Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, as I mentioned earlier this month, in a few weeks’ time we will celebrate the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, one of the great figures of the mediaeval Church and indeed of all European history. Well, I don’t intend to talk about him today, except in one very important respect, and one that is not very well understood today.
Around 800 years ago in south-west France, in the region of the city of Toulouse and down to the Pyrenees, there grew up a religious movement that had a profound influence on people in those days. They believed that there were two powerful and contesting forces in the entire universe: one of them good and the other evil. But these were not, as we might think, the same as God and the devil. Why? Because, in the first place, these people believed that these two forces were both eternal and equal. For us, of course, such an idea is utterly wrong. We believe in One God, who alone is uncreated, almighty and eternal. The devil is none of those things. He is a creature of God’s own making, he is powerful, at least in regard to his dealings with puny creatures like us, and he began to exist in time when God made him.
These people believed that everything that exists was made either by the good god or by the evil one. The good God made good creatures and the evil god made evil creatures. However, human nature is not the product of one of these creator powers, but of both. For they believed that the good God made all that is purely spiritual, while the evil one made all that is of matter. Hence, they believed that the soul, being spiritual, is good and the body, being material, is bad. For this reason they believed that men should do everything in their power to separate themselves from the body and so to liberate their spirits or souls from that evil thing.
As far as religion was concerned, this meant several very serious differences from the Catholic religion. For a start, they held that to keep aloof from everything material was the true meaning of holiness, and the only way to become holy was to avoid all material things. Hence, they absolutely abhorred marriage as a physical relation between a man and a woman, which was not only unholy in its indulgence in carnal pleasure, but even worse, far worse, it brought children into the world, new souls mired in the filth of bodily existence. For this reason these people called themselves ‘the pure ones’, or in Greek, the ‘katharoi’ or ‘Cathars’.
Also, they did not believe in the sacraments. Why? Because the sacraments unite spirit with matter. Take the Eucharist; in this most holy sacrament, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Though entirely holy, they remain part of the material world.
They celebrated all those who embraced poverty as a way of withdrawing from the filthiness of matter, and who by remaining celibate not only refused to defile themselves with sex, but also refused to bring new children into the world. Better that souls, which are created by the good God, should remain free than be mixed up with the darkness and confusion of life in an earthly body.
I mention all this because these Cathars hated the Church, and the Church understood only too well what monstrous errors these Cathars held about God and about human nature and about good and evil. But how was the Church to fight such a powerful heresy which was respected because many seemingly good men held to these ideas. The Church attempted to destroy the Cathars in southern France by warfare. But although war can kill people, it can’t destroy ideas, especially when those ideas are embodied in seemingly ‘good’ men of integrity and high morals.
Two new religious movements arose at this time which were at last effective in uncovering the false ideas behind the Cathar movement: first the Dominicans, who combined sound Catholic teaching with a truly admirable poverty of life and spirit that outshone that of the Cathars, and secondly the Franciscans. Francis radically adopted the idea of poverty, not rejecting material things as evil, because he knew that all things come from the Creator of all, the One, True God, and therefore, no created thing is truly evil in itself, but only in its use or abuse. Francis’s kind of poverty didn’t reject material things as evil, but instead rejected the power of material things to corrupt the human spirit with greed, lust, and covetousness.
So, although Francis rejected the ownership of property for himself and his followers, he did not reject the goodness of matter; specifically he did not reject the goodness of the human body because, no less than the human soul, the body was created good by God. But of course, the body with its appetites needed to be controlled, lest left to themselves, they control us. That is why the Church requires fasting and self-denial of us, yet also looks forward not to the liberation of the soul from the body at death, but to the resurrection of the body on the last day. And the Church does not make the mistake of thinking that the soul can do not sin, but following our Lord’s teaching the Church requires us to mortify our souls through acts of prayer and almsgiving, and the forgiveness of those who sin against us.
St Paul expresses all this very clearly in this morning’s second reading. He appeals to us, he says, ‘to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ He calls the offering of our bodies a spiritual worship. That is why we are here. Prayer, worship and liturgy (which is divine service) are never purely intellectual, but offerings of mind and body. Hence too, they are not simply private acts, but, especially where liturgy is concerned, public acts celebrated in union with others who share the same faith and purpose.
Paul also has another reason for emphasising the proper use of our bodily faculties and postures – kneeling, standing, singing together – in the proper worship of God, and that is because we need ‘not to be conformed to this world’. This means not being shaped in our thoughts by the world around us, by TV, internet, ideas in circulation, popular morals, etc. but instead, says Paul, to be ‘transformed by the renewal of your mind’, which means to be open to the liturgy, to the Church’s acts of worship which nourish our faith and our true identity as sons and daughters of God in Christ. This constant renewal strengthens us in mind, just as properly planned exercise strengthens the body, so that, as Paul says, ‘by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’
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