EDante, AIT Home, 11 June 2016
My late father-in-law is truly a great man. He epitomized a tender father, a loving husband, a wise adviser, and a devout Catholic. A few years before he passed away, a serious heart attack brought him into a near death experience. He recalled a brief moment of separation between body and soul. With the eye of his soul, he saw his laid body in an intense emergency room amidst doctors and nurses attending it. He felt an awesome peace of mind and relief from physical pain until his soul reunited again with his body. An American colleague told a similar experience. While working as a Peace Corps volunteer in the South of Thailand, he got severely hit by a motorcycle. Bones were broken and a lot of blood lost. He immediately lost consciousness and entered into a similar experience when his soul saw his broken body on the road and felt no bodily pain. It was a brief moment of separation and then as soon as the soul reunited with the body, for which he regretted very much, he suffered the pain. Stories like these ones abound and they provoke an examination of the true nature of man. In recent times, the body of man has been studied extensively, thanks to the advances in science and medicine. But the soul is much less understood, or totally rejected. Many people treat the soul as belonging to religion and playing no role in modern secular world. In the early centuries, the subject of the soul was well studied. Marsilio Ficino, a famous philosopher of the early Italian Renaissance, once asked: does not a man abuse the soul by not devoting himself to its study? Provoked by this question, I tried to capture in this piece the truth and insights about the soul that I had discovered through study, reflection and prayer. I truly believe that the truth and knowledge of God falls like rain from the sky. One just needs to get out in the open to get wet. The longer one stays in the open, the more one becomes saturated with the word of God. This echoes Isaiah's exhortation that just as from the heaven the rain comes down so shall the word of God be until it achieve the end for which it is sent (Isaiah 55:10-11). The soul is the true principle of life. In the beginning, God breath into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). Animals and plants also have souls because they are living beings, but quite different from human souls. The key distinction is that human souls are gifted with the spirit of God, but they (animals and plants) are not. Our souls are therefore rational and spiritual giving us superior intelligence and moral senses. St. Paul refers to both soul and spirit of man (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The spiritual nature of our souls makes it immortal, while animal souls become extinct upon death of the body. So the answer to the question, do dogs go to heaven, is absolutely no. The soul is the true nobility of man. It is the more superior part of man that belongs to God, the most pure Spirit. Because of his spiritual soul, man is eternal, powerful and holy. The nobility of man can’t be degraded even by a slightest degree because of race, color, nationality, culture, economic and social status. The poorest man is as valuable to God as the richest man in the world. The old beggar living in the filthiest slum belongs to God as much as the king in his golden throne. In the eyes of God, all men are equal in worth and dignity. As God is a King, all men are royalty. This is an incredible truth to behold. The soul is immaterial and incorporeal. It has no material or physical form. It can’t be grasped nor seen. But it exists. And it is possible to perceive it. When a man in a crowded train offers his seat to an unknown person, one can say that his act of charity is his soul. When a man forgives his wicked neighbor, consider that his forgiveness is his soul. When a son gives up his bad habits, out of love for his suffering mother, know that his sacrificial love is his soul. When a wise man comforts a confused person, you can say that his wisdom is his soul. When a sinful person repents, the triune God together with all heavenly beings rejoice in seeing his reviving soul. A soul therefore can be seen in everything that differentiates man from animals. The soul is immortal. It is created by God and destined to return to Him in heaven. In the book True Life in God, Jesus explained that our soul had seen God in a fraction of a second, the very moment of our creation. Referring to that message, Sr Anne Woods in her book "Invitation to be one with Christ" expressed beautifully this encounter: "It is this flash of the vision of the Father which was first seen at the instant of our creation that struck the spark of divine love in us and created a deep impression upon our spirit that it caused an inner desire to return into the Father's embrace. That single touch of His, as He created our souls, is that resonance that sends us into the lifelong and headlong dash and thirst to find and possess Him the Infinite Holy One. It is this once only, captivating moment of our creation that send us crying through life, "Father! Where are You?". According to the dictations of Jesus given to Maria Valtorta (Poem of Man-God), the soul is infused into the body when the baby is being formed inside the womb of the mother. The body plus the spiritual soul makes up a man, created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27) and the destiny of this man is heaven. The spiritual soul does not die, but the body does. To this effect, St. Matthew urged his followers to have courage against people who can kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul (Matthew 10:28). If it is preserved, the soul becomes perfect like its Creator and reaches its abode in heaven to reunite with God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). If sins overwhelm it, the soul suffers eternal punishment in hell. The soul is made to long for and love God. Solomon, known for his wisdom, expresses such longing in poetic language "I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song of songs 3:1). Such yearning is more essential than the need to breathe. Even those who says he does not believe in God, does believe. His innate yearning for God and for an understanding of the meaning of his existence can be expressed in believing in something else, perhaps in his own ego, science, sports, money and power. If a man didn’t receive the truth about God or perhaps chose to reject them, his yearning soul and believing mind would find alternative belief systems or even invent something else. As a subsequent to this, there are roughly 4,200 faith or belief systems in the world, according to some estimates. But only the true God and true religion can fulfill such longing. In its absence, the soul suffers because it longs for God, the True God, from Whom it comes, and it hungers for God. That is why it always calls on his body to endeavor to approach the true God. The soul is made to be formed and perfected, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The soul is exactly the same in its origin and nature for all men. But they differ in its formation and accordingly to the perfection reached before death of the body. In the book Poem of Man-God, Jesus outlines three phases of the soul: “The first is creation. The second is a new creation. The third is perfection. The first is common to all men. The second is peculiar to just people who through their will elevate their souls to a more complete revival, joining their good deeds to the perfection of God's work, whereby their souls are spiritually more perfect and form a connection link between the first and third ones. The third is peculiar to the blessed souls, or saints, if you prefer so, who have exceeded by a thousand degrees the initial stage of their souls, a stage suitable to man, and have transformed them into something suitable to rest in God”. With the help of God and cooperation of man’s will, a soul needs to be carried higher and higher on the three steps. The soul in grace possessing love, and by possessing love it possesses God. In scripture (John 14:13), Jesus said that "If anyone loves Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make Our home with him”? The soul in grace therefore possesses knowledge, science, wisdom and light. Anyone who wanted to know God and to understand certain things in life can speak to his soul and ask for spiritual truths. These conversation between man and his soul filled the silence of prisons, the silence of cells, the silence of hermitages, the silence of the rooms of holy sick people. Such conversations were the consolation of prisoners awaiting martyrdom, of cloistered monks and nuns searching for the truth, of hermits longing for an advanced knowledge of God, of sick people in bearing, nay, in loving their crosses (Poem of Man-God).. In April 2012, Moonyeen and I visited Assisi of Italy, the hometown of St. Francis. Francis founded the Franciscan religious order in 1208 and is one of the most venerated religious figures in Catholic history. His life, work and words are inscribed everywhere in Assisi's medieval castles, churches, amphitheaters and piazzas (town squares). But what captured my soul the most were the words, not of St. Francis, but of his disciple, St Clare, inscribed on the walls of the Basilica of Saint Clare that say: “He who feeds the birds of the heavens and clothes the lilies of the field will not fail you in either food or clothing; Ever since I have known the grace of our lord Jesus Christ no suffering had been bothersome no penance too severe no infirmity has been hard”. With these powerful words, one can perceive the maturity and perfection of soul by its absolute trust and submission to God’s will. Comments are closed.
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