QUOTATION: Self-Hatred

No man, then, hates himself. On this point, indeed, no question was ever raised by any sect. But neither does any man hate his own body. For the apostle says truly, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh." And when some people say that they would rather be without a body altogether, they entirely deceive themselves. For it is not their body, but its corruptions and its heaviness, that they hate. And so it is not no body, but an uncorrupted and very light body, that they want.

--St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book I, Chapter 24

QUOTATION: Take Care of Yourself

Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Body and Soul

The body expresses the person. The relation between “us” and our flesh is never accidental or incidental. Our souls and our bodies are partners, never—as gender theory asserts—strangers or even enemies.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Consequences of Original Sin

 

If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him, that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man s first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason, that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence followed death and all the bodily defects. For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that, conversely, there are such things as death, sickness and every other bodily defect, for such misfortunes are bound up with an in complete subjection of body to soul.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: God Has No Body on Earth But Yours

God has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Physical Comfort

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Vanity

The less beauty the soul has, the more it needs to decorate the body. Excessive luxury of dress and vain display of external beauty are signs of the nakedness of the soul.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Self-Mastery

Say to your body: I should rather keep you in slavery than be myself a slave of yours.

-- St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: The Body as Sacrifice

Our body is also a sacrifice when we discipline it by temperance, provided that we this as we ought for the sake of God, so that we may not offer our bodily powers to the service of sin as instruments of iniquity, but to the service of God as instruments of righteousness.

--St. Augustine, City of God, 10:6