Our body is a temple of God

In 1 Corinthians 6:20, St. Paul states, "You have been purchased, and at a price. So glorify God in your body." Yet, we, as humans, demoralize our body with eating disorders, mental issues, and various other self-harming issues. Each one of deals with the demons of trying to justify the issues that face each facet of demoralizing our bodies.

We feel that we are being judged by our peers. We think we are being judged because we are not "good enough Catholics". However, somehow we are placing all this pressure on ourselves that we sometimes end up caving into the pressures of demoralizing our bodies by committing suicide. In reality, it is our responsibility as Catholics to nourish our bodies both physically and spiritually. We forget that we are obligated to glorify God in our body, and when we make the choice to end our life, we still have the salvation of going to Heaven.

The Catechism states in number 2282 that "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide". As Catholics, we are not stating that we have permission to destroy our bodies. Our Church is telling us that we have the ability to still receive the graces of God. There are reasons why we may not have been in our right mind. Yet most importantly, we do not know what the person is truly going through or what the person is going to tell God when he or she is face to face with Him.

As a Catholic Church, we need to come up with solutions to how we can help these people. Most of these people put on the "I am fine" mentality. They suffer in silence. They suffer, and no one has a clue as to what is going on in their lives. To one effect, it is like the person is living a double life. However, the stigma is something that one, who would rather not live, to decide. We need to teach people that our body is on borrowed time. God has given us the opportunity to glory our body and allows our souls to have a home while we are Earth-bound. When we have the opportunity to go home to Christ, we have the chance to have the freedom of knowing that God will allow all our pain to go away.

We need to allow the person to have a safe haven. We need to have a Catholic church that is willing to discuss mental health issues and really address the issues. If the Church would go back to teaching the importance of the value of our bodies, maybe we will be able to see the bigger picture of helping people see that we can still have the graces of God. It is always important for us to remember that God is always there for us whether we want him to be or not. We do not deserve the grace of God, but God wants us to have those graces. Those graces are what the church needs to teach us more. We need to know what the church really teaches. A majority of Catholics do not study the Catechism and if we do, we studied it during our school years. We need to continue to study the Catechism even as we get older.

The bottom line is that we need to continue to keep our bodies as a temple of God. We need to teach people the truth of what the church truly teaches and most importantly, we need to continue to pray for the people who destroy their bodies that are housing God.