Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 14th, 2018
“Behold the Lamb of God.” With these words, John the Baptist announces the coming of Jesus, as he—Jesus, begins his public ministry, and begins to call disciples to Himself. I want to stop and reflect on these words- “Lamb of God,” and how they related to the Body of Christ and our own body.
We have just celebrated the mystery of the coming of the Lamb of God—Jesus. Jesus, the invisible God, second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, Creator and Sustainer of everything, comes into the world in the flesh, in a human body. And, it is through His body that He offered himself, and continues to 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—He said: “touch me Thomas, see I am not a ghost!” He ate and drank after His resurrection. Jesus still has a fully human nature united to His divine nature—He is still true God and true Man; He still has a human body, albeit a resurrected body.
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 as our True Food to save us. The resurrection makes it possible for Jesus at Holy Mass, to continue to offer His body in order to continue to give us His Body. This is the Body, that before we receive It, the priest holds up and proclaims, “Behold this is the Lamb of God. Jesus is still in a body and it is this sacred body of Jesus that will save us, if we believe, adore, hope and love Jesus in His Sacred Incarnated Body.
It is also through the Incarnation, God coming in the flesh, then that Jesus also 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- In Baptism, as our bodies were immersed into the life giving waters, we died with Jesus and rose with Him; we are reborn—regenerated from above, and we actually became 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—it means to actually share in God’s own Divine Nature. This has huge consequences, not only for our souls but for our bodies as well. 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—we are to live the life of Christ in our own flesh for the life of the world.
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.
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 or else it would be profaned. An example from Holy Scripture: 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, 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 Tabernacle was always veiled to remind us that what it contained was not just Holy, But HOLY, HOLY, HOLY (the Holiest of holies, Jesus, in His Body).
The human body itself was veiled (by clothing) as well, because it was holy and Sacred. This by the way is the where the ideal of veiling woman came from at Holy Mass. It was not that the woman was less, but that she was more. The woman’s body is 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 (in fact it was her father on the day of her wedding, who acting in the place of the heavenly Father, symbolic showed permission by lifting her wedding veil before he gave her hand to her soon to be husband..
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 alter 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 (on which we will be judged) 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.
While Today the Church allows cremation, it will not permit a Catholic funeral it if the person is being cremated because he doesn’t believe in the resurrection of the body or if the cremated body is not going to be buried. It must be said that Church certainly doesn’t prefer cremation, it merely puts up with it so to speak. The Church would rather have the body intact at burial and for sure, the body present and intact at the funeral Mass. The main problem with cremation in our day is not so much because of the outright denial of the Body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, but because 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 really, knowingly or unknowingly, a denial of the sacredness of the body. A cremated body must be treated as it is, a former temple of the Holy Spirit; and so, the body in cremated form needs to be buried, not kept in the home for any reason (we just don’t keep dead bodies in our house!)or scattered somewhere. To Bury the Dead is one of the 7 Corporal Works of Mercy which along with the 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy we will be judged at the Last Judgment!
To sum it all up, we are not souls held captive in the body, seeking to escape the confines of the evil body forever. We are body and soul, substantially united in one person and we will be for all eternity. What we do in our bodies affects our souls-what we do in the body determines who we are as persons. For example, one can say (as many in our modern age of sexual scandals say), “What I did wrong is not a reflection of who I am as a person”…in other words, “what I did in the body doesn’t show who I am in my soul.” But this is not so, for if in our bodies, we commit theft we are a thief, that is who we are; if we gossip then we are a gossiper, if we commit abuse, then we are abusers. Yes, we can repent, but then we are a repentant thief, a repentant abuser etc. Because of our Baptism, our bodies are now temples of the Holy Spirit, holy and sacred instruments, never to be desecrated by unholy acts or in other ways that are displeasing to God.
And so what we do in the body also determines our eternal destiny.. At the end of the world, at the resurrection of the dead, our souls will be reunited with our bodies, our bodies will rise from the grave. We will then be judged for the acts we did, both bad and good in and through our bodies, as well as for acts we fail to do, 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 united with God forever, or eternal misery of hell separated from God forever. So, St. Paul states very emphatically, 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 sacred instruments whereby God wishes to use us for holiness, for His honor and glory and for the sanctification and salvation of souls.
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 always and in all ways to glorify God. This includes especially in 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 the interior desire of our soul 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, always dressed for the weddings of all Weddings which is the Holy Mass, the place where our souls are called to be wedded to the Lord through the offering of ourselves. And because we receive Jesus in His Body and Soul in to our Body and Soul at Holy Communion which is the marital act of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, in order for the consummation to be fruitful, our souls must be dress in the proper wedding attire as well, made pure white by a good Sacramental Confession in which we confessed those sins, those things we have done and have failed to do in body and soul.
But we are also to adore God in our bodies outside of Mass by living upright, moral and holy lives, not only by not sinning in the body as St. Paul says, but also by respecting and veiling the Body through proper modest dress, never desecrating it by using it for fornication or by putting graffiti on it, and by always burying the Body when dead as to honor it as a former temple of the Holy Spirit.
In a just few moments, we will begin the Eucharistic prayer. In the Communion Rite, I will elevate the True Sacred Body and Blood of Christ and say again, “Behold—Look upon the Lamb of God. When we receive this Body of Christ- it is truly the Flesh and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus—His whole Person, we can be transformed in body and soul.
The Holy 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, if we surrender to Him He will transform us into living members of His Mystical Body, images of Himself for the sake of the whole world. May we be open to the graces we need to live out this high calling as disciples of our Lord, not only in the soul, but in the body as well, so that at the resurrection of the dead, our bodies along with our souls, will be with us in heaven for eternity, reflecting the Vision of the Glory of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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
