We hear a lot about certain pious persons in our culture that have, so to speak, left this world to be with the Lord. We also hear about some pious persons in primitive cultures who have done the same thing. I wonder what it is like to leave everything behind and be with the Lord. St. Paul said that once a person is baptized, the old human nature has died and that person is born again into the body of Christ. He wasn’t speaking figuratively because he went on to say that just as a human body has many members: hands, feet, etc., but they all form an organic whole: the human body, so also is the body of Christ. Through baptism, we become members of his body. St. Paul goes on to compare it to a grape vine. The Lord is the vine; we are the branches.
This coincides with the promise God made to the woman when he promised that her seed would crush the head of the serpent. Her seed is Jesus Christ, the Lord, become human. He strengthens all the woman’s seed in their confrontation with the serpent: Lucifer and his seed, who are human beings the serpent lures away from God.
This is the struggle in which we all participate: the struggle between the Lord drawing people toward good, the serpent drawing people toward evil. Those who give themselves entirely to the serpent will share his destiny. Those who give themselves entirely to the Lord, the God become man, will share the Lord’s destiny. This is what, I think, it means to leave the world and join Jesus the Lord. They become members of his physical manifestation, no longer just one physical body but growing into an aggregate of human bodies, like a colony, all operating through the will of the divine son, who only does the Father’s will. This whole aggregate of human bodies will have branches reaching into every human tribe, every race, and every nation. They will make God physically present everywhere he is welcome.
I think this is the good that will come out of this struggle with evil. Some human beings, hopefully not many, will side with evil. Some human beings, hopefully many, will side with good. When this struggle is over, and the woman’s seed really does have knowledge of good and evil, God will put an end to this struggle; restore every soul to resurrected bodies, and these who gave themselves entirely to the Lord will be the Lord’s Mystical Body, his physical manifestation to all of us.
Maurice A. Williams
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