1.
During our recent Wednesday meetings we have analyzed two
passages taken from the First Letter to the Thessalonians 4:3-5
and the First Letter to the Corinthians 12:18-25. This was with
a view to showing what seems to be essential in St. Paul's
doctrine on purity, understood in the moral sense, that is, as a
virtue. If in the aforementioned text of the First Letter to the
Thessalonians we can see that purity consists in temperance, in
this text, however, as also in the First Letter to the
Corinthians, the element of respect is also highlighted. By
means of such respect due to the human body (and let us add
that, according to the First Letter to the Corinthians, respect
is seen precisely in relation to its element of modesty), purity
as a Christian virtue is revealed in the Pauline letters as an
effective way to become detached from what, in the human heart,
is the fruit of the lust of the flesh.
Abstention from unchastity implies controlling one's body in
holiness and honor. This abstention makes it possible to deduce
that, according to the Apostle's doctrine, purity is a capacity
centered on the dignity of the body. That is, it is centered on
the dignity of the person in relation to his own body, to the
femininity or masculinity which is manifested in this body.
Understood as capacity, purity is precisely the expression and
fruit of life according to the Spirit in the full meaning of the
expression. It is a new capacity of the human being, in which
the gift of the Holy Spirit bears fruit.
These two dimensions of purity—the moral dimension, or virtue,
and the charismatic dimension, namely the gift of the Holy
Spirit—are present and closely connected in Paul's message. That
is emphasized particularly by the Apostle in the First Letter to
the Corinthians, in which he calls the body "a temple
[therefore, a dwelling and shrine] of the Holy Spirit."
You are not your own
2. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy
Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your
own"—Paul said this to the Corinthians (1 Cor 6:19), after
having first instructed them with great severity about the moral
requirements of purity. "Shun immorality. Every other sin which
a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins
against his own body" (1 Cor 6:18). The peculiar characteristic
of the sin that the Apostle stigmatizes here lies in the fact
that this sin, unlike all others, is against the body (while
other sins are outside the body). In this way, we find in the
Pauline terminology the motivation for expressions such as "the
sins of the body" or "carnal sins." These sins are in opposition
precisely to that virtue by force of which man keeps his body in
holiness and honor (cf. 1 Thess 4:3-5).
Profanation of the temple
3. Such sins bring with them profanation of the body: they
deprive the man's or woman's body of the honor due to it because
of the dignity of the person. However, the Apostle goes further:
according to him, sin against the body is also "profanation of
the temple." In Paul's eyes, it is not only the human spirit,
thanks to which man is constituted as a personal subject, that
decides the dignity of the human body. But even more so it is
the supernatural reality constituted by the indwelling and the
continual presence of the Holy Spirit in man—in his soul and in
his body—as fruit of the redemption carried out by Christ.
It follows that man's body is no longer just his own. It
deserves that respect whose manifestation in the mutual conduct
of man, male and female, constitutes the virtue of purity. This
is not only because it is the body of the person. When the
Apostle writes: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within
you, which you have from God" (1 Cor 6:19), he intends to
indicate yet another source of the dignity of the body,
precisely the Holy Spirit, who is also the source of the moral
duty deriving from this dignity.
You were bought with a price
4. The reality of redemption, which is also redemption of the
body, constitutes this source. For Paul, this mystery of faith
is a living reality, geared directly to every person. Through
redemption, every man has received from God again, as it were,
himself and his own body. Christ has imprinted on the human
body—on the body of every man and every woman—new dignity,
since, in himself, the human body has been admitted, together
with the soul, to union with the Person of the Son-Word. With
this new dignity, through the redemption of the body, a new
obligation arose at the same time. Paul writes of this
concisely, but in an extremely moving way: "You were bought with
a price" (1 Cor 6:20). The fruit of redemption is the Holy
Spirit, who dwells in man and in his body as in a temple. In
this Gift, which sanctifies every man, the Christian receives
himself again as a gift from God. This new, double gift is
binding. The Apostle refers to this binding dimension when he
writes to believers, aware of the Gift, to convince them that
one must not commit unchastity. One must not sin "against one's
own body" (ibid. 6:18). He writes: "The body is not meant for
immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (ibid.
6:13).
It is difficult to express more concisely what the mystery of
the Incarnation brings with it for every believer. The fact that
the human body becomes in Jesus Christ the body of God-Man
obtains for this reason, in every man, a new supernatural
elevation, which every Christian must take into account in his
behavior with regard to his own body and, of course, with regard
to the other's body: man with regard to woman and woman with
regard to man. The redemption of the body involves the
institution, in Christ and through Christ, of a new measure of
the holiness of the body. Paul refers precisely to this holiness
in the First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:3-5) when he writes
of "controlling one's own body in holiness and honor."
One with the Lord
5. In chapter six of the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul
specifies the truth about the holiness of the body. He
stigmatizes unchastity, that is, the sin against the holiness of
the body, the sin of impurity, with words that are even drastic:
"Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I
therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a
prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to
a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written,
'The two shall become one flesh.' But he who is united to the
Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor 6:15-17). According to
the Pauline teaching, purity is an aspect of life according to
the Spirit. That means that the mystery of the redemption of the
body as part of the mystery of Christ, started in the
Incarnation and already addressed to every man through it, bears
fruit in it.
This mystery bears fruit also in purity understood as a
particular commitment based on ethics. The fact that we were
"bought with a price" (1 Cor 6:20), that is, at the price of
Christ's redemption, gives rise to a special commitment, that
is, the duty of controlling one's body in holiness and honor.
Awareness of the redemption of the body operates in the human
will in favor of abstention from unchastity. It operates in acts
for the purpose of causing man to acquire an appropriate ability
or capacity, called the virtue of purity.
What can be seen from the words of the First Letter to the
Corinthians (6:15-17) about Paul's teaching on the Christian
virtue of purity as the implementation of life according to the
Spirit is of special depth and has the power of the supernatural
realism of faith. We will have to come back to reflection on
this subject more than once.
Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 16
February 1981, page 3
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