{"id":8563,"date":"2014-11-13T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T07:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/?p=8563"},"modified":"2014-11-13T16:11:25","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T15:11:25","slug":"the-measure-of-the-stature-of-the-fullness-of-the-body-of-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2014\/11\/the-measure-of-the-stature-of-the-fullness-of-the-body-of-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"The stature of the fullness of the Body of Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"duccio
\nAt Matins on Thursday:<\/em><\/p>\n

From the Commentary on the Gospel of John by Origen, Priest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both of these two things, the temple and the body of Jesus, appear to me, in one interpretation at least, to be types of the Church, and to signify that it is built of living stones, a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the head corner-stone; and it is, therefore, called a temple.\u00a0 Now, from the text, \u201cYou are the body of Christ, and members each in his part,\u201d we see that even though the harmonious fitting of the stones of the temple appear to be dissolved and scattered, as it is written in the twenty-second Psalm that all the bones of Christ are, by the plots made against it in persecutions and afflictions, on the part of those who war against the unity of the temple in persecutions, yet the temple will be raised again, and the body will rise again on the third day after the day of evil which threatens it, and the day of consummation which follows.\u00a0 For the third day will rise on the new heaven and the new earth, when these bones, the whole house of Israel, will rise in the great Lord’s day, death having been overcome. And thus the Resurrection of the Saviour from the Passion of the Cross contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole body of Christ<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But as that material body of Jesus was sacrificed for Christ, and was buried, and was afterwards raised, so the whole body of Christ’s Saints is crucified along with him, and now lives no longer; for each of them, like Paul, glories in nothing but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which He is crucified to the world, and the world to Him.\u00a0 Not only, therefore, is it crucified with Christ, and crucified to the world; it is also buried with Christ, for we were buried with Christ, Paul says<\/strong>.\u00a0 And then he says, as if enjoying some earnest of the resurrection, that we rose with him, because he walks in a certain newness of life, though not yet risen in that blessed and perfect resurrection which is hoped for. Either, then, he is now crucified, and afterwards is buried, or he is now buried and taken down from the cross, and, being now buried, is to rise at some future time.<\/p>\n

But to most of us the mystery of the resurrection is a great one, and difficult of contemplation; it is spoken of in many other passages of Scripture, and is specially announced in the following passage of Ezekiel: \u201cAnd the hand of the Lord was upon me, and He led me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me in the midst of the plain, and it was full of human bones. And he said to me, Prophesy to these bones, and you shall say to them, Hear the word of the Lord, you dry bones\u201d; and a little further on, \u201cAnd the Lord spoke to me, saying, Son of man, these bones are the house of Israel.\u201d And they say, \u201cOur bones have become dry, our hope is lost, we have breathed our last.\u201d\u00a0 For what bones are these which are addressed, \u201cHear ye the word of the Lord,\u201d as if they heard the word of the Lord?\u00a0 They belong to the house of Israel, or to the body of Christ, of which the Lord says, \u201cAll my bones are scattered,\u201d although the bones of His body were not scattered, and not even one of them was broken.\u00a0 But when the resurrection itself takes place of the true and more perfect body of Christ, 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<\/strong> (for none of those who are destitute of fitting will come to the perfect man), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Matins on Thursday: From the Commentary on the Gospel of John by Origen, Priest Both of these two things, the temple and the body of Jesus, appear to me, in one interpretation at least, to be types of the Church, and to signify that it is built of living stones, a spiritual house for <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-florilegium-patristicum"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-2e7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8568,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions\/8568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}