T. 20. VI. 1 – 5. Jesus: “The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere it would rest on mere contingency, but there is nothing elsewhere! And this relationship is wholly loving and forever.
Yet has the Son of God ‘invented’ what seems to be an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he has made up is partial, self-centered on his part, broken into fragments, and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one the Son has ‘made’ is wholly self-limiting and self-destructive!
Nothing can show the contrast better than to compare the experience of a holy relationship with an unholy relationship. The first is based on love, and rests upon it, serene and undisturbed. The body, a symbol of separation, does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters is thus based not on love, but on mere idolatry.
Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious that it cannot be misunderstood!
But idols, on the other hand, do not share! Idols accept, but can never make return. They can be ‘loved,’ but cannot love, for they have not the ability to understand what they are offered. And any relationship in which idols enter has simply lost its meaning. The ‘love of idols’ has simply made real love meaningless! They dwell in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body’s darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. Thus idols have no real relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see!
Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for real relationships. The body is the ego’s chosen weapon for seeking through relationships the power that it thinks it has lost. And its relationships must be unholy, for what they really are it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest the ego merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.
The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a relationship! The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is ‘safe,’ for here love cannot enter.
The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?”