Wednesday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time, October 14th
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Works of the Flesh
One of the most careful lines that early Christians had to walk was to maintain a proper understanding of the relationship between the body and the soul. Heresies were common in the earliest days of the Church because there was very little room for error. Who exactly was Jesus Christ? What was his relationship to specific human beings? How human was he? Could an immaterial God really place Himself within the confines of a material universe? Quite clearly, it was very easy for some Christians to erroneously assume that the things of the material world were automatically bad while the things of the spirit were the only things that were good. But it was the person of Jesus Christ who allowed us to realize the goodness of the physical world because it is a part of God’s creation that He Himself chose to enter into through the Incarnation.
How could the physical world be sanctified by God when our own flesh is the source of so many of the sins we commit? St. Paul calls the “works of the flesh” obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. Our flesh can be the gateway to our most common sins because it was through the flesh that sin entered into the world. But there is a deep connection between our bodies and our souls; if our souls are properly oriented, we can use our bodies for the works for which they were meant, namely the glorification of our Creator. If we separate our bodies and souls, calling our bodies bad and sinful and our souls good and spiritual, we do not allow the body to learn from and be guided by the spirit. This is exactly why Paul says if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. If you are guided by the spirit, you will not worry about the pitfalls of our bodies; rather, you will use your body as it was meant to be used—to unify the created world with the immaterial world. We have to understand that the physical world is not evil, nor is it so corrupted with sin that it is beyond saving. God entered into the physical world because the physical world was beginning to corrupt our spiritual existence; He came into this world to sanctify our bodies, and He did so by undergoing torture and death to His own physical body. By doing so, all of the sins, passions, and desires that have developed from our bodies were able to be overcome by a single act of selfless love and mortification of the flesh. Christ very clearly showed us in his sacrifice that there is no work or desire of the flesh that cannot be sanctified by the love that originates in our souls. We are called to perform acts of love for others and mortification of the flesh as Christians in order to still appreciate the gift of the body as a crucial part of our created beings.
Our bodies and the physical world are not the only things that exist; therefore, we cannot live as if our passions and appetites are the only things that should be satisfied. Likewise, it is just as important for us to never forget about the existence of a physical world. God created the heavens and the earth, the plants and the animals, and gave life to our bodies because He deemed it to be good. Our own creation was very good. The body and the soul, or the flesh and the spirit, have a necessary relationship because they make up who we are. Use your flesh as an extension of your spirit, not an enemy of your spirit that leads you to sin. Practice selfless acts of charity through your body and mortification of the flesh to emulate Christ and to reorient your physical self in such a way that you return to how God created you. The works of the flesh can be sanctified as long as you harmonize the things of this world with the Spirit.
