Gospel Commentary: Body and Soul

By Fr. Paul Scalia
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of  9/4/03)

"And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him" (Mk 7:32). Without taking issue with how Our Lord performs miracles, it is worth asking why He heals the way He does. "He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him ‘Ephphatha!’ that is, ‘Be opened!’" (Mk 7:33-34).

Certainly the Son of God could heal this man without gestures, groaning or words. But just as certainly He has a good reason for doing it this way. Indeed, He does: because this healing corresponds better to human nature. Man is a composite of body and soul, an "embodied soul," as the philosophers put it. Our Lord could have healed the man by simply willing it. But He does it instead through words and actions as befits man’s body/soul unity.

So much of Catholic life depends on this union of body and soul. There is no such thing as a "purely spiritual" relationship with God. The body is always involved. The sacraments, intended primarily for the soul, always use some matter, something we can see, touch, taste, smell or hear. Catholic worship involves genuflecting, kneeling, making the sign of the Cross, striking the breast, bowing — to conform the body to the soul and give the soul the assistance of the body. The entire person — body and soul — adores God. Our language also indicates this. The Church maintains Latin in the Mass for the same reason the Gospel preserves our Lord’s healing word — "Ephphatha!" — in the original: to communicate by the sense of hearing that something sacred is occurring.

The union of body and soul is the principle behind the Church’s great tradition of sacred art. Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Bernini and Palestrina created great works not for museums and concert halls but for the soul. By means of sight and sound they hoped to communicate divine truths to the soul and to elicit sentiments of reverence and devotion.

As we all know, however, the body and the soul do not have the best relationship. Through the sin of our first parents, we lost the original integrity of body and soul. They no longer work as one. Instead, the body rebels against the authority of the soul. As a result the soul must discipline "brother ass," as St. Francis called the body. Physical mortifications (fasting, abstinence, etc.) seek to train and perfect the body — not destroy it. The soul must deal with the body as a trainer deals with an animal, so that the body will obey the promptings of the soul rather than its own appetites.

There is a constant temptation to divide the body from the soul in worship. We easily recognize the hypocrisy of those who perform external acts of worship without any interior devotion. Our Lord justly condemns them. Perhaps more dangerous, however, are those who emphasize spiritual worship to the exclusion and even degradation of the body. Some of the most violent and destructive heresies disdained the body in pursuit of the purely spiritual. Such worship works for the angels because they are pure spirit. But for us, "brother ass" must be trained to worship as well.

The resurrection of the body will be the ultimate vindication of the body’s dignity. Our bodies will share the eternal reward or punishment given to our souls. It is not enough, then, to seek the purely spiritual. You must, as St. Paul says, "Glorify God in your body" (1 Cor 6:20).

Copyright ©2003 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.