The Temple of Your Heart

John Main, The Temple of Your Heart from The Reality of God, Meditatio Talks 2017 B, Medio Media

I want to put before you this evening the conviction of the early Church of the presence of Jesus within us, the reality of the presence of his Spirit within us. The real wonder of the Christian life is that each one of us is called to live out of this reality, to live out of an eternal part of our own being.

Two great Christian words are meditation and contemplation. Meditation is ‘remaining in the centre’, being rooted in the centre of your own being. Contemplation is ‘being in the temple’ with him; contemplare – to be within the temple with him. The temple is your own heart. And the essence of being with him, in the vision of the early Church, is an absolute oneness. This is what we’ve got to try to proclaim to the world, that it is our destiny to be divinised, to be one with the Spirit of God. Divinisation is something that is utterly beyond our imagination, utterly beyond our own power of understanding to comprehend. But here is the mystery that St Paul speaks of: it is not beyond our capacity to experience it in love. It is our capacity to love and to be rooted in love that is the essence our own divinisation.

Listen to St Paul when he speaks about the reality of this, the presentness of it.

‘For he it was who brought us salvation (2 Tim 1:9).’ Salvation is deliverance from all our own limitations. Salvation is the Jewish word for deliverance from bondage, from slavery, into the wonderful liberty of the children of God. 

It is he who brought us salvation and called us to a dedicated life, not for any merit of ours, but for his own purpose and his own grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity but has now at length been brought fully into view by the power of our Saviour Jesus Christ. For he has broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
(2 Tim 1:9-10)