In today’s first reading from 1 Corinthians 3, St. Paul says, “You are God’s building. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” And in the Gospel reading from John 2, Jesus talks about the people destroying the temple and in three days he would rebuild it. They thought he was talking about the Jerusalem temple, which took nearly 50 years to build. John writes, “But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
As Christians, we know that these bodies are just temporary dwelling places. We are not physical beings on a spiritual journey, but spiritual beings on a physical journey. We know that we need to take care of our bodies. But not so much because we love them, per se. We must take care of our body because it is one of God’s beautiful creations. We often think of taking care of the environment, and we should. God has given us the beauty of nature, and we need to be good stewards of His creation. How much more so our body?
If you had a $1 million racehorse, would you feed it junk food, let it stay out all night, smoking and drinking and abusing itself all the livelong day? Of course not! You would take care of it and make sure that it reached its maximum potential. Then why do we do these things to our bodies, which are worth more than all the gold in Ft. Knox? We don’t need to be neurotic about it, but we should take good care of our bodies because they were created by our loving God.
Father, forgive us for those times when we abuse our bodies. Help us to see ourselves as your wondrous, beautiful creations. Amen.
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