[Question]{.underline}: Is it true to say that the difference between human beings is in the body and not in the soul?
[Answer]{.underline}: St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, explains that man is a composite of body and soul. Both together make up the substance of his being, the soul giving the form or determination of human nature, the body being the material element, but both inseparably making up human nature. In this man differs from the angels, who are pure spirits, and not at all a composite of matter and form, of body and soul. It is because they are pure spirits that each angel has a different nature from all the other angels. Since they are all pure spirits, they share no common nature (except the fact of being pure spirits), as men do. This is in turn why there is a natural hierarchy amongst the angels, in which they are of greater or lesser natural perfection as pure spirits.
It follows from this that what makes one man different from another is not the soul, but the body. If we all share the same human nature, and if the mystery of the Incarnation is precisely this, that Our Divine Savior took upon himself our human nature, it follows that the natural difference between one man and another is not in the soul but in the material element in which the soul exists, namely in the body and everything that relates to the physical aspect of our existence. Taken separately, our souls are all identical in nature. Of course there is also the supernatural difference of grace that is infused into the soul, and in the case of Our Lord this is the grace of the hypostatic union. Nevertheless, what makes a man an individual separate from every other man is not that he has a different soul but that his soul, of a common nature, is united to a particular body.
The consequence is that it is not only a man’s sensitive faculties that depend upon his health and bodily well being, but also the spiritual faculties of his soul, namely his intelligence and his will. These spiritual faculties can only be educated and formed in a well balanced physical life and emotional life, for the emotions, coming from the body, are part of the physical make up of a person. This is a fundamental principle for all education, according to the ancient dictum: a healthy mind in a healthy body. The conclusion is drawn by Father C. Spicq, O.P.: “Parents engender a human body that will be the instrument of a soul and that will determine the initial practical value of that soul. God will intervene afterwards, and He does so, but a man’s ancestors determine the initial energy, the fundamental orientation of a human life,…even spiritual!” (Ce que Jésus doit à sa mère, p. 30).
This philosophical principle has some fundamental consequences in the mystery of the Incarnation and in the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary as unique source of the body of Our Divine Savior. Explaining St. Thomas Aquinas, Father Spicq has this to say: “Since all souls are equal and the quality of their bodies makes the difference between souls, we can understand how extremely important it was that the body of Our Lord was perfect, as an organized body, as a body destined to be united to a soul” (Ib. p. 31). He could not have been our Redeemer without being a perfect man, and he was a perfect man because he received his physical human nature from a woman who had been miraculously preserved from the stain of original sin. He had the integrity lost by Adam and hence perfect health of body, perfect and delicate sensitivity, perfect balance of emotions, perfect control of passions. It could not have been otherwise, and we see here the appropriateness of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “If a special Providence of God had not watched over the bodily formation of the Mother herself, on the day of the Incarnation of the Son the Holy Ghost would have had to multiply miracles to preserve the Child Jesus’ organism from the hereditary stains that his Mother would have---involuntarily but necessarily---transmitted to Him. But since the body of Mary was perfect, that of Christ was also” (ibid., pp. 31-32).
We do not often think of it, but when we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, and we acknowledge that Christ had no human father, and that consequently he received his genetic and physical makeup entirely from his mother, we at the same time admit that everything that makes him different from the rest of us in the natural order he received from His mother. He could not help resembling her in all things, not just in physical beauty but also in the natural harmony and perfection that made Him so loveable. It was from Our Lady’s extraordinary power of compassion that He received his own delicate and very human mercy and compassion for sinners, encountered on every page of the Gospel (e.g., to the adulteress: “Go and now sin no more” (Jn 8:11).
The same can be said of the brightness of his human intelligence and the firmness of His human will, spiritual faculties that were molded by his inheritance from his Blessed Mother. “If Jesus was the greatest genius of the human race, He owes it to His Mother; for let us repeat it again and again: his human soul was worth exactly as much as our own. It is only because it was united to a perfect body that it had a value that ours does not have… Jesus understood in the blinking of an eye all the truth that is hidden under appearances. His acquired knowledge was developed with unheard of facility and rapidity” (ibid., pp. 51, 52).
St. Louis de Montfort had a real intuition of these simple truths when he related the captivating beauty and the ineffable gentleness of Incarnate Wisdom to His Holy Mother: “He was born of the sweetest, the most tender, and the most beautiful of all mothers, the Immaculate Mary. If you would appreciate the gentleness of Jesus then consider first the gentleness of Mary, His Mother, whom He resembles by His pleasing character. Jesus is Mary’s Child; in Him there is no haughtiness, no harshness, no unpleasantness; and still less, infinitely less, in Him than in His Mother because He is Eternal Wisdom; He is gentleness and beauty itself” (Love of Eternal Wisdom, §118).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.