Chapter — Koch–Preuss
Chapter II: The Moral Significance of the Body
- THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE BODY.—The Catholic Church in her ethical teaching avoids two false extremes: she neither undervalues the body, nor does she overestimate it. a) Against what we may term false Spiritualism the Church upholds the value and importance of the material element in man. She teaches that the human body is superior to the bodies of all other creatures because it was directly created by God and is (not so much the prison as) the organ of an immortal soul.1 Through the body the soul exerts its activity and comes into contact with the material universe. In and through the body man exercises control over the lower creatures2 and communicates with his fellowmen. There could be no social intercourse if men had no material bodies.
1 Cfr. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., IV, c. 23 (Migne, P. G., XXXIII, 484). —Saint Bernard, De Diligendo Deo, XI, n. 30 sq. "The flesh is plainly a good and faithful companion to a good spirit: if it burdens him, it helps him; if it does not help him, it relieves him of his burden; or surely it helps him and does not burden him at all. The first state is laborious but fruitful; the second is at rest but by no means wearisome; the third is also glorious." (Migne, P. L., CLXXXVII, 993).
2 Gen. I, 25.
The human body was raised to its true dignity when the Son of God was made flesh and suffered and died to redeem men from sin and its consequences. With the same body that endured the death agony on the cross, Christ rose from the grave, ascended into Heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
Through the instrumentality of the Sacraments the body, having been redeemed by Christ, participates in the graces of the atonement and thereby becomes a temple of the Holy Ghost,3 destined to rise again after death and to be forever transfigured in Heaven. Hence every Christian is in duty bound not to "yield his members as instruments of iniquity unto sin," but to present them "as instruments of justice unto God."4 b) The Catholic view of the body differs also from that of the Materialists, who unduly exalt, nay fairly worship, the flesh. The Church values the body only in connection with, and as ennobled by, the spirit, and commands it to be mortified. "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscence."5 "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols."6
4 Rom. VI, 13; cfr. 19; 1 Cor. VI, 13, 20.
6 Col. III, 5 sqq.
To mortify the body does not, of course, mean to kill or maim it, but merely to subdue its sensual inclinations, so that it may become a fit companion for the spiritual and immortal soul —"bonus plane fidusque comes spiritui bono" as St. Bernard calls it,7 —and that it may be gradually prepared for its final transfiguration in Heaven.
7 See note 1, supra, p. 9.
- LIFE. —Of even greater value than the body is life. a) Life ranks first among the blessings of the natural order because it is the foundation and an indispensable condition of all the rest. According to revelation, man's life on earth is intended as a preparation for the life eternal in Heaven. It is the period of sowing for the great harvest;8 the day assigned for laboring in the vineyard of the Master;9 the time appointed for trading with the God-given talents,10 for running the race and competing for the grand prize.11 Again and again Holy Scripture tells us, "What things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap,”12 and, "We have not here a lasting city," but should "seek one that is to come."13 If this terrestrial journey forms but a moment, as it were, of our total existence, which is for the most part to be spent in the world beyond, then that moment is extremely precious, and every fraction thereof possesses incalculable value for the welfare of the soul. What Christ said of Himself applies in a measure to every man: "I must work the works of Him that sent me, whilst it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work."14 b) Life being a gift of such immense value, we are in duty bound to cherish it; or, as St. Paul says, we must "redeem the time."15
8 Luke XII, 23.—Cfr. V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. I, Freiburg 1911, 5th ed., pp. 119 sqq.
10 Matt. XXV, 14-30.
11 1 Cor. IX, 24 sq.
12 2 Cor. IX, 6; Gal. VI, 8 sq.
13 Heb. XIII, 14.
14 John IX, 4. —Cfr. St. Jerome, Comment, in Evang. S. Matth., l. IV, c. 25: "After the day of judgment no opportunity for good works and justice remains." (P. L., XXVI, 185).—St. Augustine, Serm., 93 (al. De Verbis Domini, 23), c. 10, n. 16: "It has been said, it is true, it has not been said deceitfully: ‘Knock, and it shall be opened to you’ (Matt. VII, 7), but now, when it is the time of mercy, not when it is the time of judgment. For those times cannot be confused, since the Church sings mercy and judgment to her Lord (Ps. C, 1). It is the time of mercy: do penance. Do you wish to do it at the time of judgment? You will be among those virgins against whom the door was shut." (P. L., XXXVIII, 579).
15 Eph. V, 16; Rom. XIII, 13 sq.; Col. IV, 5. —Cfr. St. Augustine, Serm., 16 (al. I inter Homil., 50), n. 2; Serm., 17 (al. 28 inter Horn., 50), n. 7; Serm., 167 (al. 24 De Verbis Apost.), n. 3 (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 122, 138, 910).
a) Hence no man is allowed to destroy or curtail his life, even though it may have become a burden and is seemingly of no further value. By the aid of divine grace all temporal adversities and sufferings can be borne, nay made productive of supernatural glory. A life of suffering is not necessarily useless, but may be rendered highly meritorious by prayer, patience, and a good example, and thus become beneficial to the afflicted individual as well as to the entire human race. He who has to suffer much should frequently recommend himself to God, practice the virtue of resignation, cultivate good cheer, and never lose hope.16 Like St. Paul, he should offer the tribulations which he suffers "in the flesh" for the purpose of "filling up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ."17 Illness and suffering are by no means always a punishment for personal sins.18 Oftentimes they are graces in disguise, given by a merciful God to enable man to train his soul for Heaven. "Sufferings are lessons," runs an old saw,19 but they are also, in the words of a modern poet, favors from on high.20 When borne for the love of God, "tribulation worketh patience, and patience trial, and trial hope; and hope confoundeth not: because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."21
16 Matth. XVI, 24; XXVI, 39; St. Augustine, Confess., l. II, c. 42; 1 Pet. IV, 22 sqq. —Cfr. Horace, Carmina, II, 3, 1: "Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem." —Seneca, Ep., 78, 20: "What then? Do you think that you are doing nothing if you are temperate while ill? You will show that sickness can be overcome, or at least endured. Believe me, there is room for virtue even on a sickbed."
17 Col. I, 24.
18 Matt. IX, 2; Mark II, 5; Luke XIII, 1-5; John IX, 1-3.
19 Παθήματα μαθήματα.
20 Luise Hensel: "Leiden sind Gnaden."—Cfr. Ecclus. II, 3 sqq.; Phil. I, 29; 1 Pet. I, 17; Heb. XII, 7-11. —St. Ambrose, Expositio in Evang. sec. Lucam, l. IV, c. 41 (v. Koch-Preuss, A Manual of Moral Theology, Vol. II, p. 38, n. 11).—Cfr. St. Augustine, Confess., l. II, c. 2, n. 4: “Lord, who formest suffering into a precept (Ps. XCIII, 20), and strikest in order to heal, and puttest us to death lest we die apart from Thee.” (P. L., XXXII, 677). —IDEM, Enarrat. in Psalmos, LXVIII, s. 2, n. 1: "And when the Lord permits or causes us to be in some tribulation, even then He is merciful." (Migne, P. L., XXXVI, 854).—Seneca, De Provid., II, 2: "Omnia adversa [bonus vir] exercitationes putat."—IDEM, ibid., V, 9: "Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes viros." —Ovid, Trist., V, 3, 75: “Hectora quis nosset, si felix Troia fuisset?"—P. W. v. Keppler, Das Problem des Leidens, 2nd ed., pp. 12 sqq.
21 Rom. V, 3 sqq.
"We suffer with Christ, that we may be also glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us."22
22 Rom. VIII, 17.
Thus, suffering may be made a source of joy. "In much experience of tribulation," says the Apostle, "they have abundance of joy."23
23 2 Cor. VIII, 2; cfr. Jas. I, 2-4; 1 Pet. I, 6-9; IV, 12 sq.
"The cross with its stern lines," writes Bishop Keppler, "a cold, bare, branchless tree with rough-hewn stumps for arms, is indeed at first sight a sad and joyless thing to look at, so true an image is it of harsh contradiction, so good a symbol of bitter pain. Yet men find that the cross possesses a certain beauty. In its sturdy, clear-cut, well-proportioned form they see a picture of steadfastness, of aspiring effort, of opposition conquered and contradictories reconciled. The sight of a man hanging in agony upon the cross arouses, at first, no sense of joy, it is true. Yet there is a wellspring of joy in the sure faith that the Divine Hero bleeding on the cross is dying in the battle against the fiercest foe of joy and of salvation, and conquering as He dies. The cross becomes the symbol of victory and thereby the symbol of joy. Darkness and gloom are dispelled and everywhere is shed the glory of the Resurrection. In its light, the tree of the cross becomes the tree of life, of resistless power; the dried trunk is clothed with blossoms and fruit; and out of the crown of thorns spring forth roses. Thus also is it with the cross and the crucifixion in the life of each individual Christian. That a man should take up his cross daily; that he should not only bear his cross, but crucify the flesh, the old man —these are not forced figures of speech, but stern demands which certainly do seem likely to lead far away from joy. Yet the battle to which they summon is waged not against joy, but against joy's worst enemies. The cross obliges us to renounce the apples of Sodom, the wild cherries of sin, which are really no joys at all, but it does not demand a total renunciation of legitimate natural joys; it only insists that they be used in moderation and with a good intention. Excessive enjoyment always begets disgust. Unrestricted activity and gratification of the sensual instincts does not add to the sum of joy, but ruins both joy and the man; it sins not only against morality but against hygiene, which is to-day sometimes regarded as the supreme standard. A life 'beyond good and evil,' —to use Nietzsche's phrase —unscrupulous poaching, complete loosing of the wild, natural instincts, whose advocate, protector, and prophet Nietzsche was unwillingly degraded into becoming by his less worthy disciples, the feeling of 'the beast of prey within man, the fair, ravenous, blond beast, lusting for prey and conquest,' —all this does not enrich, gladden, deepen, nor sweeten life. It delivers life over to the most wretched languor, to the hospital, the madhouse, to suicide, —'those graves of lust,'24 so numerous in the world to-day.25
24 Numb. XI, 34.
25 P. W. von Keppler, More Joy, (tr. by Jos. McSorley, C.S.P.), pp. 76 sqq., St. Louis 1914.
Even Goethe realized that the spirit of austerity and self-sacrifice alone can provide the proper basis for a healthy, happy, cheerful life:
If thou hast not part In death as well as birth, A sorry guest thou art Upon the gloomy earth.
"Man must die in order to grow. He must renounce selfishness, for it makes him poorer, not richer, and especially poorer in joy."26
26 Ibid., pp. 79–84.
"Nothing," says a contemporary Protestant writer, "shuts in a life and shuts out satisfaction and joy like the self-considering temper and the self-centered aim. Such a life, though it may seem to itself self-developing, is in fact self-deceived. Instead of growing richer in its resources, it finds itself growing poorer. The more it cultivates itself, the more sterile it grows; the more it accumulates, the less it has; the more it saves, the more it is lost."27
27 Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, p. 206.
b) To long inordinately for death is contrary to the Christian concept of life, its value and purpose. The "desire to be dissolved and be with Christ," which St. Paul extols as "by far the better thing,"28 must spring from an absolutely pure motive and be accompanied by complete resignation to the will of God. To wish for death in order to escape the dangers, vicissitudes, and tribulations of this earthly "vale of tears," is opposed to the teaching of Christ.29 Life is a precious gift which should be conscientiously employed.30 Though time is short, it is of sufficient duration to enable us to gain eternity by making good use of the fleeting moments given to us.
28 Phil. I, 23.
29 Cfr. F. W. Faber, Growth in Holiness, Ch. IV.
30 Phil. I, 24 sqq.; cfr. Sporer-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 2nd
"Nothing," says the Ven. Don Bosco, "torments the reprobates in hell more than the thought that they have idled away the time which they received for working out their eternal salvation; nothing so consoles the elect in Heaven as the reflection that they have employed their days for the honor and glory of God." c) By commanding us to sanctify our bodies and to employ time for the purpose of gaining eternity, the Church does not, as some assert, "preach gloom and sorrow and demand of her followers that they forego all joy, thus making hypocrites of them." Both the Old and the New Testament bid man to be joyous. "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye just, and glory, all ye right of heart."31 "Let the just feast and rejoice before the Lord, and be delighted with gladness."32 Christ Himself says: " Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full."33 And again: "These things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy filled in themselves."34 Even the "Preacher," who so frequently insists on the vanity of earthly things, counsels the "young man" to enjoy life,35 though always, of course, in the fear of God and with due regard to His commandments.36 Thomas a Kempis says: "There is no true liberty nor perfect joy but in the fear of God with a good conscience.”37 The religion of Christ is by no means gloomy.
31 Ps. XXXI, 11.
32 Ps. LXVII, 4; cfr. Luke X, 20.
33 John XVI, 24.
34 John XVII, 13.
35 Eccles. XI, 9.
36 Eccles. XII, 13; cfr. Ps. XCVI, 12; Rom. XIV, 17.
37 De Imit. Christi, I, 21 (ed. Pohl., Vol. II, p. 39): "There is no true liberty and no good joy except in the fear of God with a good conscience." —Cfr. Seneca, Ep., XXIII, 3: "Do this before all else, my Lucilius: learn to rejoice." —IDEM, ibid., 4: "True joy is a serious thing."
"Gloom is an alien and an enemy in Christian hearts," writes Charles Stanton Devas. "If Christianity is the religion of sorrow, it is also, and pre-eminently, the religion of joy; the solution of this antinomy being that Christianity is the religion of love, and that in this world love and sorrow are linked by a mysterious partnership. Now Christian asceticism is no superstitious pain-worship, no offering to some pain-loving deity, some evil principle opposed to the good, as though life and health were not God's good gifts; nor again has it ought in common, except sometimes the outward show, with the proud self-righteousness of the Hindu ascetic or Moslem dervish. Much rather Christian asceticism is a form of love; and love being the root of joy, it follows that Christian joyfulness is not in spite of asceticism, but its consequence. We are taught as an elementary truth that man is on earth for the one end of perfecting himself in the love of God. This is his purpose and probation. But only through labor, pain and suffering is love perfected. Christianity, then, has no mission to eliminate labor, pain, and suffering from this world (pati et perpeti humanum est, wrote Leo XIII), but to transmute them. They can be the means whereby we can obtain the subjection of the lower selfish life and of greedy individualism; the suppression of false self-assertion and of blind nature before the law of reason and of God. Christianity is frankly 'the religion of suffering, of mortification, of self-sacrifice, of consuming love, of self-forgetting zeal, of self-crucifying union,... the religion of the cross and the Crucified.' 38 Joyous abandonment, generous self-sacrifice, these are the watchwords, and to become living images of the Divine Model of whom it is written that He pleased not himself."39
38 Cfr. St. Augustine, Contra Duas Epistolas Pelag., l. III, c. 8, n. 24: "These are the clouds [of the Pelagians] concerning praise of creation, praise of marriage, praise of free choice, and praise of the saints—as though any one of us disparaged these things and did not rather proclaim them all with the praises due to the honor of the Creator and Savior. But creation does not wish to be praised in such a way that it does not wish to be healed. And the more marriage is to be praised, the less the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, which is not from the Father but is from the world (1 John II, 16), is to be imputed to it. Marriage certainly found this concupiscence in human beings; it did not cause it, since concupiscence exists in very many without marriage, and marriage, if no one had sinned, could have existed without concupiscence." (Migne, P. L., XLIV, 606). —St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 28, art. 1-4; Contra Gent., l. III, c. 112, n. 6. —J. Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists Viewed in the Light of Principle and of Contemporaneous History, (tr. by A. M. Buchanan), New York, 1914, pp. 131 sqq.
39 C. S. Devas, The Key to the World's Progress, pp. 121 sq., London, 1906.
"It is not true," says the Ven. Don Bosco, "that men are made sad by serving God. Who was more genial than St. Aloysius, or more joyful than St. Philip Neri or St. Vincent de Paul? And yet these holy men devoted their entire lives to the practice of virtue."
"The Catholic attitude towards modern intellectual life," says Father Joseph Laurentius, S. J., "requires no other weapon for its defence than an unbiased knowledge of Catholic principles. The Syllabus [of Pius IX] does not condemn progress, liberality, or culture as such; it merely rejects that which the enemies of the Christian religion have falsely decked out under these terms. A progress without God, without faith, without religion, —these are essential requisites of all true advance, —is no progress at all, but retrogression. A Liberalism detached from the principles of Christian freedom and justice, based upon State omnipotence and the tenets of an atheistic pseudo-philosophy, is a false Liberalism. A culture that excludes the true religion from education and science, and pursues materialistic aims, is a misnomer. Such tendencies are not only unacceptable to the papacy, but must be rejected by every believing Christian, be he Catholic or Protestant. True Liberalism and progress, —the kind that ennobles man, emancipates him from the slavery of passion and sin, and elevates him to the ideal atmosphere of faith, knowledge and virtue, and strengthens and fosters the family, community, State, both in a material and in a spiritual way, —such the Church is ever ready, nay eager, to enlist in her service."40
40 Jos. Laurentius, S.J., in the Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, Vol. LXXI (1906), pp. 241 sqq., especially 250 sq.—Cfr. Hettinger-Stepka, Timothy; or Letters to a Young Theologian, St. Louis, 1902, pp. 343 sqq.; G. Grupp, Kulturgeschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit, Vol. II, Munich, 1904, pp. 477 sqq.; Philip Kneib, Die "Jenseitsmoral" im Kampfe um ihre Grundlagen, Freiburg, 1906, pp. 133 sqq.; the Syllabus Errorum of Pius IX, n. 57, with the commentary of F. Heiner, Der Syllabus, Mayence, 1905, pp. 267 sqq.
READINGS. —P. W. von Keppler, More Joy (tr. by Jos. McSorley, C.S.P.), St. Louis 1914.—C. S. Devas, The Key to the World's Progress, London 1906. —Jos. Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and Its Antagonists Viewed in the Light of Principle and of Contemporaneous History (tr. by A. M. Buchanan), pp. 215 sqq., New York 1914. —W. Schneider-H. Thurston, S. J., The Other Life, pp. 74 sqq., New York 1920. —H. T. Henry, Catholic Customs and Symbols, N. Y. 1925, pp. 3 sqq.