Body and soul

WE have just celebrated the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15. Days before that, when I was referring to it in a chat with some high school boys,  I was taken aback to notice that in spite of their religion classes some of them did not know that the feast would fall on that day.

I immediately thought that this must part of their adolescent condition. They can know a lot of things in the sciences and arts, but can suffer some serious gaps in their religious knowledge. Well, all of us actually have some gaps one way or the other. But this situation should just lead us to help one another.

When the day came, we had a school-wide celebration of the Massl, and I took the opportunity to explain the significance of the feast, with special emphasis on how our Lady’s Assumption into heaven is very relevant to the boys.

The feast tells us that our Lady was assumed into heaven body and soul upon her death. She did not have to wait till the end of time to have her body reunited with her soul, as will happen to all of us according to what our Christian faith teaches us.

She enjoys a certain privilege, because being the Mother of Jesus who is both God and man, she was endowed with special graces that exempted her from original sin, and was sinless in her earthly life, and arguably exempted from sin’s effect of death, the separation of body and soul.

Anyway, the point is that we, as human persons, are meant to be both body and soul, and not just body only or soul only, here on earth and in our definitive state in heaven or hell.

The separation of body and soul in death is temporary, and that is precisely due to our sin whose effect on us will be definitively resolved in the Last Judgment.

We have to wait for the end of time at the Last judgment before we can have our definitive state of body and soul, because the final judgment of our earthly life also depends on how our life was affected and at the same time has given effect also on the lives of all the others.

We have been designed to be both body and soul together. Because of this, we are both individuals and social, universal and transcendent beings. We, therefore, just cannot be judged individually without regard to the others. We also have to be judged collectively, as a people, precisely on how we played a part in the lives of all the others.

We have to be more aware of these implications of this basic truth about ourselves being a body-and-soul organism. We have to be more aware of our responsibilities to live by these implications of this truth.

Foremost is the truth that we come from God who with his breath of life brought us to life. We therefore have to realize that we are not just a mass of cells. Yes, we also are that mass of cells, but it is animated by the breath of life, the spiritual soul, that comes from God.

Our spiritual soul therefore has to be linked to God always. Woe to us if we dare to separate ourselves from God! And since that soul is breathed into our body, then our body has to conform itself to the dynamics of the soul.

The dynamics of our individuality that is brought about by our material body should be made to engage with the dynamics of our spirituality that links us with others and ultimately with God. Our body has to be involved in the love of God and others.

Death precisely comes to us when our body dares to separate itself from our soul. The worst death is when our spiritual soul dares to separate itself from God, the ultimate and abiding source of our life.

If this linkage is clear in our minds, and is made a conviction that guides and shapes our thoughts, words and actions, then we can readily see the great need we have to pray, to strengthen our faith, hope and charity, and to discipline the way we think and love, as well as the way our wayward, sin-infected bodies behave.

We can readily understand why we need to have recourse to mortifications, sacrifices and all forms of self-denial—which are precisely what our Lord told us and how the saints lived.

We can then work out on the details of how we ought to live daily, considering our specific conditions.