[2] In the genuine sense 'body' means the good of love and 'ground' the truth of faith. When truths and forms of the good of truth, meant by 'the silver' and 'the livestock', can be seen no longer on account of the desolation, 'body' means merely the receptacle for good and 'ground' the receptacle for truth. The reason why 'body' in the genuine sense means the good of love is that the body or the entire person meant by the body is a receptacle of life from the Lord, thus a receptacle of good; for the good of love composes the actual life in a person. The vital heat that consists in love is vital heat itself; and unless that heat exists in a person, the person is something dead. This then is the reason why in the internal sense 'body' means the good of love. Even if a person does not have heavenly love present in him but hellish love, the inmost centre of his life still owes its existence to heavenly love. For this love flows in constantly from the Lord and provides him with vital heat in its primary and original form; but as it comes to that person it is perverted by him, and this gives rise to hellish love, from which an unclean heat is radiated.

[3] I have been able to see quite clearly from the angels that 'body' in the genuine sense is the good of love. When they are present, love floods out of them, so much so that you think they are nothing but love; it floods out of their entire bodies. Also their bodies have a dazzling appearance, full of light shining from them; for the good of love is like a flame sending out from itself light, which is the truth of faith derived from that good. If this therefore is what the angels of heaven are like, what of the Lord Himself? He is the Source of every spark of love among the angels, and His Divine Love is seen as the Sun from which the whole of heaven receives its light, and from which all who are there derive their heavenly heat, that is, their love and so their life. The Lord's Divine Human is what appears in that way and is the Source of all those things. From this one may now see what is meant by the Lord's body - Divine Love, the same as is meant by His flesh, dealt with in 3813. Also, the Lord's very body - having been glorified, that is, made Divine - is nothing else than such Love; so what else can one feel the Divine, which is the Infinite, to be?

[4] From all this one may recognize that nothing else is meant by 'body' in the Holy Supper than the Lord's Divine Love towards the entire human race, described in the Gospels as follows,

Jesus, taking the bread and saying a blessing, broke and gave to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is My body. Matt 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19.

He said, referring to the bread, 'this is My body' because 'bread' too means Divine Love, 276, 680, 2165, 2177, 3464, 3478, 3735, 4735, 5915.

[5] Divine Love is again meant by the Lord's body in John,

Jesus said, Destroy [this] temple and in three days I will raise it up again. But He was speaking of the temple of His body. John 2:19, 21.

'The temple of His body' is Divine Truth derived from Divine Good, for 'the temple' is the Lord's Divine Truth, see 3720. And since 'body' in the highest sense is the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love, all in heaven are said to be in the Lord's body.

[6] That the Lord's body is Divine Good is also clear from the following words in Daniel,

I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man clothed in linen whose loins were girded with gold of Uphaz, and his body was like tarshish,^a and his face was like the appearance of lightning, and his eyes were like fiery torches, and his arms and his feet like the shine of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. Dan 10:5, 6.

'The gold of Uphaz' with which the man's loins were girded, 'the appearance of lightning' that his face had, 'the fiery torches' descriptive of his eyes, and 'the shine of bronze' descriptive of his arms and feet mean aspects of the good of love. 'Gold is the good of love, see 113, 1551, 1552, 5658, as also is 'fire', 934, 4906, 5215; and since 'fire' has that meaning, so does 'lightning'. 'Bronze' is the good of love and charity in the natural, 425, 1551; 'tarshish' which the rest of his body looked like, that is to say, which his trunk between head and loins looked like, means the good of charity and faith; for tarshish is a sparkling and precious stone.

Notes