Third Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2015
Luke 24:35-48
“Look at my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see… (Luk 24:39)”
Our body is an important and
integral part of our faith. The first
thing Jesus did when He appeared to His disciples was to prove that He had a
living body. He was not a floating disembodied spirit, or ghost. He let the
disciples to touch His warm flesh and showed them that He could eat just like
other living beings would naturally do. He was there to prove that He has
risen, but also to show us the centrality of our body in the plan of God. Surely,
this is not just ordinary living body, but a glorious one since it is no longer
subject to death, suffering and any law of physics, but it is a body nonetheless.
If we go back to the story of
creation in the Book of Genesis, God indeed was the creator of all the physical
world. More importantly, after every creation, God would look back at them and
pronounced them as good. Thus, it is but fitting for Jesus to rise with His
body as affirmation of His Father’s creative work.
St. Dominic de Guzman in his part
defended the integrity of creation as he bravely fought the Albigentian heresy
in Southern France. Simply put, the main doctrine of the Albigentian was that
two kind of gods exist: the good god as the ruler of the spirits’ world and the
evil good as the boss of physical world. St. Dominic denounced this false
teaching since we have only one God and He created both spiritual and physical
realms according to His good providence.
However, we accept that our body
is weak, subject to temptation, suffering and death. It is equally true also
that we often sin through our body. With our mouth, we fall into gossiping.
With our hands, we get involved in domestic violence. Indeed, many sins against
our sexuality, are committed through our body. In the old rite of Sacrament of
Anointing of the Sick, the priest would impose the holy oil on all five senses:
eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands, because of the idea that we have sinned
using all these senses.
But, much more significant than a
venue of sin, our body is very good because it is also the instrument of grace
and our salvation. We do good precisely through our body as well. In the
sacrament of matrimony, the core of this sacrament is the total giving of one’s
body to the spouse. This is why when the sacrament is ‘ratum’ and ‘consumatum’,
no human power can dissolve the unity between husband and wife. The married
couple work out their salvation through their body, in holy sexual acts, in
providing each other’s needs, in giving birth to a new living body, their children,
and in bringing each other closer to God. For the priests and the religious, we
are spared from the responsibilities of married people, but still we surrender
the totality of our body to God and His Church in prayer and service. Thus,
both married persons and celibate men and women are called to give their bodies
until death, because only in death, our body ceases to be a living organism,
and becomes a cadaver.
We thank God for the gift of our
body. Let us imitate also His supreme act of love as He gives up His risen body
for our salvation in the Holy Eucharist.
Brother Valentinus Bayuhadi
Ruseno, OP
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