Just a Soul? False!

Third Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  People can utilize social media well, and social media can lead to bad things or positions.  For example, someone I know recently posted a video of Rainn Wilson (Dwight from “The Office”) about how spirituality is so important because it is reality.  Ok, not so bad.  But then he goes on to say that we are not human beings have a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings have a human experience.  He goes on to say, “Who I am and what I am is not by body…”.  He continues on to talk about being connected to a higher reality, and the benefits of being connected to the divine.  To be clear, there are many benefits of being connected to God, especially for one’s overall health.  But that part in the middle stuck out like a sore thumb.
    Because it’s a heresy.  It’s just a rehashing of Manichaeism, which taught that the body was bad, or lesser than the spirit.  This was a pernicious heresy, to which St. Augustine of Hippo ascribed before he was baptized, and which swept Europe during the end of the first millennium, which gave rise to the preaching of the Dominicans fighting this old heresy with a new name (Albigensianism). 
    What is the drive that leads to such a push?  Well, probably one of two things.  On the one hand, we see so many natural evils that are no one’s personal choices, and so we might ascribe evil to the material of nature itself as a simplistic way to deal with why these natural evils happen without anyone willing them.
    On the other hand, when we sin, we can either accept responsibility for our actions and repent, or we can blame our actions on something else, and seek to avoid responsibility and punishment.  And we’ve been blaming someone else since the beginning.  “The woman you put here with me…”; “The serpent tricked me…”.  So if we can ascribe most of our evil actions to the body, and say that they don’t have an impact on the soul, then most of us are probably not only getting by when it comes to following God, but doing very well, and probably on the straight road to heaven.  If all you had to worry about was spiritual sins (judging others in your mind, not believing the right things, wishing others harm, but never following through with your actions), most of us are probably saints right now. 
    But, of course, we are not simply spirits.  We are a cohesive unity of spirit and body.  What we do to one, affects the other.  If we choose to sin in the body, it has effects on the soul.  And even when we sin at the level of our souls, there are effects on the body. 

    That unity is part of what we celebrate at Easter, and our belief in the union of body and soul is based upon the fact that Christ rose from the dead, not just in the spirit, as we will do at our death until the general resurrection at the end of time, but also in the body.  As He said in the Gospel today, “A little while, and you shall not see me, and a little while again and you will see me.”  He died, that is to say, His soul left His body, but then they were reunited and He returned to His disciples so that they could see Him again.  In some of the accounts of the Resurrection, the disciples think their Lord is a ghost, but He asks for food so that He could eat, and assured them that He was not a ghost.  Indeed, He asks Thomas to feel the wounds in His hands and side, not only as the proof that He is the same person, but that His body is there. 
    And because we are that union of soul and body, as confirmed to us by the Risen Lord, St. Peter can encourage us to refrain from our carnal desires.  Yes, sometimes what the soul wants and what the body wants are not the same thing.  But they are still in the battle for eternal life together, and what one does affects what happens to the other.  And this is not just with our desires to be fruitful and multiply, but also how we submit to legitimate authority, the example we give to believers and non-believers alike, so that they can see that the life to which Christ calls us is, in fact, possible, and helps us find true joy and freedom.
    Because the soul and body are one, even after we die, and our soul leaves our body, they will be reunited one day.  Hopefully we will receive a body for glory in the resurrection as we go to heaven, or perhaps have to be purified in Purgatory.  But, even the damned will receive back their body, or damnation and suffering, as they remain in Hell for all eternity.  Dante, describing those in the various circles of Hell, talks about the punishment that the bodies receive, from the punishments due to giving in to carnal desires, to the Beast, chomping on Judas and Brutus in the coldest, lowest level of Hell.  This is also why sometimes the martyrs are depicted with the wounds of their suffering, not because they suffer in heaven, but because what they allowed to happen to their bodies, rather than deny Christ, now becomes the sign of their victory, like St. Denis holding his head, St. Lucy holding her eyes, or St. Bartholomew holding his flayed skin.  

    That is also why our salvation is accomplished with physical things.  We don’t simply sit and think to ourselves: “I desire to be a child of God in the Son of God.  Now I am.”  No, we have water poured over our heads as the priest invokes the Blessed Trinity over us.  We do not simply sit in our rooms and think: “I am really sorry, and I’ll never do that again.”  The priest says, “I absolve you” with his audible voice.  We don’t only ask the Lord to fill us with Himself, but He gives Himself to us under the appearance of bread and wine, but that which is truly His Body and Blood, which we receive into us, so that He is closer to us than any other human could ever be.  God uses physical stuff with which our body interacts to create changes in the soul.  What happens to the one, affects the other. 
    So, if anyone ever suggests that we are simply spiritual beings, or souls trapped in a body, or that the material world is evil, which the spiritual world is good, you can counter with a direct quote from Dwight: “False!  Body; Blessing; Beatific Vision.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.