Stephen Muse

The body and desire are not the enemy. Selfish misuse of them is. The doxological vision of St. Symeon the New Theologian graphically emphasizes the potential for sanctification of the body and of desire in Christ when he describes how his spiritual father, Symeon the Pious, was not ashamed in the presence of his own or anyone else’s nakedness, “for he had the whole of Christ, he was himself and all the members of his body Christ, and he was seeing each of the members of the body of anyone else as Christ.”

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Originally published in Christian Life and Sexual Relationships (in Greek), Vasili Arguriades and Chrestos Markopoulos, eds. Athens, Greece: Enploeditions, 2015. Republished here with thanks.