1 Corinthians 6:15

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? For ye yourselves, and consequently your body and soul, are members of the Church of Christ. S. Augustine (Serm. 18. in hæc Verb.) says beautifully: " The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is God. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul, and through the soul in the body, so that our bodies also are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God. "

Shall I then... make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Take here is not to pluck off and separate from Christ, for a fornicator remains a member of Christ and His Church so long as he retains the true faith. But it means, as S. Thomas says, unjustly to withdraw these members, that were given for generation, from the obedient service of Christ, whose they are. For whoever of the faithful commits fornication filches as it were his body and his organs of generation, which body is a member of Christ, from their lawful owner, and gives them to a harlot. He takes, therefore from Christ, not jurisdiction over his body, but the use of it. Ver. 16. Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? One body by a union and blending of the two bodies. Just as merchants in partnership have but one capital, because it is common to both, so those who join in committing fornication have one body, because their bodies are common to both, as Cajetan says. So two are one flesh: that is, out of two there is made but one human being, and that not spiritual, but carnal wholly fleshly.

For two, saith He, shall be one flesh. S. Paul is here quoting from Gen. ii. 24, where the words are applied to those married. But he refers them truly enough to fornicators, because the external acts, whether of them or of those married, do not differ in kind, though they differ morally by the whole sky, for the acts of the former are lustful and vicious, but those of the latter are acts of temperance, righteousness, and virtue, as S. Thomas says.

1. Observe that it is said of the married that they too shall be one flesh (1.) by carnal copulation, as the Apostle her takes it; (2.) by synecdoche, they shall be one individual, one person: for the man and the woman civilly are, and are reckoned as one; (3.) because in wedlock each is the master of the other's body, and so the flesh of one is the flesh of the other (cf. 1Co 8:3); (4.) in the effect produced, for they produce one flesh, that is one offspring.

2. Observe again that Scripture employs this phrase in order to show that of all human relationships the bond of matrimony is the closest and the most inviolable. Hence it was that God made Eve out of the rib of Adam, to show that the man and the woman are not so much two as one, and ought to be one in heart and will, and therefore, if need be, each for the sake of the other ought to leave father and mother, as is said in Genesis 2:24. The Apostle quotes this passage to show the fornicator how grievously he lowers and disgraces himself, inasmuch as he so closely joins himself to some abandoned harlot as to become one with her, and as it were he transforms himself into her and himself becomes a harlot. Ver. 17. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Not one essentially, as Ruisbrochius (de Alta Contempt.) says that Almaric and certain fanatic "illuminati" thought, but one in the way of accidents: one in charity, in the consent of the will, in grace and glory, all which make man like God, so that he is as it were one and the same spirit with God. So Ambrose, Anselm, Œcumenius. From this passage S. Basil (de Vera Virgin.) shows that the chaste and holy soul is the spouse of God, and is changed into the excellence of the Divine image, so as to become one spirit with God, and from this union with God drinks in all possible purity, virtue, incorruption, peace, and inward calm. " Wherefore," he says, " the soul which is joined to Christ is, as it were, the bride of the Wisdom or the Word of God; is necessarily wise and prudent, so that every mark of the yoke of brutish folly having been removed by meditation on Divine things, she wears the beauteous ornament of the Wisdom to which she has been joined, until she so thoroughly joins to herself the Eternal Wisdom, so becomes one with It, that of corruptible she is made incorruptible, of ignorant most prudent and wise, like the Word, to whose side she has closely kept, and in short, of mortal man is made immortal God; and so He to whom she has been united is made manifest to all."

S. Bernard (Serm 7 in Cantic.) beautifully describes this betrothal of God with the soul that clings to Him with pure and holy love, and the communication of all good things that flows from it. He says: " The soul which loves God in called His bride; for the two names, bride and bridegroom, denote the closest affections of the heart; for to them all things are in common: they have one purse, one home, one table, one bed, one flesh. Therefore shall a man leave father and mother, &c., and they twain shall be one flesh.... She that loves is called a bride; but one that loves seeks for kisses not for liberty, or wages, or a settlement of money, but for kisses after the manner of a most chaste bride, whose every breath whispers of her love in all its purity, and who is wholly unable to conceal the fire that is burning her. 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,' she says. It is as though she were to say, 'What have I in heaven, and what do I wish for on earth apart from you?' Surely this, her love, is chaste, since she seeks to have Him that she loves, and nothing else besides Him. It is a holy love, because it is not in the lust of the flesh, but in the purity of the spirit. It is a burning love, because she is so drunken with her own love that she thinks not of His majesty. Yet is One that looks at the earth and it trembles, He toucheth the mountains and they smoke, and she seeks to be kissed by Him. Is she drunk? Surely so, because she had perchance come forth from the wine-cellar. How great is love's power! how great is the confidence of the spirit of liberty! Perfect love casteth out fear. She does not say, 'Let this or that bridegroom, or friend, or king, kiss me,' but definitely, 'Let Him kiss me.' Just so when Mary Magdalene, when she found not her Lord in the tomb, and believed Him to have been taken away, said of Him, 'If thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.' Who is the 'Him'? She does not reveal it, because she supposes that what is never for a moment absent from her heart must be obvious to all. So too the bride says, 'Let him kiss me,' i.e., him who is never absent from my heart; for being on fire with love she thinks that the name of him she loves is well known to all." More on this betrothal and union to God of the soul that clings to Him will be found in the notes to 2 Corinthians 11:2.

Again we find S. Bernard, or the author of the treatise, "On the Solitary Life," saying towards the end: " The perfection of the will that is moving towards God is to be found in the unity with God of the spirit of the man whose affections are set on things above. When he now no longer merely wills what God wills, but has so far advanced in love that he cannot will save what God wills, the union is complete. For to will what God wills is to be like God; not to be able to will save what God wills is to be what God is, with whom Will and Being are the same. Hence it is well said that then we shall see Him as He is, when we shall be so like Him that we shall be what He is. For to those to whom has been given the power of becoming the sons of God, there has been also given the power of becoming, not indeed God, but what God is."

S. Bernard goes on to point out a triple similitude that men have to God, and then he adds: " This likeness of man to God is called a unity of spirit, not merely because it is the Holy Spirit that effects it, or because He affects man's spirit towards it, but because it is itself the Holy Spirit God who is love. Since He is the bind of love between the Father and the Son, He is unity, and sweetness, and good, and kisses, and embraces, and whatever can be common to Both in that supreme unity of Truth and truth of Unity; and similarly He makes man to become to God after man's capacity all that by substantial unity the Father is through Him to the Son and the Son to the Father. The blessed consciousness of man has found in some way a means by which it embraces the Father and the Son: in an ineffable and inconceivable manner man merits to become of God, though not God. God, however, is what He is by His own Nature; man becomes what he does by grace."