and you are that temple

We have this notion of temples or churches as places where God resides. We forget that God is everywhere; churches are buildings where we go to feel closer to God, to worship and to pray together to our Creator.

Christ driving traders from the temple

Christ driving traders from the temple

St Augustine wrote “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple: all you who believe in Christ and whose belief makes you love him. It is in this temple, that is, in ourselves, that prayer is addressed to God and heard by Him.”

Meister Eckhart, a 14th century Dominican, similarly wrote that “This temple is the human soul, which God has made exactly like Himself, just as we read that the Lord said: ‘Let us make humankind in our image and likeness.’ Nothing else resembles God so much as the human soul.”

In order for us to worship and give praise and thanks to God as we should—we must love and respect others. We cannot love God if we do not love all that He has created. True and honest worship demands that we love and respect those whom He has created in His own image and likeness.

We must recognize that when we hurt others we are desecrating the temple of the Holy Spirit. When we fail to live by the Ten Commandments, when we lie, steal, or covet what others might have, when we lash out in anger, criticize or cause people pain we are desecrating their temples, their places of worship, and God’s holy sanctuary.

Loving God means loving all that God has created because He created all out of love. While we, as children of God, must love all that God has created, we are not required to like everyone.  God created each of us out of love but not all return his love by following His commandments. We are not asked to love evil, to condone or support those who may do us harm, or to promote hatred, bigotry, or violence.

I believe that Jesus gave us the words and showed us, by his example, how we must love others, when, at his crucifixion, he prayed to God and said “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Recognizing that we are all the body of Christ, the ever living temple of the Holy Spirit; let us join together in love to worship God who created each of us in love, with love, and for love.

About the author: Deacon Chuck

Deacon Chuck was ordained into the permanent diaconate on September 17, 2011, in the ministry of service to the Diocese of Reno and assigned to St. Albert the Great Catholic Community. He currently serves as the parish bulletin editor and website administrator. Deacon Chuck continues to serve the parish of Saint Albert the Great Catholic Community of the Diocese of Reno, Nevada. He is the Director of Adult Faith Formation and Homebound Ministries for the parish, conducts frequent adult faith formation workshops, and is a regular homilist. He currently serves as the bulletin editor for the parish bulletin. He writes a weekly column intended to encompass a broad landscape of thoughts and ideas on matters of theology, faith, morals, teachings of the magisterium and the Catholic Church; they are meant to illuminate, illustrate, and catechize the readers and now number more than 230 articles. His latest endeavor is "Colloqui: A journal for restless minds", a weekly journal of about 8 pages similar in content to bulletin reflections. All his reflections, homilies, commentaries, and Colloqui are posted and can be found on his website: http://deaconscorner.org. Comments are always welcome and appreciated. He is the author of two books: "The Voices of God: hearing God in the silence" which offers the reader insights into how to hear God’s voice through all of the noise that surrounds us; and "Echoes of Love: Effervescent Memories" which through a combination of prose and verse provides the reader with a wonderful journey on the way to discovering forever love. He regularly speaks to groups of all ages and size and would welcome the opportunity to speak to your group.

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