in The Faith Explained. Although Jesus came to save us, He could not save us without us.
Incorruptible
God, until death, does not give up to save man. So even in death, He made great witnesses to His love and mercy. He destined faithful ones to be incorruptible.
The word “saint” is derived from the Greek word hagios, meaning holy. In Hebrew, the word qadowsh means sacred and set apart. In the Old Testament, a saint is one who is faithful and godly. So Paul called the Christians holy ones.
In the Catholic Church a saint is a person of preeminent holiness and officially recognized through canonization.
God honors saints by preserving their bodies from corruption. The incorrupt bodies of saints are considered great relics, thus, they are honored by the faithful.
Not all saints, however, are incorrupt.
Catholic apologetics state that they are “simply living witnesses to the truth that the Roman Catholic religion is the one true faith from God.”
The process of beatification often has been started before graves are opened for relics. While incorruptibility of the body of a candidate for sainthood is a plus point, the corruptible body is not a hindrance for sainthood.
The authenticity of incorrupt bodies has been extensively studied and has baffled scientists and medical experts. The bodies are incorrupt despite the types of burial, temperature, moisture of the graves, handling and transference of the corpse.
In addition to incorruptibility of their bodies, God gifted others with biological manifestations that are akin only to the living.
This includes the living blood that flowed from a wound of Saint John of the Cross, when his finger was amputated after his death, while Saint Nicholas Tolentino’s arms frequently bled over the last 400 years.
There is also the perfumed liquid that flows from the hands and feet of Saint Agnes of Montepulciano, while Saint Pio de Pietrelcina’s hair and beard grew.
The longest incorrupt body belongs to Saint Silvan of the fourth century. Not much information has been written about him. He must have been a priest judging from his garment with a big embroidered cross. He must have been martyred because of a large slice on his neck. His body is in Saint Blaise at Dubrovnik, Croatia.
The Catholic Church listed about 250 incorruptible bodies of holy people in the Roman Catholic Church.
A Catholic theologian commenting on the incorruptible bodies of saints, wrote: “If you don’t see God in these miracles, you got a lot of thinking to do.”
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.