the mystical temple of god 662 CHAPTER 23 The Immortality of the Mystical Temple We who are Temples of God are called mortals; how then are we going to become immortal? As far as the body is concerned, our eyes can observe every day that, after the soul has been set free, it becomes a cold, pallid, and finally a stinking corpse; finally it teems with barely tolerable rot, it teems with dreadful worms, and finally changes into ashes. Bernard said excellently: “After man,” (he states) “the worm, after the worm, stink and horror. Thus every man is turned into a non-man.”217 There is of course a divine decree against mortal man: “For you are dust, and unto dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19) [LV]. O how wretched is our condition! Unless, of course, a better one is to be hoped for, to which the merits of our Redeemer will attract us. “For we know,” (Paul encourages us) “that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven” (2 Cor 5:1). The necessity of dying is imposed on all, and it is even to be desired because of our future immortality. “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, for that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality” (1 Cor 15:21-22, 53). “Therefore, when once the brief light will set for us, we do not have to sleep everlastingly for one night,”218 as Catullus dreamed. “We shall all indeed rise from the dead” (1 Cor 15:51) [LV]. Job, sitting on a dung-heap and scraping the pus flowing from his almost decomposed body with a potsherd, soothed most pleas217 Bernard, Meditations, Ch. III, n. 2, in: AMS, p. 321. 218 Catullus, Poem V: The Book of Catullus of Verona, edited R. Ellis, Oxford,1878, p. 13. The two verses quoted here (5-6) come from a very faulty edition of the poems of Catullus; these verses in the corrected editions have the contrary sense and therefore can in no way be used as a text to confirm the “immortality of the Mystical Temple.” Cf. Jarra, p. 51-52, footnote 1.
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