{"id":1990,"date":"2005-09-24T18:01:57","date_gmt":"2005-09-24T18:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/the-bodys-forgotten-ally.html"},"modified":"2005-09-24T18:01:57","modified_gmt":"2005-09-24T18:01:57","slug":"the-bodys-forgotten-ally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/the-bodys-forgotten-ally.html","title":{"rendered":"The body’s forgotten ally"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article originally published in Crisis<\/em>, reprinted at Holy Spirit Interactive, explaining corporal mortifications as a spiritual practice:<\/a><\/p>\n

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But let\u2019s go even further. It\u2019s clear that simply being a good person requires some kind of mortification. If a man doesn\u2019t control his anger or resentment, he\u2019ll be impossible to live with, and may even end up a murderer. Furthermore, if a person doesn\u2019t know how to deny his excessive desire for alcohol, he\u2019ll become useless to himself and others. The child who wants to pass his exam must say no to, or at least postpone, his desire to watch television or play computer games. There is enduring human and divine wisdom in Christ\u2019s powerful words: \u201cFor unless the grain of wheat die to itself, it shall not produce fruit.\u201d <\/p>\n

St. Thomas More coined the English word \u201catone\u201d by combining two words, \u201cat one,\u201d to produce one meaning \u201cto reconcile opposing sides of a conflict.\u201d One of the most powerful effects of mortification is the atonement for sin. Indeed, this is the central meaning of the Jewish feast Yom Kippur. Since all sin is a kind of violation of the order of things\u2014whether that of justice, chastity, or human life itself\u2014there\u2019s a need to repair that order, in very much the same way that one is obliged to repair a broken window. Mortification or voluntary suffering restores that order, both in relation to God, who has been offended, and to the person\u2019s own soul, which has been hurt by the sin committed. <\/p>\n

St. Paul describes in an existential and vivid way his own battle with himself. It is a conflict that sincere men and women of all centuries and social classes will recognize: \u201cFor I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That St.Thomas more factoid is interesting. Can anyone confirm?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article originally published in Crisis, reprinted at Holy Spirit Interactive, explaining corporal mortifications as a spiritual practice: But let\u2019s go even further. It\u2019s clear that simply being a good person requires some kind of mortification. If a man doesn\u2019t control his anger or resentment, he\u2019ll be impossible to live with, and may even end…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe body's forgotten ally - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/the-bodys-forgotten-ally.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The body's forgotten ally - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An article originally published in Crisis, reprinted at Holy Spirit Interactive, explaining corporal mortifications as a spiritual practice: But let\u2019s go even further. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}