You Are the Body of Christ

Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.

1 Cor. 12:27

How often we speak of the Church as the body of Christ, but how seldom do we realize the full spiritual meaning of those words. No one understood them better than Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). 

Born in Spain, Teresa entered a Carmelite convent when she was eighteen. She would become one of the Church’s great mystics and spiritual writers. Her poem, Christ Has No Body, beautifully expresses the meaning of our sacred calling to be members of his body:

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.                                    

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.