and you are that 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.
