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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 11 FEBRUARY
The Holy Father continued his catechesis on the theology of the body
in his talk during the General Audience of 11 February in the Paul VI
Hall.
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.
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