“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” hearing Paul’s question in our epistle lesson, we may be jolted into Truth. It is the Truth conveyed by the “Virgin of the Sign” icon that pictures the image of Christ in the center of Mary who is standing in the orans position, with hands upraised in prayer. It is a Truth of which most of us are seldom aware, so deep within is the indwelling Presence.

Paul goes on to point out: “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” How many of us feel very holy as we go about our everyday lives? I doubt even the saints of our time, the Dorothy Days, the Martin Luther King Jr.s, the Mother Teresas, felt very holy, even as they went about God’s holy work in the world. We know our feet of clay, what flawed vessels we are, but what makes us holy is not what’s on the outside, but God’s indwelling Presence. It is God’s indwelling Presence that transforms us from within, from the self-absorbed individual we have created day-by-day to the imago dei God created us to be, to the compassionate, generous self-giving body of Christ.

In our gospel passage, Jesus calls us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Many of us just give up on hearing that—no way we can ever be perfect! Perfect here means complete, whole, like a jigsaw puzzle with all its pieces in place fitted together. “Whole” and “holy” both come from the same root word. It is the indwelling Holy Spirit that brings us to wholeness, holiness, that equips us to be God’s hands and feet and heart and voice in our time and place here, that opens our hearts and minds to God’s truth however it may be manifested in our lives.