Body and Soul

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the common errors of people today is a false dichotomy, or a presupposition that there are only two choices.  And this can also affect our faith life.  Because we sometimes act as if we forget that a person is a unity of soul and body, and deal with the one we find more enjoyable or the one that comes more easily to us.  But both soul and body are important, as we see in today's readings.
    The epistle focuses us mainly on the spiritual.  And we have to understand this spiritually, otherwise we would start some pretty strange practices.  St. Paul says that we are baptized into the death of Christ, and that the body has to be destroyed so that sin will no longer have power over us.  St. Paul intends, of course, that we read this spiritually.  We believe that by the pouring of water over our heads and the invocation of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, we symbolically die.  Now, I say symbolically because our soul is not separated from the body, as happens in natural death.  But the death is real inasmuch as our fallen self dies with Christ on the cross, and then rises to new life with Christ in the resurrection.  So it’s not as if this is all made up or in our minds.  We die to sin when we die with the Lord in the waters of baptism, and that is very real.  But it is not that our physical life is ended, otherwise we would be a cult of mass homicide.
    But then in the Gospel, our Lord focuses on the physical needs of those who were following him.  Christ had been teaching the people about who He was, and backing up what He said by healings and exorcisms.  But then, it is three days later, and the people are getting hungry and running out of food.  At this point, while the Savior had taken care of their souls by His teaching, He also focuses on their bodies by performing a miracle of multiplying bread and fish, so that they could eat and be filled.
    In the Church, people easily separate into those who take care of the soul versus those who take care of the body.  As regards the latter, we can think of those who want to provide for people’s physical needs without consideration of the hunger of their souls for truth and beauty and love.  As regards the former, we can think of those who want to teach people about the Lord and instruct them in the faith, but then when they ask for something to eat, they say some form of, “we don’t do that.” 
    And this tension even exists in Scripture.  In Acts chapter 3, we hear about a crippled man who begs Sts. Peter and John for alms.  He wants money to take care of his physical needs.  But the first pontiff says, “‘I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, walk.’”  There is a much deeper healing going on here.  Or look back to the Lord, who, when friends lower a paralyzed man down through the roof, immediately tells the man that his sins are forgiven, and only afterwards heals his body, as proof that the Son of Man can forgive sins.  But then in the epistle of James, chapter 2, we read, “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘God in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?”
    So, we invoke the principle of both/and, so often operative in Catholicism.  Jesus is both God and man.  Mary is both virgin and mother.  The Church is composed of both saints and sinners.  We are both soul and body.  We are called to care for both the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy.  We cannot choose one and ignore the other, save at the possible expense of our souls. 

    This doesn’t mean that we can’t focus on one, even while we don’t exclude the other.  St. Theresa of Calcutta is a great example of doing both as she was able.  Her primary mission was to serve the poorest of the poor, and much of her work was caring for the physical needs of those whom society had abandoned.  She didn’t exclude service to people because they weren’t Catholic.  She fed them, cleaned them, and cared for them not because they were Catholic but because she was.  Still, and I know this from my own semester of working with the Missionaries of Charity in Rome, if you were living in their house and eating the food that they prepared, you would pray with the Missionaries of Charity, too.  And St. Theresa would even speak to spiritual poverty when she was given a platform on the national and international stage.
    Probably many of us feel more comfortable serving the spiritual needs of others rather than the physical needs of others.  Part of it may be because we readily have Church teachings accessible in our minds, but we don’t always know how to help someone who says they’re hungry, or thirsty, or need a bus ticket to somewhere.  And, sadly, some people try to scam others out of money, which makes it even more difficult to assist others.  But, I would encourage you to do what I do when someone asks me for help with basic needs of life: pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit to know how best to help that person.  And remember that we don’t have to do it all.  There are many groups in Flint that assist those who are hungry, thirsty, or homeless, like Catholic Charities, the St. Luke New Life Center, St. Francis Prayer Center, and others which are not Catholic but still do great work.  It is not wrong to refer someone to those agencies to do what we cannot do on our own.  But sometimes I know I feel that tug at my heart to give money, or I often carry Applebees gift cards in my car so that, if the Holy Spirit moves me to help someone, I can have a gift card to give them so that they can get food or drink. 
    So often we can try to create false dichotomy between the body and the spirit.  And certainly, one can be fully fed but spiritually starving; or one can be physically hungry but spiritually satisfied.  Christ invites us today through the Scriptures to consider both, and to do whatever we can to address both the spiritual and the physical needs of others, according to the gifts and talents we have received from God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.