Incorruptible Bodies

After a declaring authority such as a licensed physician declares the death of a human person from whatever cause, the body of the dead human person follows either one of two pathways: the corruptibility process or natural decomposition which is the common natural pathway and the incorruptibility process or unnatural preservation which is the rare unnatural pathway.

The reality of corruptibility is rooted and enshrined in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Holy Bible. God the Creator imposed the curse of corruptibility upon the dastardly defiant couple created incorruptible. Of course, the Creator who is God will not issue the curse of corruptibility if they were already corruptible from the very start.

“for you are dust, to dust you shall return.” Such was the curse of corruptibility issued frontally on the faces of Adam and Eve. The provocative act was not only their defiance of the command of God in the garden but their conspiracy with the ancient serpent with which they never owe anything even the dust from where they were animated. They exchanged God for a serpent and defended their acts. God got angry. They were cursed to die a natural death. The unpalatable fact is: all of us inherited it.

Science and Scriptures can give a clear explanation of natural death. The scientific principles run parallel or congruent with the divine definition of natural death uttered no less by the Creator Himself. There is no need to elaborate further on the matter. It is adequate enough that natural death equals corruptibility.

Nonetheless, the incorruptibility of the bodies of a handful of saints canonized or not by the Roman Catholic Church, has made the best and sharpest scientific minds face a blank wall. They cannot give a truly satisfactory and convincing answer why the bodies of certain people, extraordinary and controversial during their earthly sojourn, that were pronounced dead failed to conform with the natural processes of spontaneous decomposition with the passage of time. It is a hardly believable fact with most people of this generation even when it has happened right under their very noses. It is a phenomenon that is simply not natural. It is a travesty of Natural Law.

Quite a number of renowned and named scientists forwarded the hypothesis or theory that the incorruptibility of the body of Bernadette of Lourdes who died centuries ago and was buried thrice already and exhumed just as frequent was due in part to the low temperature in the burial site where the body was interred and in part due to the composition of the soil where the body was buried. Nevertheless, the body of the revered saint is still intact outside the burial site that was theorized as the reason for the incorruptibility of the saint’s body. Hence, the theory forwarded is just that: a theory or simply a glorified notion.

If this generation of shallow believers and all-knowing unbelievers would care to glance at the biography of any of the aforementioned saints gifted with an incorruptible body, it is readily manifest that they were gifted with certain priceless divine attributes not found with the majority of humanity even before they left this world in such out-of-this-world and magnificent fashion. For one, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was bestowed with the gift of stigmata, the gift of prophecy, the gift of bilocation, the gift of healing the unscientific way among others. Those attributes are, hands down, not human attributes. GOD Almighty favored them even before He preserved them from the ravages of time, dreaded ailments and natural death that most of us, even the most astute, wealthy and powerful found hard to avoid. The comparative statistics between corruptible bodies and incorruptible bodies show a very, very wide disparity.

Generation after generation, exceptional people in whatever terrestrial endeavor are praised, and elevated in a pedestal for their feats and achievements in so many ways. Podium exaltations, plaques, certificates of accolade, trophies and medals are given to those who excel in their craft as in the case of the multi-gold medalists in Olympic Games. Heroes are revered and remembered with a lifeless monument and immortalized in numerous books for their contributions to humanity of their generation. However, the good and omnipotent God cannot be outdone. He will not allow it even if He does not reign in this world. God also reveres and immortalizes His heroes on this earth. The big difference is such that His standards are not human and terrestrial but divine and celestial. Therefore, the awards that He bestow are not lifeless monuments or medals or extensive bejeweled plaques. He just makes the corruptible body incorruptible. The world cannot give that to their national heroes and to their spectacular and idolized celebrities treated as demi-gods. Nobody will argue that the incorruptible body of Sergei of Radonezh that is on display in  Sergiev Posad in a town near Moscow in Russia since the 14th century is more spectacular and astounding than the lifeless monuments of Abraham Lincoln or Joseph Stalin or Oscar de la Hoya. The incorruptible bodies of the uneducated pauper from Lourdes, the Capuchin friar from Pietrelcina and the Russian Orthodox Sergei of Radonezh are, beyond the shadow of doubt, the emblems of salvation. They are definitely no longer subject to the divine justice of God. They have been aptly rewarded. 
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For every rule there is always an exception. That is a truism. Nobody disputes that. There was a period in the olden times that the common cause of death of most living beings on the land of this earth was asphyxiation by drowning. It happened during the “Great Flood”. But God found Noah blameless for reasons known only to Him. He never enumerated the criteria of blamelessness He found with Noah. He spared Noah and his family from death by drowning. They were the exceptions to the rule.

During Abraham’s time, God annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah and its inhabitants with fire and sulfur from heaven. The populace of the twin cities of iniquity all died by being roasted alive save for Lot and His two daughters. They were the exceptions to the rule.

After the Resurrection of the Messiah, eleven of the privileged dozen all died by martyrdom. Only John the Beloved did not. He died in exile on Patmos, a remote island somewhere in Europe. Again, he was the exception to the rule.

In these modern contemporary times, the rule of corruptibility of the dead human body is already an accepted and embraced reality so much so that relatives of some of the departed would not even wait for it to happen. They prefer to subject their dead to cremation immediately after its natural demise to accelerate the corruptibility process. However, there are also exceptions to the rule on this matter. They are the incorruptible bodies that are on exhibit in their respective native homelands and the list is very short. Among the names in the list include Bernadette of Lourdes, Sergei of Radonezh and Pio of Pietrelcina. Like it or not, they are the exemplars of exceptions to the rule. God exempted their bodies from the rule of decay and decomposition.

Incorruptibility of the dead human body is not a natural aberrancy. It is simply an act of the Divinity. Incorruptibility of the body was a divine attribute originally bestowed upon Adam and Eve that they shed off and exchanged for serpentine corruptibility.

Peace to everyone!