Will my body really rise again? How should the general resurrection be understood?

The Orthodox nuance

It is easy to slip into a vaguer picture, the soul flying off somewhere far away, and the body left as just a discarded wrapper. That is not what the Church teaches. This bodily hope already comes from the Old Testament, "I know that my Redeemer lives... and in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25-27), and the prophet Daniel writes plainly that "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Daniel 12:2). Christ Himself says the hour is coming "when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out" (John 5:28-29).

Saint Paul gives the fullest teaching on this, in chapter fifteen of First Corinthians. He uses the image of the seed, which must die in the ground for the ear of wheat to come from it, "it is sown a corruptible body, it is raised incorruptible." The risen body is not a different one, it is continuous with this one, but wholly transformed, a "spiritual body," Paul says, not meaning it is no longer a body, but that it is fully subject to the Spirit, without any trace of illness, old age, or death.

The concrete model is Christ's own body after the Resurrection. The disciples recognize Him, though sometimes not immediately; He eats fish before them, He invites Thomas to touch His wounds — so it is not a ghost. And yet He passes through locked doors, appears and disappears, He is quite different from before. "We shall be like Him," writes Saint John (1 John 3:2) — this is the pattern promised to all, a real body, mine, but transfigured.

The link with the veneration of relics, already touched on elsewhere, is now clear: if the body is a seed for such glory, it is never merely refuse to be thrown away once the soul departs. From here also comes the traditional Orthodox preference for burial over cremation, as a sign of honor for the body awaiting resurrection, though it must honestly be said this belongs more to piety and pastoral custom than to an untouchable dogma, and in particular situations a priest can give suitable guidance. It is also good to distinguish, so as not to mix things up, the particular judgment, the state of the soul immediately after death, from the general judgment, at the end of the ages, when body and soul will be united again for the full and eternal state, either in the light of God or in its refusal.