WE need to take care of our soul. We have to
learn how to do that in a day-to-day manner, even moment-to-moment. We have to
remember that it is the soul, more than the body by itself, that gives and
sustains us in life.
But how do we take care of our soul? What criteria can we use to determine whether our soul is healthy or not, in good state or not? And how can we distinguish between the soul and the body? Many of us ask those questions, if not explicitly, then implicitly. That’s why we need to know more about this most basic and crucial aspect of our life.
We have not much problem with respect to our body or our physical and biological organism, since a lot of sciences are dedicated to that. But dealing and caring for our soul is another story. It’s a very tricky affair indeed.
Our soul is spiritual. We can say so because we are capable of spiritual operations, like thinking, knowing, learning, wanting, choosing, loving, etc. We consider these operations as spiritual because even if they make use of some organs and senses and other material things, in the end these operations make use of ideas, judgments, reasoning that are immaterial or spiritual.
In short, we take care of our soul by taking care of our thoughts, desires, preferences, choices, loves, etc. The quality of our thoughts, ideas, judgments, conclusions, etc., determines the quality of our soul.
The questions to ask are: where do our thoughts, judgments and reasonings, etc., begin and end? Where are they founded or grounded? What motivates and moves them? Where are they oriented?
Our problem is that we are not quite aware of our duty to engage and focus these spiritual operations properly. We just allow them to be moved by what we consider as “what comes naturally,” that often is nothing other than the impulses of the flesh, world trends, and other material and external things that hardly capture the essence of things.
Worse, we have come to a point where many of us are influenced by schools of thought, philosophies and ideologies that are inspired by these impulses of the flesh, world trends and other material and external values.
Among these questionable ideologies are some, not all, brands of liberalism, capitalism, communism, modernism, traditionalism, liberation theology, socialism, naturalism, etc. It might be good to know these isms and acquire the skills of discerning their different manifestations and expressions, many of them subtle and very deceiving.
These ideologies certainly contain many good things. They cannot stand and prosper if they don’t have good, beautiful and true things. But we just have to be wary of the subtle distortions, errors, confusing elements and the rotten spirit that may inspire them.
Our thoughts, desires, judgments, reasonings, etc., should be fundamentally based and ultimately oriented toward faith, hope and charity, the theological virtues that are divine gifts meant to connect us with God as we go through the different stages and situations in our life.
God is everything to us. He is much more than the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water the drink. He is everywhere and governs all aspects of reality, since he is the creator of all. Obviously, we as creatures, even if we have been created in his image and likeness, cannot expect to know everything about him. But we have to realize that we need to be with him all the time.
We have to train our thoughts and desires, our loving and all the other spiritual operations we do to spring from faith, hope and love of God and to orient everything to him. We have to be wary of our tendency to get entangled with simply human and natural aspects of our life.
These human and natural aspects, if not vitally linked with God, would have no other way but to go haywire sooner or later. And that’s what we are seeing these days. In fact, that’s what we are seeing since the fall of our first parents in Paradise.
We need to do something about this, starting with our own selves. One thing we can do is to make a daily examination of conscience just before going to bed. Let’s see to it that we end the day reconciled with God in our mind and heart, irrespective of how the day went.
Then let’s train ourselves to refer everything to God, whether they be good or bad, humanly speaking.
But how do we take care of our soul? What criteria can we use to determine whether our soul is healthy or not, in good state or not? And how can we distinguish between the soul and the body? Many of us ask those questions, if not explicitly, then implicitly. That’s why we need to know more about this most basic and crucial aspect of our life.
We have not much problem with respect to our body or our physical and biological organism, since a lot of sciences are dedicated to that. But dealing and caring for our soul is another story. It’s a very tricky affair indeed.
Our soul is spiritual. We can say so because we are capable of spiritual operations, like thinking, knowing, learning, wanting, choosing, loving, etc. We consider these operations as spiritual because even if they make use of some organs and senses and other material things, in the end these operations make use of ideas, judgments, reasoning that are immaterial or spiritual.
In short, we take care of our soul by taking care of our thoughts, desires, preferences, choices, loves, etc. The quality of our thoughts, ideas, judgments, conclusions, etc., determines the quality of our soul.
The questions to ask are: where do our thoughts, judgments and reasonings, etc., begin and end? Where are they founded or grounded? What motivates and moves them? Where are they oriented?
Our problem is that we are not quite aware of our duty to engage and focus these spiritual operations properly. We just allow them to be moved by what we consider as “what comes naturally,” that often is nothing other than the impulses of the flesh, world trends, and other material and external things that hardly capture the essence of things.
Worse, we have come to a point where many of us are influenced by schools of thought, philosophies and ideologies that are inspired by these impulses of the flesh, world trends and other material and external values.
Among these questionable ideologies are some, not all, brands of liberalism, capitalism, communism, modernism, traditionalism, liberation theology, socialism, naturalism, etc. It might be good to know these isms and acquire the skills of discerning their different manifestations and expressions, many of them subtle and very deceiving.
These ideologies certainly contain many good things. They cannot stand and prosper if they don’t have good, beautiful and true things. But we just have to be wary of the subtle distortions, errors, confusing elements and the rotten spirit that may inspire them.
Our thoughts, desires, judgments, reasonings, etc., should be fundamentally based and ultimately oriented toward faith, hope and charity, the theological virtues that are divine gifts meant to connect us with God as we go through the different stages and situations in our life.
God is everything to us. He is much more than the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water the drink. He is everywhere and governs all aspects of reality, since he is the creator of all. Obviously, we as creatures, even if we have been created in his image and likeness, cannot expect to know everything about him. But we have to realize that we need to be with him all the time.
We have to train our thoughts and desires, our loving and all the other spiritual operations we do to spring from faith, hope and love of God and to orient everything to him. We have to be wary of our tendency to get entangled with simply human and natural aspects of our life.
These human and natural aspects, if not vitally linked with God, would have no other way but to go haywire sooner or later. And that’s what we are seeing these days. In fact, that’s what we are seeing since the fall of our first parents in Paradise.
We need to do something about this, starting with our own selves. One thing we can do is to make a daily examination of conscience just before going to bed. Let’s see to it that we end the day reconciled with God in our mind and heart, irrespective of how the day went.
Then let’s train ourselves to refer everything to God, whether they be good or bad, humanly speaking.
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