Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Living God?

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 15th, 2012

“Behold the Lamb of God.” With these words, John the Baptist announces the coming of Jesus, as he begins his public ministry, and begins to call disciples to Himself. I want to stop and reflect on these words- Lamb of God. We have just celebrated the mystery of the coming of the Lamb of God, Jesus. Jesus, the invisible God, second person of the Blessed Trinity comes into the world in the flesh, in a human body. And, it is through his Body that He will offer himself to His heavenly Father, as the true Lamb of Sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. God has become incarnate, and everything, everything has changed.

It is important to remember that the Incarnation of Jesus did not end with the death of Jesus. Jesus resurrected and He did so in the flesh. His resurrection was a bodily resurrection, a physical resurrection--“touch me Thomas, see I am not a ghost!” This is why Jesus came to earth as a little baby in Bethlehem, He came so that He could die in His body, in order that He would be able to give us this body to save us. The resurrection makes it possible for Jesus to give us His Body. This is the body that the priest holds up and proclaims, Behold this is the Lamb of God before we receive Him. Jesus is still in a body and it is this sacred body of Jesus that will save us, if we adore It.

It is also through the incarnation, God coming in the flesh, that Jesus reveals to us who we are. We too are called to live out our lives in holiness in the flesh—in a body, just as Jesus did. In fact, because of Jesus, our bodies can now actually become real temples for the living and true God to dwell in. As St. Paul says to us today, our bodies are Temples of the Holy Spirit- we are in Baptism, reborn and we become living temples of the living God. This image is not just a spiritual one- we are reunited to the Father and become children of God, literally this means to have the Life of God alive in our souls. This has huge consequences for our bodies. We are indeed true sons and daughters of God- this is truly who we are. And so as sons and daughters of God we are to live our lives in a way which shows forth this great truth to all around us.

At the end of the world, at the resurrection of the dead, our souls will be reunited with our bodies. We will be judged for the acts we did, both bad and good in and through our bodies and depending on the outcome of that judgment we will spend eternity in our bodies in one of two places, either in eternal bliss of heaven or eternal misery of hell. So St. Paul says, because our bodies are holy, temples of the Holy Spirit, our bodies are not to be instruments of sins-our bodies are not for fornication, but instruments whereby God uses us for holiness, for His glory.

This brings us three important considerations all having to do with the body as temple of the Holy Spirit. And how a failure to understand the holiness of the body leads to all sorts of desecrations and one could even de-sacrilization of the body. First, the subject of married love, second how do we take care of the building of the temple and thirdly, how do we treat the body after death.

In the sacrament of marriage our physical bodies reach their finality, meaning what they were designed for, when they are united to another body of the opposite sex. When they are used properly our bodies will be fruitful, and the fruit will be children who are one of the greatest gifts of God and who are destined to become sons and daughters of God as well. Our culture degrades the body, especially in this area, in the area of sexual morality.

If we use our bodies improperly and not according to the design of God and His holy will, we degrade the living temple of our bodies and force the Holy Spirit out of the temple. Think of all of the ways our modern world desecrates the body. Our culture is one of sexual excess. The so called sexual revolution is no more than an excuse for sexual sin. It starts in simple ways- like dressing in an immodest, seductive manner. By the way, the person who dresses in such a manner, draws upon their soul, all the sins that lead others to impure thoughts or actions. Because they lead others into sin by the way they dress, they share in these sins. And so by merely walking down the street or down the communion line, one can draw multiple and very serious sins upon one’s own soul.

This degrading of the body then progresses to fornication, that is using our sexual powers outside of marriage, such as in living together; adultery, in which ones fails to love ones spouse as ones loves own body, artificial birth control which shuts of the fruitfulness of life and refuses to be open to this greatest of God’s gifts. Abortion, which destroy the fruit of the union between two bodies, which is another body of a human person destined to be born in order to adore and glorify the Creator of life. We could go on and on, but you get the picture. Jesus desires us to use our bodies for His glory- instruments of his love and mercy.

Next, the second point, how we dress our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, holy and sacred objects were always, always, veiled. The veil reminded the view that that which lies behind or under the veil was sacred, only and belonged to God. And because it was holy it could not be looked upon with ordinary eyes and a casual glance. IN other words, it could not be look upon as ordinary or secular but as something holy and sacred to the Lord God. The holies of holies containing the Ark of the Covenant was hidden always behind a veil and no one could look behind the veil except one appointed by God,that is, the priest.

Later in the New Testament, the chalice and paten which would hold the Body and blood of Christ would be veiled until the appropriate time during Holy Mass. And the human body itself was veiled, by clothing because it was holy and Sacred. This by the way is the where the ideal of veiling woman came from. The woman’s body was holy and sacred and one was not to look upon it with eyes of lust and filth. Only the husband who body belongs to the woman because he consecrated himself by a sacred oath to her and she to Him, only he could remove the veil and see the sacredness and beauty behind.

Because our modern society as too often removed the veil outside the marital bond the body as become something dirty and filthy. Why is there the modern attempt to piece, tattoo and surgical altar the body? Is not this a sign that body is now hated so much that it is mutilated and changed, in order to try to make it more sexually desirable.

Let’s move to the third point, the end of life. Never before have we seen the sacredness of the body more disregarded at death than in our day. The Church and society informed and formed by the Church and her teachings, has always in the past seen to it that the human body received a proper burial. In fact, one of the corporal works of mercy is to bury the dead. This practice presupposed a belief in the sacredness of the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and as well, a belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead on the day of Judgment. By the way, the masons attack this bodily resurrection of the dead and so tried to convince others, especially Catholics to have their bodies cremated at death to show their denial of the churches teaching that the body would be resurrected. If the body was cremated, so they thought, it couldn’t be resurrected, this why the Church banned cremation for a while.

While Today the Church reluctantly allows cremation, it will not allow it if the person is being cremated because he doesn’t believe in the resurrection of the body. It must be said that Church certainly doesn’t prefer cremation; it would rather have the body intact at burial and for sure the body present and intact at the funeral Mass. The problem with cremation is that because of the denial of the Body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, families are not burying the body. They are dumping the cremated body at sea, keeping it on their fire place mantel, and even making it into jewelry. This is a denial of the sacredness of the body. The cremated body must be treated as a former temple of the Holy Spirit and so the body in cremated form needs to be buried.

In the end we are not just souls without bodies and we are not souls held captive in the body. We are body and soul, and even more because of our Baptism our bodies are now temples of the Holy Spirit, holy and sacred instruments. We are to adore our God not only in Soul but in our body as well. We need to change our attitudes and behaviors to reflect the reality to which we have been baptized into- we are all uniquely children of God. With this confidence, we can then use our bodies to glorify God. This includes using our body in the worship and adoration of God at Holy Mass.

We use our bodies to genuflect, kneel and bow in order to show our interior desire to adore God. This use of our body should also be reflected in how we dress our bodies; we should dress modesty, always wearing our Sunday best. But we are also to adore God in our bodies outside of Mass by living upright, moral and holy lives by not sinning in the body. At Mass our bodies are united with Jesus in a holy marriage when we receive His Sacred Body in holy Communion, so our bodies must be pure like our souls in order to receive Him worthily.

In a few moments, we will begin the Eucharistic prayer. In the communion rite I will elevate the body and Christ and say, “This is the Lamb of God. When we receive this body of Christ- it is truly the flesh and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, we can be transformed. The Eucharist, the body of Christ will give us the power we need to live lives of purity and holiness in the body. By receiving Jesus, He will transform us into members of his own sacred body, if we let Him. May we be open to the graces we need to live out this high calling as disciples of our Lord live out not only in the soul, but in the body as well, so that at the resurrection of the dead, our bodies will be with us in heaven reflecting the glory of God through Jesus Christ.

Hail true Body, Holy Body, born of the Virgin Mary, who truly suffered and was sacrificed on the cross for men. From your pierced side streamed blood and water. Be a foretaste of heaven to us in our death agony. O dear Jesus! O kind Jesus! O Jesus, Son of Mary. Amen