# Are Your Soul and Body at War_ - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 1 Jul 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72754566/are_your_soul_and_body_at_war_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you friends. We come now to the
[0:03] Speaker 1: holy season of Lent. I've said this many times before.
[0:07] Speaker 1: It's like going back to spiritual basics during Lent, and
[0:10] Speaker 1: the readings the Church proposes for this holy season are
[0:13] Speaker 1: always remarkably good and interesting and important. And watch the
[0:18] Speaker 1: way the Church juxtaposes the readings, I think with a
[0:22] Speaker 1: heightened spiritual attention.
[0:24] Speaker 2: We look at these scripture passages.
[0:27] Speaker 1: So our gospel for this first Sunday of Lent is
[0:30] Speaker 1: taken from Mark, and it's marx very laconic, very understated
[0:36] Speaker 1: version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. So
[0:40] Speaker 1: in Matthew and Luke you've got these kind of elaborate
[0:42] Speaker 1: narratives that go through the various temptations of the devil
[0:45] Speaker 1: and how Jesus reacts.
[0:48] Speaker 2: Here's all the same.
[0:49] Speaker 1: Mark says, the spirit drove Jesus out into the desert.
[0:54] Speaker 1: He remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.
[0:58] Speaker 1: He was among while beasts and the angels ministered to him.
[1:04] Speaker 2: That's it. That's all we get as a description of
[1:06] Speaker 2: what happened.
[1:07] Speaker 1: So we do, indeed hear about the temptation by Satan,
[1:09] Speaker 1: but no details, and I want to focus on this mysterious,
[1:14] Speaker 1: fascinating observation he makes after that he was among the
[1:19] Speaker 1: wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. I want
[1:24] Speaker 1: you to keep that image in your mind, like a
[1:27] Speaker 1: kind of icon. Jesus in the desert, angels above, so
[1:30] Speaker 1: to speak, ministering to him, and then down below he's
[1:33] Speaker 1: with the animals. It's a commonplace of Christian anthropology that
[1:39] Speaker 1: we human beings are a bit like a microcosm. That
[1:42] Speaker 1: means we're like a little universe in ourselves. Why because
[1:46] Speaker 1: we combine in ourselves both the spiritual and the material.
[1:52] Speaker 1: Let me see it again. It's a very simple but
[1:54] Speaker 1: very important point. We combine in our person's the spiritual
[2:00] Speaker 1: and the material. Look at the spiritual sign.
[2:05] Speaker 2: You know. We can listen to Mozart.
[2:08] Speaker 1: We hear mostart our ears, but we take in the
[2:10] Speaker 1: great patterns of Mozart with our minds. We can study,
[2:15] Speaker 1: you know, Einstein, and we can study the great scientists
[2:17] Speaker 1: and the and the most abstract philosophers. We can recont
[2:21] Speaker 1: and Hegel and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. We can design computers,
[2:26] Speaker 1: we can design spacecraft that will fly to distant planets.
[2:30] Speaker 1: We can pray in such a refined way that we
[2:35] Speaker 1: almost lose our contact with the earth, and we rise
[2:38] Speaker 1: up toward Heaven. In all those ways, everybody, our spiritual side,
[2:44] Speaker 1: is on clear display at the same time, like it
[2:50] Speaker 1: or not. We have bodies, you know. We get tired,
[2:55] Speaker 1: and we get too hot or too cold, and we
[2:58] Speaker 1: we have to sleep, and we have to eat and drink.
[3:00] Speaker 1: And sometimes our passions, our emotions, get the better of us.
[3:05] Speaker 1: Sometimes we're just dictated to by our bodily passions. We're
[3:11] Speaker 1: both spirit and matter, both soul and body. It's our glory. Yes,
[3:19] Speaker 1: we're a microcosm. It's the unique way that God has
[3:22] Speaker 1: made us. God did make the angels pure spirits to
[3:26] Speaker 1: give him glory in their distinctive way. God did make
[3:29] Speaker 1: purely material things. They give glory to God in their
[3:32] Speaker 1: unique way. And He made us hybrids of body and soul.
[3:40] Speaker 1: It's our glory, uh huh, And it's our agony. Much
[3:48] Speaker 1: of human life, am I right, Fellow Sinners, is experienced
[3:52] Speaker 1: as a kind of struggle. It's a warfare between the
[3:56] Speaker 1: spirit and the body, the spirit warring against the body,
[3:59] Speaker 1: the body warring against the spirit. One of the results
[4:04] Speaker 1: of sin is that the two of them have become
[4:06] Speaker 1: kind of dislocated from one another. Go back to Paul
[4:11] Speaker 1: to the Romans, chapter seven. You find those wonderful but
[4:15] Speaker 1: troubling lines.
[4:16] Speaker 2: Right, The good that I would do, well, that's what
[4:20] Speaker 2: I don't do.
[4:21] Speaker 1: The evil that I would avoid, that's what I end
[4:23] Speaker 1: up doing. And then he says, who will deliver me
[4:26] Speaker 1: from this body of death? Well, see, he's witnessing to
[4:30] Speaker 1: how we experience on the inside, the struggle between body
[4:35] Speaker 1: and soul. Okay, now look over the history of philosophy
[4:40] Speaker 1: and religion and spirituality.
[4:42] Speaker 2: What do you find.
[4:44] Speaker 1: You find lots of attempts to deal with this problem. Now,
[4:48] Speaker 1: one of them, very popular, by the way, from ancient
[4:51] Speaker 1: times to the present day, is a kind of imperialism
[4:56] Speaker 1: of the soul and imperialism of the spirit.
[5:00] Speaker 2: Think here of you know, Plato, and.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Think of a Plotinus, and think of a Gnosticism, and
[5:06] Speaker 1: these ancient dualistic systems that say, you know, I know
[5:09] Speaker 1: the body, but the body's bad news, and the body.
[5:12] Speaker 2: Is like a prison. That's Plato.
[5:14] Speaker 1: And the whole point of the spiritual life and intellectual
[5:17] Speaker 1: life for Plato is to have a jail break escape
[5:21] Speaker 1: from the prison.
[5:22] Speaker 2: Same with the Gnostics.
[5:23] Speaker 1: They saw the spiritual spark kind of buried deep inside it.
[5:27] Speaker 2: It's just we have to get rid of these bodies
[5:29] Speaker 2: and move up beyond them.
[5:32] Speaker 1: Forms of dualism today, you bet, you bet, it's a
[5:36] Speaker 1: very popular option to glorify the spirit and to kind
[5:40] Speaker 1: of denigrate the body. That solve the problem. No, because
[5:46] Speaker 1: the body and soular as it were so woven together
[5:50] Speaker 1: that all those attempts always kind of founder, they always
[5:54] Speaker 1: come up against the rocks because you can't just leap
[5:58] Speaker 1: spiritually out of the body. Doesn't work. Now, there's the
[6:03] Speaker 1: other way to handle the problem. Forget about the spirit.
[6:08] Speaker 1: These are people that live, let's say, in a purely
[6:11] Speaker 1: sensual way. They're completely oriented to the body and the
[6:16] Speaker 1: needs and the goods and desires of the body. Now
[6:19] Speaker 1: popular option, you bet, from ancient times to the present day.
[6:24] Speaker 1: Think of even like today a playboy of philosophy or
[6:27] Speaker 1: a purely materialistic approach to life.
[6:29] Speaker 2: It's just satisfying the desires of the body.
[6:32] Speaker 1: Whatever the spirit means, well, that's some kind of abstraction.
[6:35] Speaker 1: What really matters is the needs and goods of the body.
[6:40] Speaker 1: Is that gonna work h because like it or not,
[6:44] Speaker 1: we're a hybrid of body and soul, and if you
[6:48] Speaker 1: try to just bracket the spiritual needs, they're gonna rebel
[6:51] Speaker 1: against you. It's interesting when you go to Rome and
[6:55] Speaker 1: you go into the Assistine Chapel and look at those
[6:57] Speaker 1: great paintings of Michaelangelo, and gorgeous, the chorus beautiful, But what.
[7:03] Speaker 2: You notice is the figures.
[7:05] Speaker 1: There's something royal about them and something that's tensive about them.
[7:09] Speaker 1: You know, all the musculature that Michelactal shows, it's not
[7:12] Speaker 1: just to show off as skill. It's to show these
[7:15] Speaker 1: figures struggling. Well, see what is that? It's a depiction
[7:20] Speaker 1: what I've been talking about it it's the soul struggling
[7:23] Speaker 1: against the body, the body against the soul, and deep
[7:27] Speaker 1: down we want to resolve this tension. Now we're entering
[7:34] Speaker 1: the season of Lent. Can I suggest you everybody the
[7:37] Speaker 1: church gives us this interesting, peculiar little reading from Mark,
[7:41] Speaker 1: that this might be an important work of Lent to
[7:46] Speaker 1: bring body and soul properly together. See what's one point
[7:52] Speaker 1: of the fasting and abstinence and discipline of land. It's
[7:58] Speaker 1: it's to discipline the lest it try to dominate the
[8:02] Speaker 1: self too much? How come we fast and abstain. Well,
[8:05] Speaker 1: Sometimes our desire for food and for drink, and for
[8:08] Speaker 1: sex and for pleasure becomes too dominant, and the spirit
[8:13] Speaker 1: balks at that. The spirit needs to have the body
[8:15] Speaker 1: disciplined to some degree. Now, now, to be fair, does
[8:20] Speaker 1: it work the other way? Yeah? Can sometimes the spirit
[8:24] Speaker 1: or the soul be too dominant that it doesn't respect
[8:27] Speaker 1: the integrity of the body that we start playing dualistic games.
[8:32] Speaker 1: Could part of a discipline of land be a healthy
[8:36] Speaker 1: rediscovery of your bodiliness. Remember when I was at the
[8:41] Speaker 1: seminary years ago, and you know, it's.
[8:44] Speaker 2: A temptation of seminarians.
[8:46] Speaker 1: As you get, you know, so into the spiritual life
[8:48] Speaker 1: and so into these high rarefied things, you can almost
[8:51] Speaker 1: forget that you have a body. I remember telling the seminarians,
[8:55] Speaker 1: you remember to exercise, remember to eat well, pay attention
[9:00] Speaker 1: to your body. Don't treat your body as something that's
[9:04] Speaker 1: a low level. It's the integration of body and soul
[9:10] Speaker 1: that we want. Well, look at this image again, now
[9:13] Speaker 1: that we started with Jesus in the desert, the angels
[9:19] Speaker 1: ministering to.
[9:19] Speaker 2: Him, and he was with the animals. What do you see.
[9:24] Speaker 1: Now in his own person we find a reconciliation of
[9:32] Speaker 1: heaven and earth. We find the coming together of the
[9:37] Speaker 1: spiritual and the material. How important, everybody, that we say
[9:44] Speaker 1: the word became flesh. See how beautifuy that's expressed the
[9:49] Speaker 1: word that means a purely abstract pattern, that's something entertained
[9:54] Speaker 1: by the mind. That's a spiritual reality. But the word
[9:59] Speaker 1: in Jesus becomes flesh and dwells among us. You see
[10:07] Speaker 1: Jesus in his own person, as it were, knitting together
[10:12] Speaker 1: a universe that had fallen apart because of sin. What
[10:17] Speaker 1: does sin lead to this disintegration of the self?
[10:21] Speaker 2: I like that term.
[10:22] Speaker 1: I mean the integration means hanging together. When something disintegrates,
[10:29] Speaker 1: the elements fall apart from each other. How come we
[10:32] Speaker 1: experience the war of spirit against body, body against spirit
[10:36] Speaker 1: because of sin?
[10:39] Speaker 2: Now, just a quick observation.
[10:41] Speaker 1: The link made between that gospel and our first reading
[10:45] Speaker 1: for this first Sunday of Land has to do with Noah.
[10:50] Speaker 1: He said, Now, why are in the world would the
[10:51] Speaker 1: Church link the story of Noah and the arc?
[10:57] Speaker 2: What does God.
[10:57] Speaker 1: Accomplish in that story? Sin has affected its destruction? Right,
[11:04] Speaker 1: So there's the tohuohu. The primal chaos is back. That's
[11:09] Speaker 1: the great flood of Noah. That's destructive of life. That's
[11:12] Speaker 1: what sin does. But what does God do? God rescues
[11:16] Speaker 1: his human creatures. Yes, indeed, Noah and his family and
[11:22] Speaker 1: all the animals, this remnant of God's good creation also saved.
[11:28] Speaker 2: On the arc.
[11:30] Speaker 1: God is not playing a platonic game in the Bible.
[11:34] Speaker 2: I mean, the goal is.
[11:36] Speaker 1: Not let's get away from matter as much as we
[11:38] Speaker 1: can and move up to a purely spiritual heaven.
[11:41] Speaker 2: That isn't it. In fact, don't we.
[11:43] Speaker 1: Say in the Creed we look to the resurrection of
[11:48] Speaker 1: the body and life everlasting. We don't say we look
[11:52] Speaker 1: to the escape of the soul from the body. No, No,
[11:55] Speaker 1: we want the resurrection of the body, the whole person saved.
[12:00] Speaker 1: Think of Noah's ark now as a kind of image
[12:03] Speaker 1: or icon of that, just as Jesus the angels ministering
[12:07] Speaker 1: to him, the animals attending to him is an icon
[12:12] Speaker 1: of a reconciled world. Everybody can I suggest this would
[12:17] Speaker 1: be a really good way to pray. Your way through
[12:20] Speaker 1: lent is to understand more deeply the ways in which
[12:25] Speaker 1: the disintegration of soul and body exists in you. And then,
[12:30] Speaker 1: with the icon of Christ in the desert and mind,
[12:33] Speaker 1: ask the Lord to reknit these elements of your very self,
[12:39] Speaker 1: and God bless you.

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