The Bible Study Evangelista

  The Church Fathers teach that the body is not the “container” for the soul, but the soul is the “container” of the body, and is everywhere throughout the body. This view is reflected in Jesus’ statements,  “The eye [the soul, according to the Fathers] is the light of the body. So, if your eye is sound [integrated, one], your whole body will be full of light;  but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” When the soul, which is everywhere in the body, is suffering and sick, the body is suffering and sick. But in Christ, man is the subject and  co-creator  of the salvation and redemption of both his body and soul ( Theology of the Body,  JPII), so that the whole human person, soul and body, becomes “full of light.

  It’s hard to impossible to be physically healthy when you hate your body. Media, trauma, disease, pregnancies, abuse, ageing, bullying – how a person perceives her appearance and feels in his body directly impacts his or her physical health. What is the truth about your body? “The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit . . . For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day” (CCC 364-365).