For decades, cremation has aroused in many Catholics an instinctive, almost physical unease. Not so much for doctrinal reasons—the Church has made it clear that it does not hinder faith in the resurrection—but because of a kind of underground fear: what happens to the body? How will that which has been reduced to ashes be resurrected?
The problem, however, may not lie in cremation itself, but in an overly materialistic—paradoxically materialistic—image of what the human body means. And at this point, a little-known passage from the Jesuit and astrophysicist Manuel Carreira, in his book El origen del universo (Didascalos), proves illuminating when he addresses precisely “matter in the resurrection.”
Carreira starts from a simple observation: many theologians speak of these topics “with fear of being accused of being unscientific,” as if accepting the resurrection required imagining a body reconstructed piece by piece, atom by atom. But that objection stems from a poor understanding of matter.
“Matter is much more flexible and much more wonderful than is thought,” he writes.
And then he introduces a decisive idea: the non-individuality of elementary particles.
When we ask with what body we resurrect—whether the young one, the old one, the one from before or after an operation—we usually imagine that our body is a sum of identifiable particles, as if each atom had our name engraved on it. But that does not exist. In modern physics, elementary particles are not “things” in the classical individual sense. They are interchangeable. There is no “my” electron and “your” electron.
That is why Carreira can affirm with irony that, in the face of the resurrection, God does not have to do any work of atomic archaeology:
“At the moment when God completely remakes man in the resurrection, He does not have to go searching for the atoms that were part of my body, at the instant I died or at any particular age.”
The key is not in recovering the same material components, as if the resurrection were a cosmic puzzle. The human body is not defined by the permanence of its atoms.
In fact, Carreira recalls that the particles of the body change constantly:
“The particles of the body change day by day, moment by moment.”
If that is so—and it is—then the question “what happens if the body is destroyed?” loses its drama. Our body is already in permanent transformation. We are not a fixed block of matter, but a living structure informed by the soul.
Here the Jesuit situates himself in the most classical Catholic philosophical tradition:
“The way traditional Catholic Philosophy speaks is that man is a ‘composite of soul and body.’ They are not two juxtaposed realities… The soul is made to be united to the body.”
The soul is not an “angel enclosed in a piece of matter,” but the principle that structures that matter and makes it my body. That is why he insists:
“Any material structure made from that common substrate of all matter, any structure adapted to my spirit, is my body.”
This affirmation has enormous consequences for the debate on cremation. Because if the body is not identified with an unrepeatable set of atoms, then reduction to ashes does not mean personal annihilation. Matter is not lost to God. There is no “remnant” to save.
Carreira even mentions the extreme cases that usually appear in popular discussions—cannibalism, transplants—to point out that they are poorly posed objections:
“The problem of bodies eaten by cannibals or of others who have had transplants disappears. They are superficial and even childish objections.”
Clearly stated: the fear of cremation often arises from imagining the resurrection as a mechanical return of the same atoms, when in reality the Christian faith speaks of a glorious transformation, the work of God, not a chemical recomposition.
And at the center of it all is Christ.
Carreira concludes by recalling that the resurrection is not a material riddle, but a promise:
“The Risen Christ is the reason for our faith and our hope… This is the unimaginable promise made to the children of God.”
Perhaps, then, the non-individuality of elementary particles—that humble truth of modern physics—can serve as an interpretive key to lose a fear that does not come from dogma, but from an image that is too poor of matter.