Sunday of the Prodigal Son, Octoechos Tone 2; Post-feast of the Encounter; The Holy Martyr Agatha (249-51).
1 Corinthians 6:12-20; Luke 15:11-32.
Read 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. In today’s reading, St. Paul instructs us on a spiritual reality as concrete as that mathematical law (spirituality is not separate from physicality). Here is Paul’s equation: By being united with Christ, you become one spirit with Him. Your spirit is united with your body. Your body therefore is a part of the body of Christ. If you unite your body with someone else’s, you are becoming one body with them. If that uniting is an immoral one, that equals a violation of your spiritual unity with Christ.
There can be no more explicit an indication of the ineffaceable nature of baptism and chrismation than Paul’s admonition, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?… Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” Paul holds those realities to be true even as he addresses erroneous theological statements about the body brought forward by Corinthians who are sinning, either by commission or permission. Like them, we are not finished yet, yet God has joined Himself to us.
But, as Paul says elsewhere, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). God has, as we would say in contemporary terminology, the healthiest personal boundaries of anyone in existence—He will never violate Himself. And that is why we need the hope at the centre of Paul’s words: even though God will “destroy” the “stomach” (body), “God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power,” because we “were bought with a price.” “So, glorify God in your body.”