Friday, May 29, 2020
With Unity, Waiting in God’s Time
Do you not know that your body is a temple for the Lord?
From the NAB footnotes: Paul’s vision becomes Trinitarian. A temple: sacred by reason of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Not your own: but “for the Lord”, who acquires ownership by the act of redemption. Glorify God in your body: the argument concludes with a positive imperative to supplement to avoid the negative “avoid immorality” with v. 18. Far from being a terrain that is morally indifferent, the area of sexuality is one in which our relationship with God (and his Christ and his Spirit) is very intimately expressed: he is either highly glorified or deeply offended.
We do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God. As individuals we are temples. As a community we are a temple. We are a temple meant as a dwelling place for the Spirit, for God, for Christ’s Mystical Body.
From the Harper Collins Commentary: Just as Jewish moral tradition of the Diaspora stressed that sexual immorality is the result of idolatry in order to underline the distinction between Israel and the nations, so too Paul insists that holiness and purity with regard to sexual morality are the distinctive marks of the Christian community.
In a relativistic society we can be distracted by the idea that God is present in all things that feel good. This is not so. God dwells in his temples, the ones he created in us and St. Paul reminds us of this. In our most dear relationships we find God in the intimate gestures and words we share with another. We see and feel and hear the God we express . . . reflected in the other. This is why God created us: To know him, to love him, to serve him in the here and now and in the forever . . . in God’s timelessness. We so often forget this and so we might ask ourselves: Do we glorify the Lord in our intimate relationships or do we offend? Do we build up or do we break down? Do we bring unity or isolation? How do we serve and wait on the Lord while also showing that we understand God’s goodness and timelessness?
Tomorrow, learning to trust the Trinity . . .
Mays, James L., ed. HARPERCOLLINS BIBLE COMMENTARY. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988. 1080. Print.
Adapted from a reflection written on February 7, 2008.
Image rom: http://eternalchurch.net/who-we-are
The Noontimes 