the mystical temple of god 574 THE MYSTICAL TEMPLE Made Visible in the Christian CHAPTER 1 The Christian is the Temple of God It is so certain that Man, created by God, and consecrated to Him through the Sacrament of Baptism, is His Mystical Temple, that it ought not to stand in need of proof.1 For the Apostle of Tarsus2 makes this assertion in the clearest terms in his Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God?”3 (1 Cor 3:16). Asia Minor was once boastful of the shrine of Diana of Ephesus, and spoke of it as not the least among the seven wonders of the world. And deservedly so. It was huge, skillfully wrought, magnificent and majestic; a number of kings poured forth their wealth into its construction and splendor. Yet it was the shrine of just one renowned woman, called Diana.4 You Christians, as the Teacher of the Nations teaches, “are the Temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:15). What a glory is yours! What a dignity! Solomon, the richest and wisest of the Kings, the son of the just David, and the heir to the throne, impelled so much by his father’s commission, as by the will of God, had such a celebrated 1 The author does not attempt to prove this truth with the help of a strict theological argument, but demonstrates it by pointing out the supreme appropriateness of such an analogy. 2 The Apostle Paul: he was born in Tarsus. 3 The author adds the word “Mystical” to this expression of St. Paul, not to change the meaning, but rather to clarify it. With this addition, it is better understood that here the “Temple of God” is taken in an analogical sense rather than in its basic literal and material sense. Compare Pius XII, in the encyclical Of the Mystical Body: AAS 35 (1943), 221. 4 The Temple of Diana, which was built in the city of Ephesus (in Asia Minor) in the sixth century B.C. by Chersiphron, was universally recognized as one of the seven wonders of the world.
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