You are God's Temple 2 (Sunday, Lent 2, Year B)

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I can't forget in a hurry my experience of having a phone for the first time. It was really fun with some admixture of serious seriousness, painstaking alertness and brisk attentiveness to the minutest details of phone usage. I carefully read the User Manual of my new phone, and almost found myself in the habit of carrying it around wherever I went. Why? Because I never wanted my phone to be manhandled or misused in any way! Its User Guide or Manual was always close by for direction on usage. I was even more emphatic on insisting that admirers of my newly bought phone should stick to the phone's User Guide because I never wanted to hear stories from anybody that my ever cherished newly bought phone has malfunctioned because of rough usage.


Now, if we can pay such a concentrated attention to mere gadgets and other material things that we can possess, why does it not occur to us that we ought to be more careful in our use of those things that do not belong to us? Consider the statement of St Paul in 1 Cor. 6:19 which clearly says: "...YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN...". Certainly, there's no ambiguity in that statement. The hard fact is that I, YOU & WE are exclusive possessions of God, and the earlier we come to this consciousness the better for us. In essence, we are nothing but stewards of our bodies and souls; and every steward is expected to be responsible, accountable and responsive. 


I'm always drawn into some state of sobriety whenever I come across that very serious question posed by St Paul in that same 1 Cor. 6:19 which reads: "OR DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOUR BODY IS A TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN YOU, WHICH YOU HAVE FROM GOD, AND THAT YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN? A very serious indictment! Isn't it? The statement obviously reminds me that this body which I have consistently manhandled does not actually belong to me. It sounds preposterous. Isn't it? But that's the Word of God, and we must believe it entirely if we are serious in our Christian life. 


The most sensible thing that we must do now that we are still breathing is to go back to the User Guide of these masterfully crafted edifices of God (which our bodies and souls are). The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) has all the rules and regulations on usage and worthy stewardship of these beautiful Temples of God (which our bodies and souls are). Reflect on the Ten Commandments (cf. Exo. 20:1-17), and your relationship with yourself and with others will take a new and more responsible dimension. You may see it as a cross too heavy to bear. It's OK! Let it be! And we must carry it if we really want to be happy. And that's why St Paul encourages us not to pay attention to the enemies of the cross because the cross will ever remain the WISDOM and POWER of God (cf. 1 Cor. 1:24). 


Jesus openly expressed His anger in today's gospel reading (cf. John 2:13-25). Whatever that made Him angry must really be a very serious issue. And according to the Scriptures, this seems to be the only time Jesus expressed His anger in such a manner. With whips, He drove away those who were misusing the Temple of God. In the 21st verse of that chapter, He remarked that the Temple He was referring to is His own Body. And by extension, who are those that constitute the mystical Body of Christ today? It's YOU AND I. And that's why St Paul reminds us that "We are Christ's body and each of us is an individual part of it" (cf. 1 Cor. 12:27). 


From the above discussion, I must then know that whenever I willfully allow this body to be used for immorality, I am seriously manhandling something that does not belong to me. Whenever I offer any part of this body for criminality and wicked manipulation, then I am simply turning a beautiful Temple of God into a den of wickedness and robbery. Whenever I subject or induce other people to sin or dishonor the bodies they carry, then I must also know that I am seriously culpable for the destruction of those special Temples of God.



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