Half Human

Integrating the body and soul for human happiness

07/29/2019

Luke 10:38-42 Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

There are always two paths or roads to happiness for human beings, for me and you. Each path is particular to each part of the human person: one corresponds to the body and the other to the spirit. These are not two separate paths, like a fork in the road that forces you to choose one over the other; rather they are tightly woven together, like the two strands of a DNA molecule, or two lovers in an intimate embrace. Peter Kreeft, who teaches at Boston College, said that is why we are scared of both ghosts and zombies, both are only half human. Ghosts are spirits without bodies, and zombies are bodies without spirits. Only when we integrate both – body and soul – does the human being find happiness. The reason so many of us are only half happy is we are only trying to be half human.

This two-fold path is portrayed in my favorite fresco in Rome called “The School of Athens” by the Renaissance master, Raphael. In the center of a crowd of brilliant philosophers stand the formidable figures of Plato and Aristotle. Plato points toward heaven and the life of the spirit (contemplation), while Aristotle gestures toward the earth and the life of virtue (activity). Contemplation corresponds to the soul, but virtue to the body. But Raphael’s point is that both are key to human happiness. That is, if you are only half human, you can only be half happy.

Today’s scriptures and saints also suggest this two-fold path to paradise, and human happiness. In Exodus 32, Moses descends from Mt. Sinai with the two tablets of the Ten Commandments. Traditionally, the 10 Commandments were not seen as equally divided on each tablet, five on one side and five on the other. Instead, scholars and saints have always held that the first three commandments pertaining to love of God, were inscribed on one, and the second set of seven commandments about love of neighbor were written on the other. The first tablet, therefore, concerns the spirit’s relation to God, while the second tablet directs our bodies to love our neighbor. In other words, the Decalogue describes the dual path to perfection. To fulfill only half the commandments is to be only half human and therefore only half happy. You cannot choose between Plato and Aristotle, but must learn from both, to be happy.

The gospel gives us the account of how Martha and Mary serve the Lord and each other. Martha symbolizes the active life of the body, the Aristotelian virtues of hospitality, hard work, zeal, productivity, self-discipline, sacrifice, and so on. She symbolizes the second half of the Decalogue, the love of neighbor. But Mary is an icon of the contemplative life of the spirit, the Platonic ascent of the soul to ideas and inner inspirations of the spirit, and the fulfillment of the first half of the Decalogue, the love of God. And it must be added that one is higher than the other; love of God is higher than love of neighbor, even though both are essential for human happiness. Hence, Jesus says: “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” The scriptures and the saints help us know how to stop being half human and thus they teach us how to be more than merely half happy.

Let me suggest three applications of this two-fold path of perfection and human happiness. Firstly, at Mass we must learn to be both Martha and Mary. We should incorporate both activity and contemplation at every Mass. Have you noticed there are times the liturgy calls us to be quiet like Mary and sit and listen and not talk and not fall asleep? But we tend to be like Martha, and we want to be busy and move on to the next item on the to-do list. Be careful, that tendency to over activity leads to being only half-human, and will only make you half happy.

Secondly, I wonder if that is why more people like rock-n-roll music and shy away from the symphony. Rock-n-roll is very visceral and bodily, which is why people love to dance to it: it moves their bodies. But the symphony touches the higher powers of the human person, the spirit, the soul, and requires quiet contemplation to perceive the movements and magic of the music. The symphony lifts the soul beyond the confines of the cosmos. But again, both have their unique beauty, and one without the other only makes us half-human, and half-happy.

Finally, homilies can be both active and contemplative, leading to virtue and love of neighbor, but also to prayer and the love of God. Some people complain my homilies beat around the bush and don’t tell people what to do with their lives. To that criticism, I reply like the great German philosopher, Josef Pieper, who said: “But what – someone may well ask – are we to do about it? Well, the considerations put forward in this essay were not designed to give advice and draw up a line of action; they were meant to make men think” (Leisure the Basis of Culture, 71).

Praised be Jesus Christ!