Reflection for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s second reading from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 6:19, we hear this: Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased, and at a price. It’s a verse full of mystery: you are a temple; the Holy Spirit is within you; you have been purchased;  at a price. This is not a simple declaration of the way we should live, as in1 Corinthians 7:32, where St. Paul says, I should like you to be free of anxieties.

NO, this verse strikes us in a way that either confuses us or causes us to shiver with joy. We have been bought by Jesus–from whom? From the evil one. At what  price? The Blood of Jesus. We are temples of the Holy Spirit–yet we might say, but I hardly know Him at all, so how can I be His temple? What does it mean in the concrete, that I am not my own? In this one verse we find the entire mystery of the Indwelling of God, something we don’t often hear about from the pulpit. But it is the crux of our faith, to be sure.

God chooses to dwell–not with us, but within us, and this privilege was a gift paid for by the tortuous passion and death of Jesus. And He not only lives within us, but he also makes us a temple for God.

Many of us went through at least one period in our lives when we felt that we were nobody, a complete failure, a mistake. We might have been bullied as a child because of our name or our way of speaking, or the way we dressed. We came to believe what others told us, and it was a long, lonely journey before we got to a point where we could finally feel there was a place for us in this harsh world.

Once we allow ourselves to be found by God, either through the example of someone we trust or we learn it from the Holy Spirit Himself, we can begin to believe that indeed, we are His Temples (with a capital T). God is at home in us. He waits for us to praise Him and adore Him within our souls, to rest in Him, to conduct ourselves in a way that enables others to believe that there is something different about us. But we aren’t different from anyone else, except in this way: we believe that what Jesus invites us to is the secret of holiness: Make your home in Me as I make Mine in you (Jn 15:4).

To be His Temple translates into this: We must turn to Him a hundred times a day to find ourselves in Him. Then, no voice telling us we aren’t good enough can make its way into the ear of our soul; no thought that I have to earn God’s love or forgiveness will ever take root in us.

2024 is already two weeks old, and already I have forgotten two of my three resolutions. (Or maybe I only had two to begin with?)  Perhaps I should say to myself, “Self, this year will be the year that I won’t go one day without closing my eyes at least once to bow to God who dwells within me. And the second resolution I take is this: that not a day will go by that I don’t bow to the Divine Image of the Holy Spirit in at least one other living Temple I encounter.

That’s two resolutions I don’t WANT to forget.

Thank you, St. Paul, for reminding me who I am, and Whose I am.

Sometimes I forget.

God bless you, one and all reading this.

I bow to the Divine Image in YOU.