Main news for 12 May 2024

Paul's words about Christians, as the Temple, where dwells the breath of God, can seem at first sight either an exaggeration, or an allegory. Of course, even before the coming into the world of Christ, man had the possibility of coming to the Temple, of approaching the altar and to be sanctified, without such sanctification the people of God would not be the people of God. And before the coming into the world of Christ, the prophets felt completely real in their heart the breath ("the spirit") of God, who revealed to them what they later witness to their contemporaries.

But all the same nobody before the coming of Christ had compared man with the Temple: because man could only join this God's presence, which is revealed to the people in the Temple, but without containing it. But as seen, after the coming into the world of Christ, everything changed, and first of all because He brought the Kingdom into the world. The same Kingdom, to which the way is now opened to anyone, who is ready to trust Christ and to follow Him. But indeed, the Kingdom is nothing else than sacred spaces, which formerly, before the coming into the world of the Christ, was limited by this physical space, which God Himself indicated, as the place of His presence.

Now, according to the words of the Savior, all the restrictions have been lifted: "that" or "this" "mountain" is not already important any more, because the breath of God the day of the Pentecost penetrates the world, as a whirlwind, covering it completely. And every inhabitant of the Kingdom is not only a person who approached the altar, entering in the sacred space, but also the carrier of this breath, as the prophets, who felt it as something internal. But the prophets felt the breath of God only sometimes, from time to time, at moments of spiritual ecstasy, but for the inhabitant of the Kingdom such a state is in fact the norm of the spiritual life: because it is impossible to be in the Kingdom and not to be involved in this breath.

Well then it turns out that every Christian becomes himself the likeness of the Temple: because now it becomes the receptacle of this God's presence, which was formerly connected with the Temple, with the altar. This fact is particularly important in the context of this mission, which leads the Church in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed: to be not only a witness, but also a carrier of the Kingdom so that it, by remaining reality "not of this world", would touch all the same the not transformed world, transforming it.

In such a situation every Christian, without being separated from the world, has to remain nevertheless in a certain sense a stranger for the world: because he has to live according to the laws of the Kingdom, and this breath of God, because he, as inhabitant of the Kingdom, is involved, he has to protect against profanation as carefully, as the servants of the Temple protected against this the altar of God. Otherwise the Christian, in fact, will stop being a Christian and a part of the Church as the “body of Christ". And the apostle understands of course that perfectly.