What Are Our Bodies?

Last Sunday’s readings were focused on God’s call to each of us.  In the first reading, God called Samuel while he was sleeping, and in the gospel when the first apostles approached Jesus, He asked them, “What are you looking for?” before inviting them to join Him.   This short meditation will focus on the second reading in which St. Paul explains that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Here are a few excerpts from chapter 6 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

“Brothers and sisters: The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord,
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.
Avoid immorality.  Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
but the immoral person sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
Therefore glorify God in your body.”

As part of God’s creation, each one of us has a mortal body created miraculously out of the matter that God created at the beginning of all creation, commonly understood as ‘the big bang.’   Every cell in our body, with its precise atomic structure, function, and purpose, seems to know exactly what its role is in forming our bodies and keeping us alive.  You might say there’s a certain native intelligence inherent to every cell and every organ that comprises our mortal bodies, even though these mostly carbon-based cells are formed out of atomic and subatomic matter that has been in existence for billions of years.  The complexity of our bodies is awe inspiring when studied and understood in it inexplicable order.  This is all too astounding to be the product of random chance, as demonstrated by so many scientists who ascribe to the anthropic principle of intelligent design.

In addition to these astonishing bodies we take for granted, we are imbued with the power of reason and understanding, two realities that cannot be accounted for simply by the electro-chemical processes of the brain, otherwise many other mammals would share these qualities.  These uniquely human qualities are quite literally super-natural, in that they cannot be accounted for by the purely biological functions of our bodies.  Clearly, God created us for something more than our instincts and personal comfort, and that something has been revealed to us by God Himself in scripture, and more precisely in the words and actions of Jesus.  Not only did Jesus come to heal the sick and forgive sins, He conquered death itself, showing us that we were created for more than just a short human lifetime. 

The question Jesus asked his first apostles, “What are you looking for?” resonates down through history to every one of us.  What is our life’s desire?  Are we satisfied with momentary pleasure and comfort, or does our spiritual nature drive us to want something greater, more permanent, and more fulfilling?  St. Paul answers this question for us when he says, “the body is not for immorality… the immoral person sins against his own body.”  When we succumb to temptation and commit sin, we invariable injure ourselves either physically, emotionally, or both.  Too often, we settle for momentary satisfaction even though it may injure our soul and weaken our spirit, often without our realizing it.   However if we cultivate a virtuous life by avoiding sin, we “glorify God” with our bodies.  These amazing bodies we have been given for a short while are nothing less than the physical embodiment of God’s love, or as  St. Paul says, “your bodies are members of Christ.”  If we use them selfishly, we squander our birthright as sons and daughters of God, and damage or impair our spiritual health, possibly jeopardizing our eternal happiness.

God has promised that our spiritual bodies will live beyond death, no longer restricted to the physical limits of human perception.  In death we will rise above the confines of the visible and audible spectrums of light and sound, beyond the constraints of time and space, and live in the eternal present with our Creator.  At the risk of repeating what I’ve said in previous blogs, I believe our mortal life is a gestation period until we are born to eternal life.  The difference between this decades long gestation period and that of an unborn child, is that we have the power to choose, to cultivate a moral conscience, to use our supernatural powers of reasoning to discover that God exists, and to prepare for eternity.  Or we can fritter away this opportunity by remaining in the darkness of sin that clouds our judgment and limits our spiritual growth, to the extent that when the end of our life comes, we may be unprepared for, or possibly incapable of accepting the infinite Love of God.  

The gift of our body and human lifetime presents us with the opportunity to mature spiritually so that at the end of our life we can confidently answer the question, “What are you looking for?”