The death of the body, therefore, has in the last analysis been made irrelevant by the Risen Christ.  For physical death is a factor in eternal life only in so far as it will be finally conquered in the resurrection of the dead in which we profess our belief in the Creed.

For human beings are a unity of body and soul, and therefore when physical death renders them disembodied souls, they are to that extent incomplete human beings.  But that incompleteness, that broken unity, will be made good by God who will clothe the soul with a supernatural body, perfectly fitted to enable the person, body and soul, to live to the full that glorious supernatural life which the Risen Christ himself enjoys and to share it with him.

Such then is the Christian faith and the Christian hope.  In St Paul’s words, “…this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality…then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

‘Death is swallowed up in victory’.
‘O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?’
The sting of death is sin…But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (RSV Catholic edition, 1 Corinthians 15:53-57).