Your Body Matters

God Loves you. It’s a platitude for most of us, I know. It’s something that we say all the time. We say it in times of sorrow when we wish to comfort others and, hopefully, we it say in times of joy to thank Him. But, do we live it? I mean, seriously, do we really live it? Or do we only spiritualize it. Are we really as committed to this Love as we think we are? Are we really willing to go through the physical and emotional pain that loving God in a human way requires of us? Because, I don’t think we are. I must confess, I certainly don’t think that I’ve been willing to submit myself to it. I think that each and every one of us is guilty of separating ourselves into parts, preventing us from fully participating in God’s infinite Love for us.

So, I’m calling everyone out, right here and right now (myself included). We need to stop hyper-spiritualizing our faith. We need to get our heads out of the clouds (figuratively and “virtually”). The kingdom that Christ created was for the living. Yes, His kingdom is not of this world, but it was made for those who wander in it. Those who wander in this world—you and I—were given bodies. What we do with those bodies matters. Why am I harping on this?

Because I think that, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, a lot of us will realize that in the back of our minds we’re slightly relieved to not have to go to mass on Sundays. Being physically present at mass can be difficult, distracting, uncomfortable, and sometimes—dare I say it—boring. The problem with this is that, we don’t realize what we’ve lost. Our Lord has been taken from us. He’s been wrenched from our hands, declared non-essential, and if we can’t see that our reaction to this is a problem then we simply don’t understand the significance of our human bodies.

Now, I’m about to embark on a short dissertation on bodies and souls. This is going to be difficult to follow. So, I’m going to start off by stating the end goal here so that it can serve as a roadmap. What I want us all to take away from this short dissertation is that we all, yes all of us, have a split mind in this area. We all unintentionally are separating our souls and our bodies from each other. We consider them as two separate things. We think that we can somehow separately “act physically” and “act spiritually”. So, what I’m hoping we can all take away from the next few paragraphs is this: your body and your soul are not separated things; acting with “just your body” makes no sense; acting with “just your soul” makes no sense. Now, to begin:

You’ve often heard that your body and soul are not two separate things. They are, in fact, one thing. “A body infused with a soul,” goes the common explanation, which is true. Unfortunately, though, this statement doesn’t accurately convey the reality of the situation in my opinion. You are a physical thing: something that is and can become something else. The “that is” part of the definition is your form (or your soul since “a soul” is just the form of a living thing), and the “can become something else” is your matter (matter doesn’t equal body, it is simply manifested by it, but we’ll get to that later). This means that when we say, “your soul”, we really just mean your form, what you are.  Note the oneness this understanding. Your body and your soul are just parts of the definition of what you are as a physical thing.

What does this mean for us? Well, it means that when I look at you, I don’t simply see “your body”, I see you. I do not, at once, perceive all of you in your entirety, but I do observe that a very integral part of who you are is that you can change. I see that you are, and that you can become something else (i.e. you are a physical thing). So we can see that your soul is not “infused into your body”, it is just simply you, and you can change. When you change, those changes are reflected in you and I am able to perceive them. We colloquially would call this a change in “your body” but, it really is just simply a change in you. Let me repeat that for clarity: “your body” changing (or acting) is really just you changing.

God gave you free will and an immortal soul. This means that a part of you does not change, and what happens to this part of you that is unchanging—immortal—is determined solely by what you can change. Thus, your body has a profound importance. It is your only means of actually changing. It is your only means of exerting your influence, your will, on the world around you. It is your only means of actually accepting the gift that Christ freely offers you.

You may be tempted here to try to call me out here on the importance of prayer, saying that praying is far more powerful than anything else we could ever do physically with our bodies. This, while partially true, is forgetting that you use your body to pray. You cannot pray when you are sleeping, you cannot pray when you are in a coma and don’t have brain function. Your body is necessary even for the spiritual act of praying. Because, again, trying to separate things that “your body” does and things that “your soul” does, makes no sense. When you act, all of you acts.

So, why is all of this important? It’s important because the way that we all reacted to my earlier statement that, “our Lord has been taken from us,” is simply just wrong. I’m 1000% sure that you, in your head, said to yourself, “God is always with us, He can’t be taken away.” I’m that sure because I heard it in my head and I’m the one trying to convince us that it’s the wrong reaction. The only sense that something can be taken away from us is in the physical sense.

Since your body is the only way you can change, someone else is only able to change you with their body. This means that it simply doesn’t make any sense for something spiritually to be taken from you, since you, in your power to change (to become something else), are given sole dominion over your immortal soul. Only something physical can be taken away from you because that is the only part of you that can change. So, when I say that our Lord has been taken from us, I mean this in its truest sense.

Our Lord has been physically removed from our lives. Access to the sacraments has been prohibited, prevented, and in some cases, made illegal. Many of us have no issues with this at all. We tell ourselves that this separation is necessary to save lives, and therefore we are “at peace” with it. However, saying we are “at peace” with this situation is a misnomer so great it’s almost laughable. To be at peace is, to put it simply, to have that which you desire.

Our first and foremost desire in this life is to be with God. Consequently, for us, peace in its truest sense means to be with God. Your body, and therefore you, are currently separated from God. You are not in your entirety separated from him, for sure. But, in the truest sense of the word He has been taken from you, and this should not give you peace.

Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not to trying say that we should all just turn in to angsty toddlers who have been separated from the parents, but we also should avoid the trap of retreating into a hyper-spiritualized realm where we can somehow be with God in any way that remotely resembles the ineffable and unknowable beauty that is in the Sacraments, without actually having them. God didn’t give us these sacraments for some spiritual entity attached to us that we call our soul. God gave the sacraments to us because He wanted us to be able to fully and completely participate in heaven here on earth.

In no uncertain terms, when we receive Him in communion, we are truly at peace in its fullest sense. Within us, for a time, resides the Creator of the universe. Not just in the miraculous way in which the Holy Spirit resides in us always, but fully and completely changing even as we do. Yet, for some reason, when faced with a situation so singularly evil that we are forced to be separated from Him, we refuse to allow ourselves to truly experience the pain that this separation should bring. Instead we are running away from the importance of our bodies.

Listen, I’m not trying to say that we need to have public masses. I’m not trying to say that there is something wrong with watching mass online to spiritually participate in the sacrament. What I’m trying to say is that you and I grossly misunderstand what the mass is. We just simply don’t understand. Our hearts should be broken, yearning to be reconciled with our greatest love in the same way that we yearn for physical human interaction in these difficult times of separation. Your body matters because your body is your only way of acting and only when you act with it are you fully human. God does not want to be with your “soul”, he wants to be with you, and that includes your “body”.

We need to let our hearts be broken, even as God heart is broken because He is separated from us. God is not allowing this evil to separate us so that we can find novel ways of halfway participating in His sacraments. We already do that every day when we go to mass and forget to present our bodies to Him even as we feebly attempt to present our souls to him; as if one can be presented without the other. God is allowing this evil to separate us so that we can experience physically the desire that so many of us seem to only be able to experience in its spiritual form.

“Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” (St. Augustin of Hippo)

This is not a “spiritual” love. This is a human one. I burned for your peace. I…burned…to be with you. Do you burn for his peace? Is your heart burdened with the crushing pain of separation that you feel when you are separated from your closest friend, your wife, your husband, your children, the people that are closest to you? For some reason, when we move into the realm of our faith, it’s like we leave our bodies behind, like this is some sort of intellectual duty that we all participate in to get grace points. It’s not.

We are being asked by God right now to make our faith “less of a theory and more of a love affair.” Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. Don’t run to the fanciful land where the desires for your spiritual welfare are somehow disconnected from your physical body. Let        your        heart        break.

Acknowledge in the depths of your heart that you are without your greatest love. That you have been separated from Him. Let this tear you apart like the lost love of your past. Let the deepest desire of your heart that you have disguised as merely a spiritual desire manifest itself physically within you. Allow yourself to fully participate in your faith both physically and spiritually like you never have before. Don’t push away the discomfort and the sorrow. Let it come crashing down upon you and in the broken mess that results, allow Him to stretch your heart. Allow yourself to hope. Allow Him to lift you up. The whole you.