Day 68. Be Kind to Your Body
I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
Romans 12:1
Before we conclude this portion of the Novena, we should consider our own bodies in light of this new reverence we have found in our Temple of Relationships. As the outward expression of our inner self – our person revealed in flesh – we must pray for a deep reverence for our own physical bodies.
This reverence is not to be confused with the cult of the body we identified earlier. We are not to idolize our bodies by seeking the perfect shape, muscle tone and weight. Neither should we neglect our bodies by the failure to exercise or by careless eating habits. We should not abuse our bodies through the use of mind-altering or body-altering (performance enhancing) drugs.
If we are committed to breaking the patterns of using in our relationships with others, we should likewise resist our tendency to use our own bodies as tools for pleasure or power. As temples of the Holy Spirit, our primary motive in all things is to glorify God. Secondarily, we strive daily for the love of neighbor and the authentic love of self.
The cult of the body has affected us all. The images we see of “perfect people” in movies and magazines become daily indictments of our own physical imperfection. I often encounter otherwise spiritually mature people who struggle with a negative self-image that is outwardly expressed in a body-loathing. Feelings of worthlessness come from negative comparisons with others. I don’t measure up. I’m not capable. I’m not beautiful. I don’t like me.
To love my neighbor as myself means that I will not be able to love my neighbor (nor God!) if I refuse to love myself. Authentic self-love is not egotism. It is an acceptance and affirmation of the goodness of God in his gift of being that I call “me.” For many, self-acceptance may take a greater act of faith than the choice to believe in God.
“I accept, Lord, the body you have given me; the self you have made for me.” Such a statement may require the scriptural modifier: “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief!” In the communion of Ark and Altar, a profound love flows continually from the Father who affirms you in the depths of your person and in the beauty of your body – yes, your flabby, frail, imperfect, “wish-I-weren’t-so…” body. We do well to pray daily for the grace to accept this truth: God doesn’t make junk.
I have heard it said that the most difficult Christian doctrine to grasp is not the Trinity, nor the two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. The most difficult teaching in Christianity is simply this: God loves me. As we become more deeply aware of the effects of sin and of the imperfections that cause us grief at every level of our being, we can find it easier to believe in an angry, judging God than in a God who loves us.
The cross of Jesus Christ is the eternal sign of God’s love for us. In it we perceive, at the same time, the gravity of our sin and the greatness of God’s love. Gratitude for this gift will grow over time if we are faithful to frequent reflection on the cross. Note that it was Jesus’ body that was offered for my sins. Therefore, when I degrade myself in the ritualized starvation of bulimia or anorexia, when I use my body as a pleasure tool through the abuse of alcohol or other “recreational” drugs, or when I cut myself or burn myself or carelessly risk my life for the fleeting feeling of “being alive,” I am not merely desecrating the temple of my body, I am showing disregard for the costly sacrifice of Christ’s own body.
God looks on you with great love. Your body is pleasing to him. Before you were born, he imagined what you would look like. You are his handiwork; his perfect craftsmanship. As you are emerging into the fullness of your adult life, how tragic it is that you don’t see what God has labored so intensely to bring about. You are a gift. And you are made to be a gift to others. Grasp, then, the greatness of this gift. In gratitude acknowledge the Lord’s goodness and celebrate it by making the most of the person you are. Develop all the potentials of your being that you can with discipline and determination saying in every worthy effort, “Lord I make of myself an offering of thanksgiving, for the marvelous gift you have made me to be.”
I conclude with two prayers – one for a woman and one for a man – as a word of hope and encouragement for you. They are intended as God’s prayer to you rather than your prayer to God. How often have you wondered what God sees in you? I have come to understand that his favor and his delight in me surpass anything I could have imagined. So I offer these as God’s prayer to you his daughter or to you his son. I pray that in these you will begin to find the way to greater self-acceptance.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Pier Giorgio responds: I beg you to pray for me a little, so that God may give me an iron will that does not bend and does not fail in His projects.
Let us Pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, lead me in the path of purity, for only those who are clean of heart can behold God’s face. Help me to be faithful to the covenant I have made with God in Baptism, that I may always be loyal to His command and thus offer Him sincere worship. Show me by your life how to be single hearted and completely, unswervingly, dedicated to proclaiming the Kingdom of God here on earth.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is pure love and holiness, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (for the grace to see others as jewels and not as tools – to serve them and love them with the heart of Christ.)
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
BREAK OPEN YOUR BIBLE
1. Body Language
We communicate with our bodies all the time. They manifest spiritual or relational realities that are difficult to put into words. Can I put into words what the message might be when…
…my friend who just broke up with her boyfriend (he cheated on her) dyes her hair bright blue?
…a man I meet who is doing a pilgrimage has not shaved or cut his hair in over three months?
…the captain of the school football team is killed in a car accident, and the whole team tattoos his number 33 on their arms?
…a girl gets her ears pierced on her twelfth birthday?
…a young woman likes to borrow and wear her boyfriend’s shirts all the time?
…a virgin newlywed on her wedding night cries “for no reason”?
A QUOTE TO NOTE
2. The Power of Touch
Our sexualized culture has become blind to the simple purity and power of bodily contact. Watch this video and reflect on the passage of scripture that says,
“…as a child has rest in its mother’s arms, even so my soul.” Psalm 131
Have I ever been touched in this way – bodily – by someone who loves me? When?
My Thoughts…
3. The Paradox of Jesus’ Beauty
In the modern economy of love, we think looks are what really matters. But Jesus shows us a bodily beauty that goes beyond appearances and cuts to the heart. It wounds, but it also heals, as Pope Benedict wrote years before his pontificate.
And so we return…to the paradox that we can say of Christ both: “You are the fairest of all men”, and: “He had no beauty…his appearance was so marred.” …The one who is beauty itself let himself be struck in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns …. Yet precisely in this Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, the ultimate beauty: the beauty of love that goes “to the very end” and thus proves to be mightier than falsehood and violence….
Who has not heard Dostoyevsky’s oft-quoted remark: “Beauty will save us”? Usually people forget to mention, however, that by redeeming beauty Dostoyevsky means Christ. He it is whom we must learn to see. If we cease to know him only through words but are struck by the arrow of his paradoxical beauty, then we will truly come to know him and will no longer merely know about him at second-hand. Then we will have encountered the beauty of truth, of redeeming truth. Nothing can bring us into contact with the beauty of Christ himself more than the world of beauty created by faith and the light that shines upon the face of the saints, through which his own light becomes visible.
Ratzinger, Joseph/Benedict XVI, On the Way to Jesus Christ, tr. by Michael J. Miller, Ignatius Press 2005
What is the beauty of Jesus this quote is describing?
Have I ever been touched by this kind of beauty from the Lord? When? How?
Offer this prayer.
Lord Jesus, you are the mirror in whose reflection I want to see myself. You are the one who reveals the true meaning of my body. I am clothed in your love, adorned in the gifts of the Spirit and arrayed in the splendor of your sacrifice. If the world doesn’t see it in me that’s no surprise. It didn’t see it in you either. Thank you for this body that you have created for me and for helping me see who I am in the light of your loving face.
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”