Temple of God: Spend 5 with Jesus: February 19, 2023

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Are you at all aware that you are the temple of God, and that the Holy Spirit dwells in you? That is Saint Paul's very profound and important question to each of us, just as he asked it of the citizens of Corinth. Our lives, it seems to me, are like being on a pendulum. We can find ourselves at certain points and moments of our lives thinking that we really do not need God. Yet, at other times, we can find it hard to accept that we are loved by God beyond our wildest dreams. Both of these extremes are the result and consequence of sin. Sin deceives. We think it good when we sin, but we are deceived. Sin can never bring the absolute fulfillment that God's love can bring to us. It is simply not possible. Sin is empty. God's love is full. In both extremes of our life, we need to remember the words of Saint Paul. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. What this means is that in all things we are loved by God more than we can know or understand. But we have to move beyond seeing this only as the acceptance of a statement. We have to live this way. And this means accepting that we experience our true fulfillment when we recognize we are made in God's image and likeness. And we live out of this identity of a child of God when we accept in our own lives that God gives us all of the help we need. He loves us. He cares for us. He provides for us a way of life, that if we just accept what he says, we can be fulfilled beyond our wildest dreams. All we have to do is to recognize that God is God. We need to accept that God gives us very high dignity and wants us to live in His presence forever. On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.