124. In what condition was the body of Christ while it lay in the tomb? (part 2) (continuation)

124. In what condition was the body of Christ while it lay in the tomb? (part 2) (continuation)

(Comp 124 repetition) Christ underwent a real death and a true burial. However, the power of God preserved his body from corruption.

“In brief”

(CCC 630) During Christ's period in the tomb, his divine person continued to assume both his soul and his body, although they were separated from each other by death. For this reason the dead Christ's body "saw no corruption" (Acts 13:37).

To deepen and explain

(CCC 625) Christ's stay in the tomb constitutes the real link between his passible state before Easter and his glorious and risen state today. The same person of the "Living One" can say, "I died, and behold I am alive for evermore" (Rev 1:18): God [the Son] did not impede death from separating his soul from his body according to the necessary order of nature, but has reunited them to one another in the Resurrection, so that he himself might be, in his person, the meeting point for death and life, by arresting in himself the decomposition of nature produced by death and so becoming the source of reunion for the separated parts (St. Gregory of Nyssa, Orat. Catech. 16: PG 45, 52D). (CCC 626) Since the "Author of life" who was killed (Acts 3:15) is the same "living one [who has] risen" (Lk 24:5-6), the divine person of the Son of God necessarily continued to possess his human soul and body, separated from each other by death: By the fact that at Christ's death his soul was separated from his flesh, his one person is not itself divided into two persons; for the human body and soul of Christ have existed in the same way from the beginning of his earthly existence, in the divine person of the Word; and in death, although separated from each other, both remained with one and the same person of the Word (St. John Damascene, De fide orth. 3, 27: PG 94, 1098A).

On reflection

(CCC 628) Baptism, the original and full sign of which is immersion, efficaciously signifies the descent into the tomb by the Christian who dies to sin with Christ in order to live a new life. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4; cf. Col 2:12; Eph 5:26). [END]

(Next question: What is the “hell” into which Jesus descended?)