I think of the thoughtless ways I've often treated my own body: not getting enough sleep and keeping running on a caffeine rush, throwing any food into my mouth that's handy to keep going, overeating out of stress, not exercising enough, worrying more about how I looked than about how my body felt, so I developed varicose veins from wearing too-tight panty girdles...... We all have our own stories!
But - we're not alone in not knowing what to do with our bodies. A lot of the great saints had difficulty with loving their bodies. They treated their bodies as an after thought, or, at best, as a great source of temptation, so they punished their bodies to discipline them, "get them under control," so to speak. Others believed that they pleased God when they made themselves suffer great agony in imitation of Christ's sufferings. Many saints in the past whipped, or flagellated themselves. Others wore hair shirts under their clothing, or chains around their waists. But - even if they did these things to their bodies in great sincerity and out of love for God, they weren't honoring the gift of their bodies, a gift which God had generously given them.
When God created human beings, He thoughtfully, meaningfully made each of us a unique combination and union of body and soul. Then in Jesus, God became flesh and dwelt among us: that truth, the Incarnation, or "Enfleshment" of God, ("carne" means "flesh") is the backbone of our Christian faith. In Jesus, God meets us in our humanity and we meet Divinity "in the flesh." In Jesus, our embodied God, God can physically show His love for us. Celeste Snowber Scroeder, in "Embodied Prayer: Harmonizing Body and Soul," says
"Jesus comes to us in the entirety of what being human means, and his body is integral to both his humanity and his divinity. Jesus' vocation on earth came through his body: pounding nails, walking among the poor and brokenhearted, praying, kneeling, eating, washing feet, healing the sick. Jesus' hands became a living extension of the heart of God; his bodily touch was central to loving and healing people while on earth. Born into a culture that honored the body as an expression of the heart, Jesus would have had to walk, skip, run, jump, kneel, extend hands in prayer, even dance!
"But what is most important is not that Jesus kneeled or danced, and that we should follow his example, but that God chose to be revealed through human flesh, through the physical, the body.....We are our bodies, and if God can honor the body enough to be revealed through flesh, we need to take the body seriously."
C.S. Lewis, great theologian and novelist (he wrote the series beginning with "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", explains the unique attitude of Christianity towards the human body:
"Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy."
So - how can we change our attitudes and actions towards our bodies?
First, we can appreciate the MIRACLES that they are. And our bodies don't have to be in perfect working order to do this. The great dancer Martha Graham, said once
"The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle."
Secondly, when we PRAY WITH OUR BODIES, it is an affirmation of that miracle. Schroeder agrees, saying that prayer using our bodies heals the division between body and soul because our body is "a sacred place for dialogue with God."
For Catholics, making the Sign of the Cross is a prayer, a bodily remembering of the cross which is our salvation. We physically cover ourselves with the protection and the sanctification of the cross!
On Holy Thursday, men and women from each parish go forward to sit at the altar, remove their socks, watch the priest or deacon kneel before them with basin and towel, and then shiver as they feel water coursing over their feet. The prayer of feet-washing is a bodily remembrance for them and for we who watch and listen to the flow of water that Jesus came to serve, not be served, and that he told us all to go and do likewise: serve the least of our brothers and sisters. Our bodies engage with the sight and sound of this feet-washing; our souls remember Jesus and his words to all of us.
On Good Friday, we've invited to prayerfully reverence a cross that people hold in the front of the Church, the base resting down on the floor. We can kneel before the cross, kiss it, touch it, lay our cheek to the hard wood. And, through our bodies touching the wood, our souls remember Jesus' sacrifice and give thanks.
During the night, when I am restless or anxious, I reach for my rosary beads, and the pressure of my fingers closing around them reverberates in my soul, lifting me once more to the Throne of God, Who is Divine Mercy. My lips murmur the familiar words, my fingers move from bead to bead, and finally my soul relaxes and is at peace.
Every kind bodily action of ours, every gentle word, every smile, is a PRAYER, an outpouring of love not only to a person but to the God Who lives in that person.
Every cake we bake, spaghetti sauce we make, scarf we knit, painting we create, dance that we dance, when our work and play are infused with tenderness and love, we're PRAYING, honoring God, honoring those we love, and celebrating the MIRACLE of our bodies.
Every time we make love with real love and tenderness and joy in a committed marriage, it's a PRAYER, a MIRACLE, a CELEBRATION of our having bodies, and a union of our bodies and souls giving praise to God. Can we believe that our bodies are worthy of sexual expression even though they aren't "perfect"?
Thirdly, when we HONOR our bodies, we honor God as well as ourselves. We honor our bodies when we consider them a living expression of ourselves.
We honor our bodies when we recognize that severe over-eating, over-drinking, or abusing drugs is cruel self-abuse. Can we feel enough tenderness and kindness towards ourselves to stop this self-abuse? Can we consider a diet a gift that we give ourselves?
We HONOR our bodies, when we enjoy healthy relationships and don't allow others to abuse our bodies through beatings or demands for sex outside a committed marital relationship.
We HONOR our bodies when we realize that we have a right to put ourselves first, to speak up if we feel we've been treated unfairly, to say "no" when others, by their selfish desires to control our lives, want us to "take care of them" to the point of our physical and emotional exhaustion.
God expressly created each of our bodies. God loves our bodies. God wants us to love our bodies too. To take joy in what we can do with them! To treat them as the MIRACLES they are. To PRAY with them. To PLAY with them. To BUILD and CREATE and REPAIR with them. To COMMUNICATE LOVE with them. To HAVE RELATIONSHIPS with them. To HELP AND SERVE others with them. And, finally, to ENJOY ETERNITY with some kind of wonderful body.
Find some kindness and tenderness in your hearts for your bodies today. HONOR your body. It's the same kind of body that Jesus, Son of God, had - and has in Heaven. And it's the pinnacle, the truly miraculous GIFT that God has given you!