thistle;9522569:
Please, why is it so important for you to insist that everyone should agree with you on this issue? No one is insisting that you should agree with us. There are priests who disagree with you and the Church does not say what we believe is a contravention of doctrine.
The second person of the Holy Trinity became incarnate as a human person. God lowered Himself, He condescended, to take on human flesh and become one of us. Humans are both spiritual and material beings, made a little lower than the angels. He became one of us so that He could raise us, make us live supernatural lives, live above our material nature and become holy, like He is holy. A squirrel does not do this. A squirrels perfection is climing trees and eating nuts and breeding.
Jesus ascended into heaven in His human body resurrected from the dead, a body that ate and drank, spoke, was touched and felt.
He did not take on dog nature, goldfish nature, spider nature, or worm nature, the nature of an amoeba, or plant nature, die and rise and ascend to heaven. He did not become a parakeet or a potato. Jesus is the God-man.
Humans are capable of living above their natures, although it is difficult. A pig is not. A pig will root for acorns to fill his belly. A human may fast for a long period for spiritual reasons. A lion will hunt prey in packs and kill antelope or zebras. You can not tell a lion to not hunt and kill prey. It is the animal’s nature. An male elk will smash his brains out for the right to have sex with all the females in the neighborhood. Male gorillas, sheep, goats, walrus, etc. behave similarly. Humans can not only not brutilize rivals, but be celibate and live above their natures.
We can live spiritual lives with our souls in communion with God in this life, and we must.
As in marriage where males and females are made one flesh, heaven is the soul joined to divinity, made one in spirit with God. Our natures are joined eternally as Jesus is alive forever in His human body ascended to heaven, the firstborn of the dead.
Cockroaches can not participate in the divine nature and neither can cockerspaniels.
Saint Peter writes that we will participate in the divine nature. We become one with God by sharing His nature.
The nature of a being is defined by what the being does, is capable of doing. I can not fly or pull worms out of the ground for food, because I do not have bird nature. I can not swim through the sea and breathe water, because I do not have fish nature. I lack gills, scales, a tail and feathers. I do not have the ability, power, to do the things cats, bats, frogs do.
When human nature is divinized by the power and love of God that is heaven. It does not happen to wild or domestic animals.
Human beings are made to long for this union with God which is heaven. They can not be fully happy until they find it. They know instinctively something is missing in our earthly existance. They seek the glory of heaven by writing hymns and symphanies, in art and architecture. They explore the universe and study its smallness and immensity and are awed by its beauty.
Dogs are perfectly happy being dogs, howling at the moon, chasing cats and the mailman, scratching for fleas, gnawing bones, sniffing garbage cans and one another’s body parts. For them life is just fine as it is.
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For humans something is missing. Humans seek something above themselves and although we sometimes look in the wrong places to fill what is empty in us, we will not be content until it is found. That thing we seek is heaven, God.
