We have all learned that good hygiene, good diet and daily exercises help the health of our physical body that is going to age and disappear after all.
But not everyone has learned how to cultivate the health of the inner being that is eternal.
Some movie star athletes, politicians and business people, have come to have enviable bodies, but inside they are sick, weak and some are even internally corrupted.
They fall very easy on the temptations of money, sex, drugs and corruption. One lives according to the strength that the inner being has, not the body. The apostles called flesh the outer personality, perishable, mortal and the eternal interior called it spirit.
People who care more than anything about the body that perishes called them carnal and those who deal with the inner being, the spirit, called them spiritual. A balanced person is the one who takes care of both things. Your outer body and your inner life. But the interior is a priority. And that is the work of the Church: to strengthen the inner being.
HUMAN WEAKNESS
1.- God made the human being with the capacity to live a balanced life. Experience carnal pleasures, such as a rich meal, succulent desserts, rich drinks, vacations, swimming pool, the pleasure of love, children, air conditioning, heating, etc. But also experience spiritual pleasures.
The carnal desires must be controlled by that inner force otherwise they ruin our lives. Our inner being is formed by reason, intelligence, common sense and conscience. God left us a very clear graphic lesson so that we understand the balance between the flesh and the spirit and that is a priority, this picture is death. Every funeral and dismal corpse reminds us how meat pays us everything we do for it. "What we sow for our flesh, from the flesh we will reap a corpse and worms that will eat us" Galatians 6: 8.
Some live dissipated lives satisfying only the thirst of their flesh without thinking about the thirst of their spirit
I have wondered many times why the end of our earthly history is so sad: old age, sickness and at last, the final news: a cancer, or the heart that fails us, the prostate and death. Each funeral is a call to remember that the body is temporary, that this earthly life is over and that we have to pay more attention to our inner being, which is eternal.
Some live dissipated lives satisfying only the thirst of their flesh without thinking about the thirst of their spirit. They forget that the inner being is eternal and needs a relationship with "Father of the spirits" Hebrews 12: 9. If you have not given importance to your inner being and your thirst to connect with God, do it today. For that, God established his Church.
2.-But I want to speak to believers who attend the Church with wrong reasons, to ask God to grant us carnal desires instead of coming to strengthen our inner being. Many come to the Church with earthly and temporal interests: To have better luck, for God to help us in marriage, with children, in business, health, etc.
But in knowing God we have not got anywhere. We are offended by anything, we murmur, we criticize, we do not obey the shepherds, when we face a misfortune we lose faith, if we go wrong in finances we are discouraged, if we get sick we are disturbed, if we lose our job we despair, if we lose a friend, we are depressed, if our spouse leaves us we are paralyzed. How weak we are inwardly, how little influence the inner being has over our personality! We are merely carnal.
3.- And what shall I say about the temptations of the body! Gluttony, alcohol, pornography, the hunger to see, hear, smell, taste and touch beyond the correct and permissible. We watch movies of horror, of violence, where blood flows, where there are tortures, of sex and unholy stories. We yield to temptations without thinking twice. The conscience, which is the voice of the inner being, weakened to the point that it does not speak to us anymore and we are left adrift in our carnal desires.
That happens to many believers who go to church and attend Bible studies. We know of important politicians, children of pastors, who attend Bible studies, go to church with the Bible in their hands every Sunday but they have not cultivated the inner being and for that reason they fell enslaved by the appetites of the flesh. Galatians 6: 7- 10 It takes a radical conversion. Only a firm decision and a power stronger than us can change us.
