Our Bodies are Living Cathedrals

Anna Rose Meeds

When someone talks about a cathedral or church, we often think about a building. Stained glass windows, candles, crucifixes and tabernacles might come to mind. Words like “chapel” invoke different imagery for different people, but there are similar themes and descriptors.

These physical places of prayer are important. However, Christians sometimes forget there is another type of church: our bodies.

The reading from 1 Corinthians this past Sunday makes this perfectly clear. Paul writes in 3:16-17: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”

Thinking about our bodies as a church in which God resides can be terrifying. I have often tried to escape from my body. After all, Paul also writes in Romans 8:5, “For they that are according to the flesh, mind the things that are of the flesh; but they that are according to the spirit, mind the things that are of the spirit.” This seems to state that “the flesh” or our bodies are bad while our souls strive to follow God.

Some early Christians committed self-mortification in an attempt to rid themselves of sin in the form of their earthly bodies. According to All the Saints You should Know, many women saints harmed themselves partially because “they believed that an inner, sinful nature was inherent to [being a woman] but that they could overcome it by burning it out, cutting it out, purging it out or starving it.”

To feel holier, I mimicked these saints by restricting food, committing self-harm and hating my body. I assumed that I was transcending my human weakness and growing closer to God.

Yet, the Bible is clear that humans were created to be body and soul. When Paul speaks about the flesh, he does not mean it literally. Msgr. Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington explains in “What Does the Bible Mean by ‘the Flesh’?” that “it refers to the part of us that is alienated from God” and “is the rebellious, unruly and obstinate part of our inner self that is operative all the time.”

Multiple heresies have arisen in the past by people who claimed that Christ was God, but not human. For example, Gnosticism teaches that all matter is evil while the mind is connected with the divine. Thus, Gnostics claimed Jesus’ body to be an illusion because He could not take a sinful form.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states in 464 that this belief is false: “The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.”

If Jesus took on the human form willingly without sinning, there cannot be anything inherently sinful about our bodies. In fact, God affirms our creation in Genesis 1:31: “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good.”

Instead of viewing our bodies as a negative thing, God sees them as beautiful and created wonderfully in His image. With His Spirit dwelling within us, think of how much more amazing our temples are! Thus, we should treat our bodies with the same care that we do a chapel building.

Cleanliness to keep everything in order, repair when needed, beautifying to celebrate and great respect for its dignity are all important. I struggle to do this, but know that God has called us to care for His dwelling place and beautiful gift to us.

Hatred of the body still continues to be a problem in the Church. Christians struggle with issues like eating disorders, shame of touching even in marriage and anxiety about being overly kind to themselves. These issues in part stem from a misunderstanding of what God created our bodies to be.

We must keep striving to treat God’s creation with love, awe and joy. After all, one day our bodies will be resurrected as renewed and glorified. The Fourth Lateran Council stated that after Jesus judges the world, people “will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their desserts, whether these be good or bad.”

In the end, we were created to be body and spirit. The Holy Spirit graces us by entering into our very being and making us into living cathedrals. This is a huge responsibility and honor. Thus, treating our bodies with reverence and respect is an essential part of our Catholic faith.

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6 thoughts on “Our Bodies are Living Cathedrals”

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  5. I could not agree with you more that our bodies (and spirit/souls) are vessels of the sacred … images of that which is most holy and the highest truth. Distortions of the body and abuse of the body are not limited to Catholics, Christians or members of any faith.non-faith. This refusal to respect our bodies is born of social media, advertising, false notions of mortification, etc. and our acceptance of that media as a representation of reality. All sorts of addictions, be they starvation, drug abuse, alcoholism, nicotine, etc. depict an ultimate betrayal of our bodies and spirits … when health is sacrificed so is our union with Divine. Rampant instance of obesity is perhaps the most glaring example of disrespect of the body (excepting rare genetic conditions) and the comforts of food deprive us of truly living on a higher spiritual level. You are very insightful and right!

    I would take the strongest exception only with one statement: “The Fourth Lateran Council stated that after Jesus judges the world, people “will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their desserts, whether these be good or bad.” People will not rise with their own bodies, which they nor wear..” My son is a spastic quadriplegic, totally immobile, contracted in every joint, severe scoliosis, cannot communicate. I reject any belief that he is chained to this body for all eternity especially when his is incapable of doing any wrong and totally dependent on me for all care. No God, not matter how you perceive Him, would be that cruel, unjust, unmerciful and devoid of compassion. A totally crippled person is not doomed to being a cripple for eternity.

    Additionally, Joseph Ratzinger (aka Benedict XVI) was fairly clearly in his book “Introduction to Christianity”, that the resurrection of the body is not literal; and he more a theologian than most, and not contradicted by authority.

    “…one thing at any rate may be fairly clear: both John (6:63) and Paul (1 Cor. 15:50) state with all possible emphasis that the ‘resurrection of the flesh’, the ‘resurrection of the body’, is not a ‘resurrection of physical bodies’ . . . Paul teaches, not the resurrection of physical bodies, but the resurrection of persons, and this not in the return of ‘flesh body’, that is, the biological structure, an idea he expressly describes as impossible (‘the perishable cannot become imperishable’) but in the different form of the life of the resurrection, as shown in the risen Lord” (p 246).

    Benedict continues: their essential content is not the conception of a restoration of bodies to souls after a long interval; their aim is to tell men that they, they themselves, live on . . . because they are known and loved by God in a way that they can no longer perish . . . the essential part of man, the person, remains . . . it goes on existing because it lives in God’s memory’ (p 243)

    1. I have not heard what was written in “Introduction to Christianity.” The Bible does clearly state that we have new bodies which are remade. They will certainly not be the same as our earthly bodies because, as you stated with your son, they are imperfect. However, I would have to read more and understand what Benedict XVI meant.

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