Venerable Sophrony of Antim speaks to us
In each of us, since Baptism, the Kingdom of God dwells in our spiritual heart. Saint Apostle Paul asks us, as if it's something each of us should know very well: “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). That is, the Holy Spirit is within us. Not only Him, but also the Holy Trinity, the entire Kingdom of God is within us. The great inner Liturgy is performed there. The outer Liturgy is an imitation of the inner one and of the divine one in Heaven. So the Holy Spirit within us prays and also urges us to prayer.
Oh, if only we would understand this cry and this impulse, this urging of the Holy Spirit within us! How much He calls us, how much He encourages us, how much He strengthens us! Let us pray and keep in touch with the God of our fathers! Therefore, the Holy Spirit prays in us and for us “with inexpressible groans” (Romans 8:26), as the Apostle of the Gentiles tells us.
Saint Silouan wrote a book that circulates widely in the Christian world. When I read it, I felt enlightened. In this book is found the very essence of the purpose of life: to live in the Spirit of God. As he says, if we live this humility and this love and this goodness to which the Savior urges us, we ourselves, each of us, are content, full of life, full of good desires, we have zeal to work and we have personal relationships with other people founded on love.
If we do not follow God's path, we behave like enemies towards one another. There are people in our families who have not spoken to each other for twenty or thirty years, even though they come from the same mother and father. There are people who have not confessed and have not received communion for many years. It is not possible for humility or good deeds to bear fruit in such clay vessels, stained by all sins. Our body, this vessel of clay, must first be cleansed of passions.
This is what we are. For this clay of ours, we do everything in life, even sacrilege. We do everything to keep this clay vessel well-maintained, which, one day, will give way. This extraordinarily well-crafted apparatus, made by God, this unique machine, superior to any sophisticated machine in the world, extinguishes, melts away, and rats, snakes, and all creatures of the earth run to it to feed on what we, at the cost of our lives, have gathered and placed in this tent of clay, in this human body.
Therefore, Christian brethren, I am not for the defamation of the human body, because it bears within it the grace of God, it bears the Holy Trinity. This body that we carry all our lives, on all the streets, will resurrect together with our soul at the universal Judgment, they will have a life together in eternity. So the body should not be condemned; it needs asceticism, but it must also be cared for, to be clean, to be healthy.
Thus let us traverse this earthly life, taking into account both body and soul, but the body should be secondary. When we die, the body will remain to the dust; the soul will have priority, it will be judged first by God, so that, at the end of history, at the Last Judgment, the body will also be judged together with the soul, then receiving a response and reward for our entire life and for the consequences of our deeds.
From "Father Sophian – Humility and Love, the Marks of Orthodox Faith", Doxologia Publishing House 2022