“What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority…Jesus replied, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ ...The temple He had spoken of was His body” (John 2:18-20)
St. Paul builds upon this analogy of the temple and the human being. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (I Corinthians 3:16, also 6:19, II Corinthians 6:16). Such a bold, exciting idea would appear to be incredible were it not for the fact that it comes from the words of the Word of God Himself, Jesus Christ. Indeed, by distorting what He was revealing about the potential value of the human being, His enemies justified His crucifixion. His meaning is that each human being is more precious than anything on earth. We are more valuable even than the sacred temple in Jerusalem, considered a blasphemy to the Jews—the irony is that they who obeyed Moses’ commandment not to make any idols to worship failed to see how the temple itself could become an idol. The temple was made to be an instrument of salvation, not an end in itself. St. Paul, a Jew of Jews, understood the truth of that insight and proclaimed it to the Gentiles who also worshipped in temples of their own.
The brilliant thinker St. Maximos the Confessor who lived six centuries later invited us to meditate on the comparison between temple and body, suggesting that our minds correspond to the sanctuary and our bodies to the nave of the temple [Mystagogy, ch. 24]. In second thought he thinks of the sanctuary as the soul and the body as the nave. Our souls lift us up to glory, and the glory of God comes forth from the sanctuary when the holy gospels are read and we rise in Spirit to listen to our Lord Jesus as though we were standing among His disciples hearing the words from His own lips. That being done, the holy book of gospels put away, we await the next part, even more precious for our benefit—His very own sacred Body and Blood contained in the holy chalice that is offered to us and mystically carrying us through the limits of space and time to be there in the Upper Room of Jerusalem at the table of the Last Supper.
In our bodies we have left behind our concerns of daily living, those problems that can even be obsessions if we cannot muster the ability to “lay aside all earthly cares.” Yet when we do so, still we are held fast to the time and space limits that keep us from ascending with the angels. We are in the nave struggling with our physical needs. We may be tired, sick, perhaps hungry or depressed; nevertheless, we are there waiting and hoping for something good to come from our attendance at the Divine Liturgy.
We hear prayers coming forth from the sanctuary and answered by the choir. They are singing, which sets a certain mood that gives us peace if we open ourselves to its beauty. We are aware of something sweet, an aroma that lets us know we are in a special place, even if part of our attention is elsewhere. Then we see some movement out of the sanctuary, making a circle with the beautiful book which will be opened to the words of Christ. His first appearance captures our attention. His ministers will clarify who He was and still is, but it’s far better to have Him tell us Himself. Then we hear an explanation to describe to those who don’t know Him, and to fortify the faith of those who are aware of the implications that go with following Jesus Christ and bearing His cross. The second procession comes with the precious gifts offered to those who appreciate what He has done for all who belong to Him and in fact are adopted into His family: Remission of sins, union with the Holy Trinity, and life everlasting.