Now, Christian reader, do you wish to possess faultless personal beauty in your heavenly home? Do you desire, not only to increase your own blessedness, but to be even an ornament in the kingdom of your Father? No doubt you do. Well, you have the means in your hands. Lead a holy life, a life of purity and perfect charity. Endeavor to reproduce in yourself the virtues which Jesus taught and practised; and when the angel's trumpet calls the dead to life, your body, which must first be sown in dishonor, shall rise in that degree of beauty which you have deserved by the holiness of your life. CHAPTER VI. THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE RISEN BODY. Having seen the personal beauty and splendor in which the just will rise on the last day, we shall now examine some other attributes of the glorified body. St. Paul tells us: "It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body."* * 1 Cor. xv. 44. Rising a spiritual body does not mean that the bodies of the just shall be changed into spirits. Our bodies, which are material by nature, must remain so forever. They must rise in conformity to the glorious body of Jesus Christ, "who will reform the body of our lowness made like to the body of His glory." And what kind of a body had Jesus Christ, when he arose triumphant over death and hell? It was certainly His own material body of real flesh and blood, and not a spirit. When he appeared to his apostles, as St. Luke tells us, "they, being troubled and affrighted, supposed that they saw a spirit. And He said to them, Why are you troubled, and why do these thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have."* Assuredly, here is a true body of flesh and blood and bone, and not a spiritual one--in the sense that matter does or can become a spirit. It is the very same body in which He suffered such terrible tortures and agonies during his bitter passion. * Luke xxiv. So shall we rise on the last day, in our own material body of flesh and blood, with every organ and member glorified and made conformable to the body of Jesus Christ. According to the teachings of St. Thomas, our bodies shall rise of the same nature as they now are. For glory does not change or destroy nature, but perfects it.* Evidently, then, rising a spiritual body does not mean that our bodies are to be changed into spirits. What then does it mean? It means that, while retaining their essential material nature, they will be clothed with properties which naturally belong only to spirits, and not to bodies. These we shall now examine.