November: Day 11: Teaching 1: Holy Martyr Vincent

November: Day 11: Teaching 1:
Holy Martyr Vincent
 
(The Purpose of the Human Body)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Holy Martyr Vincent, whose memory is celebrated today, was a native of Spain, a deacon in Augustopolis and was martyred in the 4th century, under Diocletian. "Spare yourself," said the torturer to him. "I pity you, and I would like to see you in honor and glory, and not in dishonor and torture." The Saint replied that he was not afraid of any torture. Then the torturer ordered that he be subjected to various tortures. These tortures were cruel and prolonged: having nailed the confessor to the cross, they inflicted merciless blows on him, and when his body was lacerated, his limbs broken, his sinews pulled out, they threw him into prison and laid him on sharp shards of glass. The martyr endured all this with unperturbed patience and unearthly exultation; but the tormentor's rage was not appeased and he invented an even more cruel torture: Vincent was placed on a red-hot iron grate, and in the midst of these torments he departed to the One Whom he loved, glorified and sang all his life until the last minute. His body, given over to the beasts as prey, but remaining untouched, because neither beasts nor birds touched it, was thrown into the sea, but, washed ashore by the waves, was taken by the Christian guards, who buried it in a small church outside the city. At present, the incorruptible relics of the Saint are in Rome in the church named after him, in the suburban Abbey of the Three Fountains.

II. Reading the story of the sufferings of the Holy Martyr, we see that the Lord sometimes miraculously protects the bodies of the holy martyrs and other saints of God; fire does not burn them, wild and bloodthirsty animals do not touch them, and decay itself flees from them. This was the case, for example, with the body of the Holy Martyr Vincent, who is now being glorified.

This prompts us to ask: what is the purpose of the human body? Surely it has a great purpose, if God Himself guards it and glorifies it with incorruptibility.

a) The human body was taken from the earth, but it was not created for the earth.

It fell into corruption, it was not created for corruption. Created, gracefully adorned by the Creator for eternity and the eternal, it was immediately after creation enlivened by an immortal and holy soul, and together with it was caught up from earth into a bright paradise for a stay in it, for spiritual activity, for spiritual enjoyment; it was incapable of carnal enjoyments. It could not leave the hands of the All-Holy Creator otherwise than it being completely pure and holy; subsequently sin distorted and disfigured it. Its eye was so immaculate that it did not see the nakedness of its other members, which, in turn, presented nothing that needed to be covered. The soul was not overwhelmed and agitated by passions; the body was not agitated by them either. The blood did not boil from anger, nor was it cooled by sorrow and despondency. Death was not proper to this body; ailments were not proper to it; it had no need to protect itself from the influence of the elements; it was not a bondage or prison for the soul; it was a wonderful, eternal new garment for it. This is the first purpose of the body: to be a wonderful, eternal garment for the soul.

b) But this purpose of the body remained almost the same even when man, as a result of the fall of his first parents in paradise, was subjected to illnesses and death in the body. And now the body of sinful man, although due to his sin it was subjected to disorder, illness and death, nevertheless serves as clothing for the soul, fully adapted to its present sinful state. Disorders and illnesses of the body, which almost always occur from sin and almost always stand in a causal connection with it, give the soul “insistently” to know that sin is a great evil, from which it is necessary to free oneself in every possible way, so as not to destroy both soul and body. Although we see, then, that now the bodies of the deceased fathers and brothers descend into a dark grave and are covered with earth, and although we expect that the same fate will befall our bodies, we believe and know that these bodies will not remain forever in the earth. They will rise again, as the body of the new Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, rose from the dead. The body sown in the grave “in corruption” will rise “in incorruption,” will rise “in glory,” will rise “in power; the earthly body” will become “a heavenly body, the natural body” will become “a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:40–46).

c) But for a Christian, the purpose of his body does not end with being the mental and spiritual clothing of his soul; together with the soul of man, it has a higher purpose – to be the temple of the Holy Spirit: “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you” (1 Cor. 6:19).

This transformation of our body into a temple of the Holy Spirit begins to take place through the Holy Mysteries established in the Church of Christ. Thus, in the baptismal font it is reborn unto salvation in the image of the body that the heavenly Man received, conceived and born of the Holy Spirit and the Most Pure Virgin: “for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Through the wondrous mystery of the Eucharist, our body is united with the body of Christ Himself – our body is united with the Divine body, our blood with the Divine blood. “He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood,” said the Lord, “abides in Me and I in him” (John 6:56). The true Christian rests in the Lord, and the Lord rests in him; the Christian is clothed in Christ, and again in the Christian is Christ. Contemplating this greatness of Christians, the Apostle calls out to them: "Your bodies are members of Christ" (1 Cor. 6:15)! "Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (1 Cor. 6:13). "Put on our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not make provision for the flesh in its lusts" (Rom. 13:14). "The gifts of the Holy Spirit," said a certain great Saint of God (Sisoes the Great), "are already natural to the renewed nature. It is already natural for the body, which is one with the body of Christ, to be the temple of the Holy Spirit: where Christ is, there the Holy Spirit is inseparable and unmingled with Christ."

Many true servants of God demonstrated the presence of the Holy Spirit in their bodies during their earthly life and thereby demonstrated empirically that the bodies of Christians must and can be the temple of the Holy Spirit. The shadow of the Holy Apostle Peter healed the sick (Acts 5:15); linen articles (e.g. towels), which the Holy Apostle Paul had for his own use, were brought to the sick, and the sick were healed by touching them, and unclean spirits left those tormented by them (Acts 19:12). A viper - that most poisonous snake - bit the apostle, but he remained unharmed, as if not at all subjected to the bite of the snake. Some saints walked on water, flew as if they had wings over considerable distances in a very short time - during prayers they raised their bodies from the earth, as if beginning, in the words of a certain holy writer, a future rapture in the air and demonstrating the ability for such rapture. Such was, for example, the Venerable Mary of Egypt and some other great saints of God. Not only in their souls, but in their very bodies the Holy Spirit acted! Just as in human bodies, reduced by sinful life to the likeness of senseless beasts, various passions boil, so, on the contrary, in sanctified bodies Divine grace boils and overflows, delighting the body with heavenly and spiritual sweetness and at the same time mortifying it for sin. After the separation of the soul from such a body, corruption does not dare to touch it, because, despite the absence of the soul, the Holy Spirit is present with it, revealing His presence through various signs worthy of the Spirit and characteristic of the Spirit.

So the purpose of the human body is to be a wonderful, eternal and an always new garment for the soul and, together with this, a temple of the Holy Spirit.

III. Why are our bodies for the most part alien to spiritual sanctification? Why are our bodies capable almost only of bestial sensations, while the Holy Spirit testified, “that there is one flesh for men, and another flesh for beasts” (1 Cor. 15:39)? Because we do not heed the warning of our Lord, Who said: “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be weighed down with carousing, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life” (Luke 21:34). Our hearts have become heavy, our souls have become attached to the earth: such a state of the spirit reduces the body to fatness, and we remain alien to the experiential knowledge that our “flesh” can “rejoice in the living God” (Psalm 83:3). “Let us direct our hearts upwards,” and the body will be drawn there, following the heart. Let us love the Lord as He commanded us to love Himself, “with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength” (Mark 12:30), which is impossible to do without the participation of the body. Let us make our bodies spiritual, heavenly! Let us deliver them from the sorrowful transition from the prison of the grave to the prison of hades. We have an absolute duty to do this: we were originally created for heaven, and subsequently, after the fall, we were redeemed for heaven. We belong entirely to God, and not to ourselves. “You are not your own,” the Apostle tells us, “you are bought with a price,” the price of the priceless blood of the Son of God. “Glorify God therefore in your body, and in your soul, which is God’s: for your body also,” not only your soul, “is the temple of the Holy Spirit which dwells in you" (1 Cor. 6:20, 19). Beloved brethren! What can we say after this about fornicators, drunkards, gluttons, and other people who make their bodies instruments of shameful passions? Even before we completely perish in our sins, save us, O Lord, for the sake of Your mercy! Turn our hearts away from the earth, the flesh, the world, sin, and the devil, and turn them to heaven, the spirit, and holiness.

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.