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The soul and the body “are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” The Catechism introduces us to this profound mystery and begins to unpack our nature as a body and as a soul. Fr. Mike shows us how so much pain and confusion in modern times—and indeed throughout history—stems from an attempt to separate these two inseparable parts of our being. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 362-368.
Click on the link to play video: https://youtu.be/eHpnUQQ_iho
“Welcome back to 21 questions that will change your life.
Question #13 is about your body and how it talks to you. Our bodies talk to us all the time. They say, “I’m hungry” “I’m thirsty” “I’m tired.” “I need a shower.” “Pass the salt.” The body is constantly talking to us, and very often ordering us around. But the body is like money, a great servant and a horrible master.
Question #13 is… If your body could talk to you, what do you think it would say? Would it tell you to slow down? Would it say you need a break? Maybe it would tell you that you need to visit your doctor.
Today’s question is… If your body could talk to you, what do you think it would say?”
Your body is not an end in itself; rather, it offers the gift of tangible connection to the spiritual world. As a human, you experience God in and through your physical body. Perhaps this looks like kneeling and standing through your worship service. Perhaps it looks like singing or dancing. Perhaps for you it is hiking through the woods or meditating in the grass. The way you reach out for God might differ from the way of the next person, but you can be sure that if your heart desires divine encounters, then your body will put itself to good use to make them happen. Have you ever thanked your body for this gift?
For the fact that your limbs and senses help you organize your spiritual experience in a way that you can understand and recognize? When you consistently honor your body for this holy gift, it becomes harder to criticize and despise it. When you can feel the very life of God flowing in and through your body, connecting you to transcendence itself, it becomes easier to accept whatever shape it happens to take.
—from the book Luminous: A 30-Day Journal for Accepting Your Body,
Honoring Your Soul, and Finding Your Joy, by Shannon K. Evans
//Franciscan Media//
Your body is spiritual. There are not two halves of you: soul versus body. You are one whole, made in the image of a God who is integrated and indivisible. Your relationship to your body cannot be separated from the health of your soul, for the two are intertwined to make up all that it means to be you. Your flesh and bones are sacred; they connect you to your soul’s experience of the divine. Science indicates that your body is composed partly of stardust. Faith tells us this was no accident. The presence of your body on this earth today is a miracle—a massive statistical improbability. And yet here you are, held fast in the divine generosity of this body you were given. Here you are, your flesh and bones a product of a perfect, generative, mysterious Love; a Love that holds all things together.
The contemplative tradition centers on an awareness of the reality that all things are interconnected; all things find oneness within one another, and thereby within God. With this contemplative posture in mind, think about the miracle of your body’s existence on the planet, here against all odds. Let yourself be amazed and humbled. As you come to honor your place in the universal life of God, see if you can notice and physically feel the gratitude in your body.
—from Luminous: A 30-Day Journal for Accepting Your Body, Honoring Your Soul, and Finding Your Joy,
by Shannon K. Evans
//Franciscan Media//
Rather than being taught how to listen to and honor your body’s messages with discernment, you have most likely been taught to seek mastery over your body through controlling things such as the amount of food consumed, the intensity of exercise, and your dress size. In some circles, this is even painted in religious language and made to seem pious— as though achieving dominance over your physical self indicates some kind of spiritual gift. But this mastery mindset separates the divinely intertwined parts of yourself. If you are seeking to dominate your body, there is no way to hear and trust the messages she is trying to send you. Your body is not something separate from you for you to control.
Your brain was not created to dominate your body, but to live together in a harmonious relationship. Trusting your body will teach you something about trusting yourself. When you practice deep listening within your body, you will begin to learn how to listen deeply to your truest self, too. Everything is connected. There is no separation within the parts of God’s own self, and there need not be any separation in you, either. This is one mysterious way you embody the image of God.
—from Luminous: A 30-Day Journal for Accepting Your Body, Honoring Your Soul,
and Finding Your Joy by Shannon K. Evans
//Franciscan Media//
If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter the Presence, whether they call it God or not. For the most part, those skills are learned by letting life come at us on its own terms, and not resisting the wonderful, underlying Mystery that is everywhere, all the time, and offered to us too. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” as I have heard Paula D’Arcy say so beautifully in her talks and retreats.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter the Presence, whether they call it God or not. For the most part, those skills are learned by letting life come at us on its own terms, and not resisting the wonderful, underlying Mystery that is everywhere, all the time, and offered to us too. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” as I have heard Paula D’Arcy say so beautifully in her talks and retreats.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
To keep our bodies less defended—to live in our bodies right now, to be present to others in a cellular way—is also the work of healing past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. The body never seems to stop offering its messages. Fortunately, the body never lies, even though the mind will deceive us constantly. Zen practitioners tend to be well trained in seeing this. It is very telling that Jesus usually physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt were lodged: in the body itself.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
“Just as in one man there is one soul and one body, yet many members; even so the Catholic Church is one body, having many members. The soul that quickens this body is the Holy Spirit; and therefore in the Creed after confessing our belief in the Holy Spirit, we are bid to believe in the Holy Catholic Church.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas
//Catholic Company//
“Christ is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, true God and true man, eternally united with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Just as there can be no separation within Christ’s human nature, so there can be none within His divine nature. Just as we cannot separate Christ’s body from His blood, or His soul from His body and blood, so we cannot separate Christ from the other persons in the Trinity. Time after time, we hear the priest pray to the Father at the end of the opening prayer of the Mass: We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.”— Vinney Flynn, p. 25