Category Archives: Icons

“We Have Knowledge!”

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Traditional Easter baskets are full of eggs, meat, cheese, and holiday Easter bread. People bring their baskets to church to be blessed and share the food with their families, friends, and neighbors. Community identity is forged by what people do or do not eat together.


Concerning food that has been offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs us up but love builds us up. If anyone thinks that he or she knows something, that one does not yet know as he or she ought to know. (1 Cor. 8:1-2)

Having spent all of chapter 7 talking about various aspects of marriage, St. Paul turns to the subject of food. He discusses various aspects of food for the next three chapters of this epistle. Food was important to the Christians of Corinth. Food is still important to Christians today.

The Corinthian parish had evidently written to St. Paul and asked him several questions about food. What to eat? Who to eat with? How to maintain their Christian identity in connection with food?

St. Paul begins by pointing out that although all the Corinthians claim to have knowledge, there is both “false knowledge” and “true knowledge.” The difference is that true knowledge goes together with love. False knowledge puffs up people, making them proud and arrogant. True knowledge, united with love, brings people into fellowship with each other. “We have knowledge!” was apparently the slogan or motto of the faction of the parish that was proud and arrogant. St. Paul warns these people that too often the people who claim to know more or know better are–in fact–the ones who know the least about the truth.

“Whatever knowledge we may have, it is still imperfect,” said St. John Chrysostom when he was preaching about this passage. “Where God is concerned, we cannot even say just how wrong our perception of him is.” He warns them, “More than anyone else, the arrogant injure themselves.”

One Flesh=Made Holy….

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Left: St. Mary of Egypt received Holy Communion when she was baptized as an adult in Jerusalem and then again from the priest-monk Zosimas in the desert after 47 years of ascetic practice as a hermit. Right: priest pours water into the chalice at the Offertory of the Eucharist.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. (1 Cor. 7:14)

St. Paul has already discussed how a man and woman become one flesh when they have a sexual relationship, no matter how brief that relationship might be. Now he points out that because a husband and wife become one flesh, the unbelieving spouse shares in the holiness of the believing spouse.

Among the Eastern Christians, the spouse of the priest shares in her husband’s priestly ministry, to some extent. She is given a special title of respect, usually the feminine form of whatever title her husband has: presbyter/presbytera, papa(batushka)/mama (matushka), preot (priest)/preoteasa. She and the priest are one flesh and share a common relationship to the parish.

In the reception of Holy Communion, each Christian becomes one flesh with Christ and with other believers who partake. This is why the use of one loaf and one cup are so important in the celebration of the Eucharist. We all receive the same Holy Gifts and share a common life as a result.

Because we share a common life, we contribute to each other’s salvation and sanctification. The holiness of one member supports and sustains the holiness of the others; the sin of one member pulls down the others as well. “Save yourself and you will save 1,000 people around you,” said St. Seraphim of Sarov. The salvation of one radiates out to touch everyone in the vicinity–and beyond!–just a ripples from a stone thrown into a pond radiate out across the surface of the water.

“Husband and wife are one in the same way that wine and water are one when they are mixed together,” wrote the 2nd century Bible scholar Origen. The wine and water mixed in the chalice are frequently seen as an allusion to the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, as well as the union of human spouses or members of the same congregation. It is in the Paschal cup of blessing that we find our communion with God and each other.

Glorify God in Your Body

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Orthodox believers stand in line to kiss the relic, the right hand of St. John the Baptist, which was brought to Russia from Montenegro, in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have received from God, dwelling within you, and that you are not your own? You have been bought and paid for. Therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

“Don’t you know?” St. Paul asks the Christians in Corinth. “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” he tells them. He is picking up on what he has just told them about taking each other to court. “What you are doing is inappropriate for anyone who has been washed-illuminated-sanctified in the Name of Christ and by the Spirit of God.”

“Illumination” or “enlightenment” was an early name for baptism. Plunging into the baptismal water, the new Christian is enlightened by the light of Christ, the light that filled the darkness of Hell and destroyed the realms of darkness and death. The new Christian is also sanctified, anointed by the Holy Spirit. Literally anointed. Not just metaphorically. The newly baptized was liberally anointed with chrism, the perfumed and sanctified oil that conferred the gift of the Holy Spirit. This sanctifying oil glistened in the candlelight by which those present at the baptism could see.

The body of the new Christian belongs to God as much as the new Christian’s soul does. Baptism is not just a spiritual experience. It is a physical experience that changes a person’s physical situation as much as it changes a person’s spiritual situation. Because a person’s body is washed and anointed, that body becomes a holy thing to be treated with respect, i.e. venerated and honored. Because a body is a holy thing, to be treated with respect and honor, it is inappropriate to treat the body in any disrespectful way. Some of those inappropriate, disrespectful ways involve sex but there are other inappropriate, disrespectful behaviors that do not involve sex.

Material things–including the bodies of the baptized but any material thing–can communicate the presence and power of God. Material things can communicate the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. One of the respectful, honorable ways we treat these sanctified material things is to kiss them.

Even after the baptized person dies, the body is still a holy thing and the remains–i.e. the relics–of the person are venerated and honored. The relics of the baptized dead are kissed and honored with incense, whether the person was a heroic saint or not. The baptized dead are saints by virtue of their baptism and their relics are treated accordingly.

Treating a person in a respectful manner during a sexual encounter goes hand-in-hand with venerating the relics of the saints. Bodies are important. They are holy. They are washed-illuminated-sanctified. Far from being irrelevant to ultimate salvation, the body is the means whereby God is glorified.