1. Impassibility implies the total loss of the power of suffering. What an enormous capacity we have for suffering! The power of receiving pleasure through our senses is only as a drop in the ocean, when compared to our manifold capacities for suffering, in every faculty of the soul, in every organ, member, and nerve of our frame. Every one of them is susceptible of tortures, which, while endured, make the enjoyment of life and its pleasures impossible. A violent headache or a burning fever drives a man almost to distraction, and destroys any pleasure he might otherwise experience. What consolation, therefore, to think that this body of suffering shall rise impassible! No more disease; no more pain or pang; no more suffering either of mind or body; for we shall enter a new world from which suffering is forever banished. St. John had a glimpse of this new world, when he said: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth were gone.... And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He shall dwell with them.... And God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away."* * Apoc. xxi. It was the thought of rising in glory, with a body free from suffering, that gave comfort to the holy man Job when the storm of adversity had burst upon him. Listen to his beautiful words: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day, I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God. Whom I myself shall see, and not another. This my hope is laid up in my bosom."* Lay up that hope in your bosom as he did, and when the storm of adversity bursts upon you, the thought of rising in a glorified, impassible body, and in a new world, will give you patience and resignation. * Job xix. But rising with the gift of impassibility does not mean that our bodies will be unfeeling as marble statues. It only means that they shall be free from the power of suffering; but that does not exclude the power of receiving pleasure. Glory does not destroy nature, but perfects it. The bodies of the blessed will remain sensible to impressions from suitable objects, and, according to St. Thomas, the blessed will use their senses for enjoyment in all that is not repugnant to a state of incorruption.*