The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “To rise with Christ, we must die with Christ: we must ‘be away from the body and at home with the Lord’. [2 Corinthians 5:8] In that ‘departure’ which is death the soul is separated from the body. [Philippians 1:23] It will be reunited with the body on the day of resurrection of the dead.” But in the texts here quoted, does the apostle Paul say that the soul survives the death of the body and then awaits the “Last Judgment” to be reunited with the body?

At 2 Corinthians 5:8, Paul says: “We are of good courage and are well pleased rather to become absent from the body and to make our home with the Lord.” Some believe that these words refer to an intermediate state of waiting. Such ones refer also to Jesus’ promise to his faithful followers that he was going to prepare a place in which to ‘receive them home to himself.’ But when would such prospects be realized? Christ said that it would be when he ‘came again’ in his future presence. (John 14:1-3) Similarly, at 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, Paul said that the hope common to anointed Christians was to inherit a heavenly dwelling. This would come about, not through some presumed immortality of the soul, but through a resurrection during Christ’s presence. (1 Corinthians 15:23, 42-44) Exegete Charles Masson concludes that 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 “can be well understood then without having to resort to the hypothesis of an ‘intermediate state.’”