The correlation between body and soul

THOUGH there is a distinction between our body and our spiritual soul, we always have to remember that these two are both constitutive of our being. They are meant to be together. We are neither body alone nor soul alone. We are at once body and soul.

There might be some separation of the two at our death, but then at the end of time, our faith tells us that there will be a resurrection of the body and the reunification of it with the soul. In heaven or in hell, in our definitive state of life in eternity, we will be both body and soul. In this life, they are like friends that cannot get together often, and enemies that cannot separate from each other.

That there is distinction between the body and soul is quite obvious. In fact, not only is there distinction, but also conflict, as testified by St. Paul when he said, “In my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Rom 7,22-23)

But in spite of that distinction and conflict, they are meant to be united. This is how our Catechism teaches us about this point: “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body, i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” (CCC 365)

These clarifications are significant for they would show us that somehow the condition of the body is determined to some extent by the condition of the soul, and vice-versa. There is some kind of correlation between the two, though not in a strictly one-to-one mathematical kind of correlation.

To put it bluntly, we cannot say that just because one has an ugly face or a frail body, he too has an ugly soul or a weak soul. That is absolutely foul. In the lives of saints and holy men and women, we can see a beautiful soul in ugly faces and sickly bodies.

In fact, we have these prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah that described the future Christ: “He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire him.” (53,2)

So we have to be careful with making judgments based on looks alone and other external things. Just the same, we have to say that when the body is sick, especially of the mental, emotional, psychological kind, we cannot say that the illness is due exclusively to some organic malfunction. The condition of the soul has something to do with it also.

In these illnesses, we can say that the person has his soul not totally identified with God, with Christ in the Holy Spirit, because if he is, he would know what to do with those illnesses in terms of how to avoid, handle and overcome them.

These illnesses should not just be managed by using drugs alone and other human and material means. The recourse to spiritual and supernatural means to recover full union with God is also necessary. When the soul is not with God, then it is with the devil completely or partially.

Thus, when attending to our ailments and those of the others, we should not forget to have recourse also to the spiritual and supernatural means which, in fact, are more important and indispensable than the drugs and other medical interventions that we also need.

We have to liberate ourselves from the mindset that our sicknesses and illnesses are purely bodily affairs with no spiritual and supernatural dimensions involved.