Vigils Reading

THE ONE BODY OF CHRIST

From a commentary by Origen

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The temple and the body of Jesus, seem to me…to be a type of the church

signifying that it is built of living stones, a spiritual house for a holy priesthood…

The temple will be rebuilt and the body will rise again on the third day, after the

day of evil which threatens it and the day of consummation which comes after.

For the third day will rise on the new heaven and the new earth when these

bones – the whole house of Israel – will rise again on the great day of the Lord,

victorious over death.

Thus it is that the already completed resurrection of Christ, including his

sufferings on the cross, contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole

body of Christ. But as that physical body of Jesus was crucified and buried and

then raised up, so the whole body of Christ’s saints is crucified with Christ and

now lives no longer…For Scripture says: All my bones are scattered.

But when the actual resurrection of the true and more perfect body of

Christ takes place, then those who are now the members of Christ, (for they will

then be dry bones) will be brought together, bone to bone, and fitting to fitting,

to the measure of the stature of the fullness of the body of Christ. Then the many

members will be the one body, all the members of the body, though they are

many, becoming one body. But the distinction between foot and hand and eye

and ear and nose, which in one sense fills out the head and in another sense

represents the feet and the rest of the members, the weaker and the humbler,

the less honorable and the more honorable – this distinction is for God alone to

make who will put together the body and, more than he does now, will give the

greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body,

but that the members may have the same care for one another, and if one

member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice

together.