All Creation is the Temple

I read the following passage yesterday from Richard Rohr:

When the crucifixion of Jesus is dramatized in the Gospels, we have this very interesting image of the tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom. Now the word for temple is fanum. Everything outside the temple was pro fanum. (Hence we get our word “profane.”) There was “the holy” and it was distinguished from “the unholy.” The tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom is saying that division of life is over. Everything is now potentially the fanum, the holy, the temple. There is nothing that is not spiritual. There is nothing to which God is not available and given, which is the core meaning of the Incarnation. Matter and Spirit are forever shown to be united in Jesus. He is himself the temple, and we are also the temple, and all creation is the temple. As Thomas Merton said, “the gate of heaven is everywhere”!

This is something we should remind ourselves of constantly: for Christians there is no separation between sacred and profane. We can’t divide our lives into sacred parts and ordinary parts. As St. Ignatius understood so well, there is no part of life that is not charged with God’s grace, no profane part separate from the sacred part.

God is alive and present everywhere in the world around us. All the world – all that exists – is suffused with the reality of God’s presence.

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