Renewed Dignity of the Body: Day 17
Author: Andrew Comiskey
October 30, 2020
‘When the Apostle writes,
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
which you have from God’ (1 Cor. 6:19), he means to show a further source of
the dignity of the body, namely, the Holy Spirit, who is also the source of
the moral duty that derives such dignity.
What constitutes this
source is the reality of redemption, which is also “redemption of the body.”
For Paul, this mystery of faith is a living reality, directly oriented to every
human being. Through redemption, every human being has received himself and
his own body anew, as it were, from God. Christ inscribed in the human
body--in the body of every man and every woman--a new dignity, because He
Himself has taken up the human body together with the soul into union with the
person of the Son-Word. From this new dignity, through the “redemption of the
body,” a new obligation was born at the same time, about which Paul writes in a
very concise and moving way: “You were bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:20). The
fruit of redemption is indeed the Holy Spirit, who dwells in man and his
body as in a temple. In this Gift, which makes every human being holy, the
Christian receives himself anew as a gift from God.’ (TOB 56: 3, 4)
I love how St. John Paul
II, following the clear witness of St. Paul (1 Cor. 6), now unites our fractured
bodily gift with the power of Jesus’ blood (‘bought at a price’) and the
indwelling Holy Spirit (‘do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?’).
In other words, Jesus’ redemption of our bodies now defines our sexual offering
more than sin.
TOB puts to death the
insidious belief that among the faithful, fallen sexuality prevails over
wholeness. Why? St. John Paul II believes in Jesus! He fans into flame the
truth that this deeply personal Savior has made us new--more authentic, more
true, more honorable than ever. Why did Jesus pour out His blood unto death, if
not to break the back of our sexual sins? And why did He rise in the power of the
Holy Spirit, if not to raise up our renewed bodily offerings for others? The
spousal gift-giving of Eden--that capacity for communion rather than fickle
chemical responses--is ours once more. To claim otherwise is to leech the light
from Jesus’ Cross.
But St. John Paul II does
not stop at our new positional authority. He charges us with a moral
obligation. Ok, he says, you have a renewed gift, your dignity restored. Now
act like it! Love as a person made new. Don’t just preen in the mirror admiring
your ‘gift’--give it! We are once again back to Eden’s edict to lose our
self-consciousness by investing in someone else. We find ourselves by loving
others. We have a moral duty and must discern what the Spirit is asking of us.
‘Jesus, how can I best
glorify You today by offering myself to another? How can I best activate my
gift? Please reveal and burn off any strange comfort I derive from defining
myself as ‘broken.’ Help me to live responsibly the whole-enough dignity of my
bodily gift.’
'Jesus,
thank You for confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court, Your
bright light in a dismal political season.'
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