By Valentine Obienyem
Familiarity often dulls appreciation. We become so accustomed to what is near us that we sometimes fail to recognise its richness until we encounter it through fresh eyes. That is why there is often great excitement when a priest from another place comes to celebrate Mass. People leave saying, “What a wonderful priest! Where did he come from?” It is not necessarily because he is better than the priests they already have, but because a fresh voice, a different perspective, and a unique style often illuminate familiar truths in new ways. Such was my experience listening to Fr Stephen Ugwuzor today.
In his homily, Fr Stephen centered his reflection on St Paul’s words in the second reading: “We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh” (Romans 8:12). We are debtors not because we own our bodies, but because we have received life itself from God. Our true debt is to the Spirit, who gives us life and directs us toward our eternal destiny.
In order to explain the importance of the body and the soul, like the lecturer at Pope John Paul II Major Seminary that he is, he ventured into metaphysics. He spoke about “essence” as that without which a thing cannot exist. He described the essence of a human being as a composite of body and soul, noting that without either, a human being remains incomplete.
His sermon reminded me of one of my old teachers, Fr Collins Okeke, a man of towering intellect whom, if it were today, I would have nicknamed “Nous,” after Anaxagoras. At a very tender age, he introduced us to the theory of hylomorphism. If memory still serves me correctly, he taught that Aristotle gave the definitive formulation of the theory, which holds that the human person is a composite of body and soul.
Fr Stephen explained that the human person is a unity of body and soul. The body gives us our visible identity, while the soul is the principle of life. Neither alone constitutes the human person. Yet, while we spend enormous time caring for the body, we often neglect the soul, which is immortal and ultimately defines our relationship with God.
According to Fr Stephen, we take care of our soul only when we refuse to become slaves to the numerous demands of the flesh and instead live according to the Spirit. Here, I remember the song that recently trended: “Anuahu m choro this and that.” Christian discipleship is, therefore, a daily struggle to subordinate bodily desires to the higher calling of the soul.
We repay our debt to God not with material offerings but through lives of holiness. Every act of prayer, charity, self-denial, forgiveness, and obedience to God’s will is a repayment of that debt. Today’s readings remind us that while the body deserves care, the soul deserves even greater attention, for it is through the soul that we attain the eternal life promised by Christ – what Augustine called the “beatific vision.”