The Body was Made by One who Knows What He is Doing
Look within yourself. From your own nature you can learn something of your Maker.
There is nothing to be ashamed of in your body. If you are in control of its members, they are not in the slightest evil. Adam and Eve in paradise were naked at first and their bodies did not appear shameful or disgusting. Our limbs do not cause sin, but the wrong use of them does. The Creator of our bodies knew what he was doing.
Who makes the secret parts of the mother’s womb able to bear children? Who gives life to the lifeless fruit of conception? Who shapes the sinews and bones, who covers all with flesh and skin? When the baby comes to the light, who gives the milk that it can suck? How does the newborn infant grow to become a child, then an adolescent, then an adult, and then in the end an old person?
Who imposes on the heart the regularity of its beat? Who protects so skilfully our eyes with their eyelashes? Who makes our whole bodies able to be kept alive by our breathing?
Look at your Maker. Admire your wise Creator. The greatness and the beauty of his creatures will help you to contemplate him.
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, 9, 15 (PG33, 653)
A Talented Musician Needs an Exceptional Instrument
You could say that the body has been constructed like a musical instrument.
Musicians often cannot give adequate proof of their talent because the instrument they are playing is unfit for use: it is either spoilt with age, or damaged by being dropped, or completely ruined through damp or rust. If you put it in the hands of an artist of the first rank, such an instrument does not respond to his skill.
The same thing happens with the spirit. It functions through the body to display its skill in a spiritual way. But the spirit cannot exercise its normal activity except with an instrument which conforms to the order of nature.
Our spirit is fashioned in the image of the perfect Good. As long as it remains with the good, it keeps its likeness to the Model. When it strays from the good, it loses its original beauty.
Therefore, just as the spirit takes its proper perfection from its likeness to the beauty of the universal Model, so the body, ruled by the spirit, finds its proper embellishment in the beauty of the spirit.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Man, 12 (PG44, 161)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
