VISIO QUARTA, cap. LXXIII
The Soul as the Breath of the Body
The soul is compared to the air that gives life and fruitfulness to the earth, warming the blood and working visibly through the body.
If the earth were to flourish twice in a year and bring forth fruit far and wide, it would turn to dryness and become like dust. Through this is signified that if the soul were to consent equally to the desires and the will of the flesh, it could accomplish no work, since the soul itself is a living breath that, by its noble touch, passes through the whole body giving it life, just as the breeze of the said air renders the whole earth fruitful. The same air exists, as it were, as the soul of the earth, whose moisture, touching it with its own breeze, makes it flourish; and just as this air — whose greenness signifies blood and whose moisture signifies sweat in a human being — is invisible and impalpable in the earth, so the soul in the body, being impalpable, warms the blood and through rationality works visibly in it.
The Fall and the Longing for Paradise
Humanity received a natural law in paradise, rejected it through the serpent's counsel, and now lives in exile with deep longing for what was lost.
For a human being understands that God dwells within him through the soul, and so, whether through himself or through another, he always establishes a law for himself; and this is natural to him, since the first human being received a law in the commandment, which he rejected through the serpent's counsel. Whoever, after the transgression of God's commandment, was driven out into this exile and could not dwell in paradise — yet toward that place they longed deeply, with many sighs.
Unequal Struggles of Soul and Body
The soul sighs when overcome by the body and rejoices when it masters the flesh, producing unequal works just as the earth yields unevenly in cold and heat.
So also the soul, when it has been overcome through the body, draws many deep sighs through suffering; but when it has subjected the body to the desires of its nature, it rejoices in great joy. And just as the earth in cold and in heat does not bring forth its fruits equally, so also the soul itself, working badly and well, produces unequal works.
The Faith That Was Lost
No one in the fallen state can possess the pure, mountain-moving faith that Adam once enjoyed before the transgression.
For from this nature, in which the soul is overcome through the body and the body through the soul, a human being by no means can have that pure faith by which one could raise a mountain and cast it into the sea, as the Lord said to his disciples about the grain of mustard, and which Adam had when he beheld the invisible brightness of God with his outward eyes, in which he did not doubt that he could do whatever he wished. But after the transgression, neither Adam nor anyone else could have this vision.
Faith, Mortification, and the Body's Limits
The faithful are called to trust God in the mirror of faith, by which many have mortified fleshly desires, for the soul grows weary when the body is always indulged.
So let the faithful person look toward God with the inner vision of their soul in the mirror of faith, and trust in him who is able to do all things to save them.✦ By this faith, many have done great signs, putting to death the desires of their flesh. Because just as the veins of the heart, liver, and lung assist the stomach in receiving or expelling food, yet continuous or excessive fullness or emptying would harm that same stomach, so the soul is indeed present to the body in whatever works it does, but it would grow weary if the body itself were always allowed to follow the desires of the flesh.12
Read the original Latin
Quod si terra bis in anno viresceret et passim gigneret, in ariditatem verteretur et sicut pulvis efficeretur. Per hoc designatur quia si anima desideriis ac voluntati carnis suae pariter consentiret, nullum opus perficere posset, quoniam ipsa vivens spiraculum est, quod nobili tactu totum corpus illud vivificando pertransit, quemadmodum etiam flatus praedicti aeris totam terram fructiferam reddit. Idem vero aer quasi anima terrae existit, cujus humiditatem flatu suo tangens, eam virescere facit; et sicut aer iste, cujus viriditas sanguinem et humiditas sudorem in homine significat, in terra invisibilis et impalpabilis est, sic anima in corpore impalpabilis sanguinem calefacit, et per rationalitatem, in illo visibiliter operatur. Homo namque se Deum habere per animam intelligit, ideoque sive per se ipsum, sive per alium legem sibi semper constituit; et hoc ei naturale est, quoniam primus homo legem in praecepto accepit quam per consilium serpentis repudiavit. Qui post praevaricationem praecepti Dei in exsilium istud expulsus, paradisum inhabitare non potuit, ad quem tamen in multis suspiriis anhelavit. Ut etiam anima, cum per corpus superata fuerit, plurima suspiria dolendo trahit: sed cum illud desideriis naturae suae subdiderit, in magno gaudio laetatur. Et sicut terra in frigore et in calore fructus suos non aequaliter profert, sic etiam ipsa male et bene operando inaequalia opera habet. Ex natura namque ista, in qua anima per corpus, et corpus per animam saepe superatur, homo illam puram fidem nequaquam habere potest per quam ipse montem elevare et in mare mittere possit, ut Dominus discipulis suis de grano sinapis dicebat, et quam Adam habuit quando invisibilem claritatem Dei exterioribus oculis suis videbat, in qua quaecunque vellet se posse facere non dubitabat.
Sed post praevaricationem, nec Adam nec ullus hominum hanc visionem habere potuit. Unde fidelis homo cum interiori visu animae suae in speculo fidei ad Deum respiciat, et ab eo qui omnia potest se salvari confidat. In qua fide multi desideria carnis suae mortificando plurima signa fecerunt.
Quia sicut venae cordis, jecoris et pulmonis, ad receptionem vel emissionem ciborum stomacho subveniunt, et eidem stomacho continua vel nimia repletio aut exinanitio obessent; ita et anima corpori quidem in quibusque operibus adest, sed eam taederet, si corpus ipsum desideria carnis semper sequi permitteret.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Cor.13.12 — For now we see in a mirror, dimly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Notes
- 1 ↩The analogy between bodily veins and the soul's presence to the body is rendered as an extended comparison (sicut...ita) of the soul's sustaining and vulnerable relationship to the flesh.
- 2 ↩anima rendered 'soul' per lexeme policy; 'eam taederet' rendered 'it would grow weary' captures the soul's fatigue under the body's unchecked desires.
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