St. Paul said “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?” John in Revelation: “saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne. Now God’s home is with mankind! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God.”
Try to imagine this new temple where God resides, the new Jerusalem, as it has been formed through the years. First there is Christ, himself, killed and raised body and soul from the dead. Then there are those who, through Baptism, have died to the old human nature and have been raised into the body of Christ, at first very small numbers from the early Church, but now, centuries later, a vast multitude from every nation and every tongue. These souls right now participate in the body and blood of Christ, with both his divine and human natures, and after the end of this world, their resurrected bodies will reunite with their souls to flesh out this new Jerusalem.
Visualize this new Jerusalem as it rises from this exiled human race, like the seraph snake Moses raised up to heal the Israelites of poisonous snake bites—the flesh of many humans joined to the flesh of Christ, their blood also and their human souls, connected together into a mysterious way incomprehensible to us, but easily accomplish by God, united to Christ’s body, his blood, his soul and his divinity, becoming one thing with many parts, all working in unison doing the Father’s will through Jesus to bring salvation to all.
See Christ in this new Jerusalem where God dwells intimately united with those who accepted such close union, those who minister to Jesus as Jesus ministered to God, doing only God’s will: never insisting on their own will, so much so that now, in eternity, their individual wills cannot be separated from Christ’s will. This new Jerusalem is a temple not built of stone but built of living souls with resurrected bodies, each one a portal to the treasure within God, with torrents of God’s love and grace emanating through them to bless with happiness and joy, and endow with purpose and meaning, everything that God created.
Maurice A. Williams
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