Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

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.

“Arise, Come, My Love… My Dove”

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 Altarpiece depicts the Mother of God holding Christ while treading the serpent underfoot in St. Jürgen church in Gettorf (Schleswig-Holstein). In Genesis, God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Genesis 3: 14 – 15). Christians have always understood this promise to be made not to Eve, but to the new Eve, the Virgin Mary.
“He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” Scripture scholars over the years have debated regarding the word “he.”  Should it be translated he or she or even they? In other words, the he is generally understood to refer to the Messiah but can also be understood to refer to Mary and to the descendants of Mary, as well; i.e., Christ and the Church.

“Arise, come my love, my beautiful one, my dove” (Song of Songs 2:13-14).

“The bride hears this command,” St. Gregory of Nyssa explains, “and she is empowered by the word; she arises, advances, comes close, becomes beautiful, is called a dove. Now, how can you see a beautiful image in a mirror unless something beautiful has come near the mirror? So it is with the mirror of human nature: it cannot become beautiful until it draws near to the Beautiful and is transformed by the divine Beauty.”

The bride in the Song of Songs becomes beautiful because she comes close to the bridegroom, who is Beauty itself. Or, she has embraced the Beauty which has come close to her. The movement is twofold: bride and groom approach each other and the groom proclaims his desire for his beautiful bride, who becomes beautiful because she is close to him.

But this beauty is not a static presence. The bride becomes more beautiful the closer she is to the groom and the longer she remains there but if she were to pull away, her beauty would fade just as the reflection in the mirror fades if what is reflected is taken away. Her beauty is constantly growing or shriveling, intense and intensifying or fading and faded.

Many of us have heard the quote from Dostoevsky’s book The Idiot that “beauty will save the world”…. But we do need to read the whole conversation in the book to get the fuller picture, for this statement is soon followed by the question, “But what is beauty?” just as Pilate asked, “What is truth?”

St. Gregory tells us, “When our human nature lay fallen upon the earth, it looked towards the serpent and reflected it. But now our nature has arisen and looks toward the Beautiful, turning its back on sin and reflecting the Beauty which it faces. For now it looks at that archetypal Beauty… turning towards the light, it has been made into the image of light and within this light it has taken on the lovely form of the dove–I mean the Dove that symbolizes the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

Human nature has turned its back on the serpent and now reflects the divine Beauty, radiant and filled with light. The bride, now the beautiful one because of of the Beauty she reflects, is also the place where the Dove can be found.