Homily for July 9, 2023
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Flesh and the Spirit
St. Paul
contrasts two seeming opposites in the Second Reading: the flesh, and the
spirit. Our bodies, and our souls. He says that they are at war with each
other, and that we have to live according to the spirit and not the flesh. But what
does he mean by that? Let’s explore this interplay between body and spirit and
understand what it means for Christians.
Back in
the second and third century, there was a heresy called Gnosticism. This heresy
believed that the body, and the whole material world was evil, created by the
devil. The Church quickly and wholeheartedly rejected this idea! The body is good,
as it was created by God. Throughout history, saints have taken care of the
needs of the body – like St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the queen who used to take
food to the poor…St. Camillus de Lellis who founded hospitals…Mother Teresa who
spent her life taking care of those who were physically suffering. So, the
Church has always recognized that the body was good, as it was created by God.
But our
bodies are not our own, to do whatever we want with them. Some people believe
that our bodies is a “tool” that we can manipulate however we want, or even a “prison”
that entraps our real self. But, as Pope John Paul II said in his Theology
of the Body, “The body expresses the person.” We don’t have bodies,
we are bodies. Our bodies are how we make incarnate our humanity, how we
interface with the world around us.
So for
this reason, we have an obligation to take care of our bodies. We are stewards,
not owners. We ought to take care of it with good eating, proper rest, healthy
exercise. Of course, we can overdo that and fall into what John Paul II calls
the “Cult of the Body” (such as tech tycoon Bryan Johnson who spends over $2
million each year on a team of 30 doctors in an attempt to make himself feel perpetually
young…that would be a bit obsessive!). So, it’s a balance. We ought to also
give thanks for how God made us, whether male of female, tall or short, large
or small, with a full head of hair or going bald! He doesn’t make mistakes, and
our bodies are all His handiwork. While this body is temporary, we will receive
it back in a glorified form at the end of time to share in the joys of Heaven,
if we are among the Blessed.
Despite
the goodness of the body, however, like all of creation, the body is fallen and
subject to original sin. There is an effect of original sin called concupiscence,
which we all experience. Concupiscence means that we desire harmful things. Our
desires are disordered – we do things we know aren’t going to lead to true
happiness. For example, have you ever been to an all-you-can eat buffet? If you’re
like me, you go up time and time again until you’re stuffed and buttons are
popping off your shirt…and then you look up and see the dessert table. I know
that the dessert table will cause me immense pain and suffering, but I do it
anyway. That is the reality of concupiscence – the weakness of will by which
the disordered desires of our flesh have mastery over us.
The
flesh is meant to be a servant under the mastery of our will, but because of
concupiscence, we find it to be quite the opposite, and we start to desire
things that are disordered. Too much food, too much alcohol, too much sleep at
the wrong time, sexual pleasure outside of marriage, addictions to social
media, comfort when we need to be sacrificing, avoiding the necessary
sufferings of our vocation. All of us find that our flesh is fallen and often
overpowers our will.
We like
to use the excuse, “Oh, but this is how God made me.” No, God did not make us
fallen – that was the result of sin. As human beings, we have the ability to
master our desires, and to order them properly. We master them through our free
will, and we put them in the proper order through our intellect. The order of
our desires should be to desire God first above all else, to desire to love and
worship and obey Him, then to desire to concretely sacrifice ourselves for
others. Unfortunately we often see our desires topsy-turvy where we desire our
glory, wealth, power, and pleasure over these properly-ordered desires.
So when
St. Paul talks about “the flesh” waging war against the spirit, he is speaking
about this question of self-mastery. Will our disordered fleshly desires have mastery
over our souls, or will our bodies be good servants of what we truly know to be
good and holy and beautiful?
We grow
in this self-mastery through discipline and training. Consider the example of a
martial artist. Their hands can give someone a wave, a high-five, a hug…and can
be registered as deadly weapons in several jurisdictions in the United States. So
how do they discipline themselves to use their hands well? First they train their
mind to understand the teachings and concepts of their martial art. In the same
way, our first step is to train our minds to understand the Scriptures and the unchanging
teaching of the Church about how best to live a life where our bodies and our
wills are submissive to Christ. After we train our minds, then we train our
wills through practice. The martial artist will practice, over and over again, until
they can use their hands to break boards or take down a bad guy. We train
ourselves through practicing virtue, practicing sacrifice, denying our flesh
and its unruly desires. Eventually it will become second nature to make sure
our physical desires are submitted to God’s will.
And here’s
the key – we can only do this with the grace of God. It’s not a “white knuckle”
oh-I’m-just-not-going-to-overeat. It’s a radical surrender to Him, with
His help. Paul says that it is “His Spirit in you” that has freed us from slavery
to our physical desires. So let us live in that freedom, won for us in Christ,
so that our fallen flesh may not rule us, but that it might serve us – and Christ
– to become redeemed and free!
No comments:
Post a Comment