Today is the Feast Day of St. Dominic.
St. Dominic was known for his preaching and intellectual rigor. I used to belong to a church that was led by Dominicans and their homilies were intellectually intense.
I appreciate St. Dominic and his order because I cannot stand bland, trite, watered-down Christianity.
St. Dominic preached against the Albigensian heresy that sprang up in France. It’s a complex heresy and I don’t have the space or time to fully flesh out its tenets, so I’ll just focus on one part.
Albigensians believed that only the spiritual was good and matter was bad. Consequently, they believed that our souls—the spiritual side of us—were the good part and our bodies were bad.
This, of course, had all kinds of ugly ramifications. Suicide was commendable, especially doing it by starvation because feeding the body was bad. Marriage was looked down upon because sex within marriage was seen as bad. Any good pleasure for the body was seen as bad and therefore should be avoided—food, sexual intimacy between spouses, care of the body, etc.
It is obvious to see why this was a great heresy that needed to be condemned. Our souls and bodies were created by God, He designed us that way. We are different than angels in that we are not just pure spirit. While we can get into a lot of sin and vice using our bodies, ultimately it is our soul that animates our bodies. Our bodies just follow our will and our will is of a spiritual nature.
This is not to say then that the soul is bad. Neither the spiritual or material world is inherently bad. Both are great goods, created by God. The material world is how we experience much of our human existence, through our senses. We need the material world to sustain our bodies through food, water, medicine, clothing, etc.
We, also, are spiritual creatures and need our souls sustained by the Eucharist, prayer, and the Sacraments.
It is good and right, Catholic Pilgrims, to care for our bodies and our souls and not to view a war between the two. Thank goodness, St. Dominic challenged that heresy and set the record straight.
Have a blessed Tuesday.
St. Dominic, pray for us!
